AEW: Tony Khan Reflects on First Meeting With Cody Rhodes, The Elite in 2018 (Exclusive)

All Elite Wrestling materialized rather quickly. Back in 2018, Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks co-produced an independent event, ALL IN, that would effectively serve as the spiritual pilot episode of AEW programming. Behind the scenes during this time, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Tony Khan had been quietly crafting his ideas for a professional wrestling promotion. As a lifelong wrestling fan, Khan had wanted to get into the squared circle business for some time, and the state of the industry in 2018 was the perfect time to strike. While promotions like New Japan Pro Wrestling and Ring of Honor were setting personal financial records, the very top of the industry, WWE, had grown stagnant, leaving room for a company to disrupt.

“I first had the idea, I believe on April 6th, 2018. I was at a party in Beverly Hills,” AEW President Tony Khan told ComicBook. “I was with my friend Kevin Reilly, who was at the time the President of TBS and TNT. This was before my good friend Mr. David Zaslav had taken over. It was a different era. It was still WarnerMedia, it was not Warner Bros. Discovery. There were lots of things happening back then in the world of wrestling and TV rights in 2018. There was a big opening and opportunity for somebody to launch a wrestling promotion if it was done the right way, at the right time, with all the necessary resources that we had.”

Television was a key factor to Khan’s wrestling concept, as having a weekly viewable product is crucial to any promotion’s success.

“I just needed to find a TV partner and in Kevin, I found a potential TV partner. It took me another year after that to actually get a deal on paper, but Kevin was interested,” Khan continued. “We had a lot of meetings about it and I had opened a door that I would never close.”

Once chats with Warner executives went down, Khan began to float the idea to his future foundational wrestlers, The Elite. The Elite was an offshoot faction of New Japan’s Bullet Club comprised of Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson), Hangman Page, Cody Rhodes, and Marty Scurll.

“It was a few months after my first conversation with Kevin Reilly that I had my first conversation with Matt and his wife Dana. The first person I talked to out of The Elite was Matt and Dana. They called me on July 3rd, 2018,” Khan mentioned. “I think Nick thought, ‘This guy’s crazy.’ Everybody’s heard charlatans come out of the woodwork in wrestling, and they’d seen a lot of that, and I don’t think those guys were going to take it seriously, but something about my approach intrigued Matt. Honestly, I think it was the fact that it’s coming from the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars is what it was. I think it gave us a lot of credibility.”

After those phone calls, the “vetting process” began.

“After that I met with Cody’s agent, Brian Wittenstein, because Matt reached out to Cody and said this was a great call,” Khan continued. “I talked to Matt and Nick together, and then met Brian, and then Brian introduced me to Cody and we had all these great talks.

“It was a while later before I could talk to Kenny because Kenny was with New Japan Pro Wrestling,” Khan added. “We actually launched with Matt, Nick Jackson, Hangman Page, Cody Rhodes, MJF, Pac, and Chris Jericho, Dr. Britt Baker and many others that came to the rally in Jacksonville when we announced AEW on January 8th, 2019. Kenny joined us a month later after he fulfilled his obligations with New Japan. It’s crazy to think back.”

AEW Dynamite 250 airs tonight at 8 PM ET on TBS.