Tony Khan Describes the Changes Coming to AEW Dynamite and Rampage
AEW has been heavily promoting a new look for Dynamite and Rampage beginning in the new year. Tony Khan recently discussed those changes while appearing on Fightful's Grapsody podcast, hyping up what kind of changes fans can expect. He explained, "The wrestling is going to be the same great wrestlers and the same great fans, but it's in a new city, Seattle, and the look, the changes to the set, and the presentation are going to be changes that we're going to keep. I'm really looking forward to the new look for the show.
"I find, in wrestling, when you overpromise, you can disappoint people. It's a set and a presentation. At the end of the day, the most important thing is what the fans bring, what the wrestlers and the staff of AEW and the crew bring every week, but the look of the show is important too and it's going to look really cool," he added.
The new look comes following Michael Mansury's hiring as the new AEW Senior Vice President and Co-Executive Producer. He previously worked for WWE and was seen as the successor to their executive producer, Kevin Dunn, but decided to leave the company in March 2020.
"There was definitely unfinished business in a, I don't know that I left wrestling feeling fulfilled. I think when I left WWE, I was burnt out and frustrated," Mansury said while on The Sessions this week. "Even after I left WWE, I left and jumped right into Pat's show, but we were also in the middle of a global pandemic, and you didn't really have time to process that I just left a place that I had spent a third of life working in, where I grew up as a man. I hadn't had time to process that. Nor were the situations going on in life in a place for me to process that. It started to dawn on me that there was still a lot more that I've yet to accomplish. Around the summer, I started talks again with AEW. A few folks had reached out, shoutout to [AEW Chief Legal officer] Megha (Parekh). Megha and Tony (Khan) were pretty inviting right from jump street. 'We have an opportunity here, we feel the company is at the threshold of that next level and next iteration of what AEW is in establishing our identity and everything else in between.' They wanted to gauge my interest and see if I would be interested in coming along for the ride. It was a pretty long process, and at that point, I said I was interested for sure, but we were getting ready to launch ONE on Prime Video and I wanted to give that the focus it deserved. It occupied a lot of my thoughts. We got to the point, ultimately, as conversations progressed, we were literally packing up our bags to head to the US and going back and forth as to what this role would be, what I would do. We came to an accord and here I am."
Khan's full interview will premiere at Noon EST on Monday.