Tony Khan might have taken a beating on AEW Dynamite, but he’s out there swinging during NFL Draft weekend.
All Elite Wrestling President Tony Khan was a recent guest on NFL Network. When asked about wearing a neck brace after being on the receiving end of a TK (Meltzer) Driver, Khan said that after Matthew and Nicholas Jackson renamed the move a few months ago, maybe he should have seen it coming.
“They changed the name a couple months ago to the Tony Khan Driver. Maybe I should have seen it coming in hindsight,” Tony Khan admitted. “They called it the Tony Khan Driver. I have a complicated relationship with Matt, Nick, and Jack. Jack had been out of AEW for a while.
“I sent him on an excursion to our partner in Japan, where he did great things. I reinstated him Wednesday night on TBS, by his own request. He repaid me by hitting me in the stomach with a microphone. And then Matt and Nick pulled me up and gave me the Tony Khan Driver, which is really a spike piledriver.
“It’s one of the deadliest moves in pro wrestling. It’s been banned in a lot of states, it’s illegal in the state of Tennessee. And for them to do that to me in front of millions of people around the world and a great audience live Wednesday night on TBS. It scared me, and it scared my family, and I just feel really lucky that I’m here at the NFL Draft with the Jaguars and able to still be working at the Jaguars and AEW right now.”
When asked if his father, Shad Khan, was concerned for his well-being after the incident, Khan said his father was more angry at the people who assaulted him than anything else.
“He was very angry at the people that assaulted me,” Tony Khan said. “My dad loves AEW, and he’s a big fan of what we do Wednesdays on TBS and Saturdays, just like tomorrow night here in Jacksonville on TNT every week. He watches every show, and he never expected something like that. It’s never happened before.”
Khan then went on to put over AEW as the most successful challenger brand since the AFL pre-merger, comparing his company to Pepsi while WWE to that of Harvey Weinstein.
“AEW, we’ve been doing this for five years,” Tony Khan continued. “We are the most successful sports startups since the AFL pre-merger. There has not been a challenger brand that has gained as much market share as AEW in many, many, many years.
“We are like the Pepsi of pro wrestling, and we’re up against a really evil juggernaut. WWE is our competitor. That’s what we’re facing. AEW, like the Pepsi of pro wrestling. WWE is like the Harvey Weinstein of pro wrestling. And I’m really proud of what we do.”
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