Can Tony Khan’s AEW beat Vince McMahon and WWE at its own game?
Three years in, All Elite Wrestling has established itself as being the first viable alternative to WWE since the ‘Monday Night Wars’ of the mid-90s.
Ask any professional wrestling fan what their favourite thing about it is and the answer is almost always the same.
The surprise.
More than a title change or even the outcome of a particular match, fans of sports entertainment always want to see a good guy turn bad or a new superstar debut.
In 1996, when Hulk Hogan decided to turn heel for the first time at World Championship Wrestling’s “Bash at the Beach” pay-per-view, it was a moment still remembered by both wrestling fans and non-fans alike. After years of telling kids to say their prayers and take their vitamins, Hogan’s decision to launch the villainous New World Order only added an extra spark to the fight for wrestling supremacy between Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment and Ted Turner’s WCW. Known as the “Monday Night Wars,” when both companies ran their flagship television programs against one another in the mid-1990s, the battle ended in 2001 when McMahon bought out his rival.
Now, with the emergence of All Elite Wrestling, there is a strong sense of déjà vu.
Celebrating its third anniversary this month, AEW has established itself as being the first viable alternative to WWE in 20 years.
“The plan was to put on the best wrestling show on television,” AEW President and CEO Tony Khan told the Star in an exclusive interview. “When we started, we had a great roster and a lot of great people but there was more parity in the world of wrestling in terms of where people were signed. Did I expect that we would be competitive with the company (World Wrestling Entertainment) that was number one in many of those metrics? Yeah, I did, and it’s gratifying that we have been.”
While Khan handles day-to-day operations, the wrestling promotion is owned by his billionaire father, Shahid Khan, whose sports and entertainment empire includes the National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars and the Fulham football club in the Premier League. He also owns the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto.
AEW has made its mark on the wrestling landscape by signing big-name talent released by WWE, using mature storylines and producing matches that include a greater degree of violence. Coupled with national TV deals in both the U.S. (with TNT and TBS) and Canada (with TSN), the company has become the undisputed main competitor for WWE.
Eric Bischoff was the last man to beat Vince McMahon at his own game. The executive producer and former president of WCW launched his company’s show, “Nitro,” on TNT in 1995. It competed head-to-head against WWE’s flagship program “Monday Night Raw” on the USA Network until 2001. Starting in the summer of 1996, “Nitro” beat “Raw” in the ratings for 83 consecutive weeks, a feat that hasn’t been replicated since.
The former head of WCW believes that WWE’s current product is stale.
“The WWE product is just as successful as it has been over the last 20 or 25 years,” Bischoff, who was inducted into the WWE’s Hall of Fame Class of 2021, told the Star. “The bad news is the formula that keeps WWE in the position that they’re currently in and enjoying is a very safe and sterile formula. The names change, the outfits change, but nothing else really does. It’s very very formulaic. It’s not attracting new viewers.”
There is also an opening.
Like many businesses, WWE was hit hard by COVID-19. At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the company moved the majority of its programming to its training facility in Orlando with no audience in attendance, meaning no ticket sales and no touring shows. In a press release to investors issued in April 2020, the company cited COVID-19 as the reason why it was being forced to release large groups of its talent.
While WWE was tearing down, AEW was building up.
From March to December of last year, the latter signed 12 former WWE superstars. Toronto’s own Christian Cage appeared in WWE’s Royal Rumble in January 2021 and signed with AEW in March 2021. Daniel Bryan main-evented WWE’s WrestleMania in April 2021 and debuted as Bryan Danielson in AEW just five short months later. Tony Khan even managed to coax CM Punk back into his ring after seven years away from the ring.
Tony Schiavone was WCW’s lead commentator during the “Monday Night Wars” and finds himself in the thick of things once again with AEW. He says the incredible rate at which his current employer is signing wrestlers cast away by WWE has made watching the show a must for fear of missing out on another shocking debut.
“Everybody feels that the big star is going to end up here,” Schiavone said.
Paul Wight was one of those big stars. He signed with AEW last March and is in the unique position of having worked for all three companies, wrestling as “The Giant” in WCW and “The Big Show” in WWE during the “Monday Night Wars”. He says that the philosophical difference between the companies is the key to the momentum shift and why wrestlers are choosing to sign with the new option.
“In AEW, there is a great synergy. It’s a positive environment of everyone wanting to do well together, whereas WWE is extremely competitive. You need to work with others to be successful in AEW whereas in the WWE, some of the talents need to be very aggressive and very motivated for themselves to get over because nothing is guaranteed.”
Just adding talent that has been released by the competition won’t be enough to beat a company that has been at the top almost since it began. It’s the way AEW is using these wrestlers to push its content that has led to it being in the conversation as the next best thing to WWE. It’s similar to the strategy WCW used to beat WWE before its demise.
In his book, “Controversy Creates Cash,” Bischoff writes: “WCW’s revenues had grown phenomenally since 1994. But by the summer of 1999, the mandates of “kid-friendly” programming, budget cuts, and the brick wall I kept running into each time we were presented an opportunity to turn things around had taken their toll. People quit watching our product and were sold on the WWE ‘attitude.’”
The “attitude” Bischoff references is the riskier content WWE featured compared to WCW in the mid-90s. Storylines saw Stone Cold Steve Austin chug beers on a regular basis, female superstars participate in sexually provocative matches and featured fights that included a much greater degree of violence than they do today.
Now things have reversed as the WWE’s “safe” content is the exact opposite of what AEW is offering.
Wade Keller, the PWTorch.com editor and host of “Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcasts,” has been covering pro wrestling for 34 years. He says the WWE’s current comfort zone has led to many wrestling fans looking for an edgier alternative, reminiscent of its past “attitude” era.
“Many fans still like WWE better, but AEW is offering an alternative version of pro wrestling,” Keller said. “Tony Khan has followed pro wrestling closely for decades and saw (as a fan) the WCW-WWE battle. He accurately calculated that there was a segment of the pro wrestling fan base that wasn’t being served by WWE’s approach.”
Keller says that AEW’s success is primarily due to the more authentic-sounding unscripted interviews its stars employ, the greater degree of violence and edgier language it uses, and how the company is able to acknowledge that there are wrestling promotions outside of itself.
“Vince McMahon’s inner circle are as disconnected from what’s cool and attractive to the 18- to 35-year-old audience as he is, and he isn’t feeling any urgency to stray from his decades-long proclivities and preferences that have largely served him well over the years,” Keller said.
For its part, WWE plans to stay the course. In an exclusive statement provided to the Star they referenced a bloody women’s tag-team match put on by their competition where Penelope Ford and The Bunny took on Tay Conti and Anna Jay on AEW’s Dec. 31 “Rampage” show. They said that is not what they are willing to do.
The WWE’s statement reads: “If you look at the gory self-mutilation that bloodied several women in the December 31 event on TNT, it quickly becomes clear that these are very different businesses. We had an edgier product in the ‘Attitude’ era and in a 2022 world, we don’t believe that type of dangerous and brutal display is appealing to network partners, sponsors, venues, children, or the general public as a whole.”
The editorial and content differences have led to the ratings gap between the two companies beginning to thin, especially in Canada.
According to numbers provided by PWTorch.com and cross-referenced by PostWrestling.com and Wrestlenomics.com, WWE’s “Friday Night Smackdown” on Sportsnet360 has averaged about 71,000 viewers between the 25-54 demographic with 155,000 total viewers in 2021. AEW’s “Dynamite” on TSN averages 62,000 in the same demographic with 104,000 total viewers.
Bischoff says that the true measure of the top company will be who comes out on top when the flagship shows face off against each other. He also believes that AEW continuing to reference the competition on their programming by mentioning WWE superstars isn’t a winning strategy.
“If they don’t have the balls to go head-to-head, then shut up and wrestle. There is no tactical advantage in completely degrading your competition when it’s clear to your audience that you don’t have the guts to do anything about it. You’re fighting a fight that you are not willing to get in. It’s childish to me.”
For his part, Tony Khan says he is laser-focused on succeeding and doesn’t plan on listening to the naysayers.
“I don’t care what night the shows are on. It’s really irresponsible for (Bischoff) to say that because I don’t pick what night the show is on. These are time slots that I was assigned.”
While WWE’s return to Toronto was originally scheduled for Dec. 29 before being pushed to March 27 shortly after Ontario enacted COVID-19 capacity restrictions, there are currently no scheduled dates for AEW to finally cross the border. But Khan says it’s on his radar.
“Toronto is a really important market for AEW that I’d like to hit,” Khan said. “Canada is very important to long-term business growth.”
It’s yet another surprise debut many wrestling fans in Canada are eagerly waiting for.
History repeating with that statement, as Vince McMahon used to write letters to Ted Turner complaining about the violence on WCW programming:
Imagine how good of a surprise that would have been 
