The Tony Khan Is A Twat Thread

[DavidB6937]

Without knowing the ins and outs, I do think he genuinely struggles with wanting to please the talent and give them what they want vs running the company in the way it needs to be.

If you could find a middle ground between Vince McMahon and Tony Khan I reckon you'd have pretty much the perfect person to run a wrestling company.

[BomberPat]

One of the selling points for AEW early on was the amount of freedom that wrestlers would be given, both in their matches and promos, and we've seen enough to know that actually a lot of wrestlers don't warrant being given that kind of freedom, and that most wrestlers aren't as creative or as compelling as they like to think they are. There's definitely a middle ground where there can be more direction than there is, without the scripting of promos and overt micromanaging that seemed to typify the WWE until recently.

If anything, I'd say Tony Khan doesn't seem to micromanage (or delegate to someone who can do these jobs for him) enough. That's why you end up with far too much repetition of spots, sequences and even finishes across multiple matches, and too much repetition in general. It does sometimes make me wonder what any of their producers/agents actually do.

When it comes to promos, there's some shit, and there's some really good stuff. And I think that's probably an acceptable balance, in a weird way. If not scripting promos allows for people like Eddie Kingston to rise up from the pack, and for people like CM Punk and Jon Moxley to feel like actual human beings rather than just cartoon wrestling characters, then the occasional shit promo from someone else is the price you pay for that, and how wrestling has largely always been done. AEW could definitely do a little more in terms of hiding negatives and accentuating positives, though; there's a lot of factions and managers around, but few of them being used to their best potential to elevate people by disguising flaws in their game.
 

I still think, as I've said a lot, that most if not all of the problems with AEW come from Tony Khan sticking far too rigidly to a long-term plan. When everything goes according to that plan, we get some really great long-term storytelling, matches with a lot of heat and crowd investment, and quality shows. When it doesn't, he presses the panic button and we get filler matches, interim champions, and tournaments, and people who had been a featured part of TV get forgotten about and pushed aside until everything's in place to go back to The Plan. Case in point - they did a big Trios tournament, and then obviously had to hit the reset button once The Elite got suspended, so they put the belts on The Death Triangle instead. But Death Triangle haven't teamed together once since winning the belts, but the Lucha Bros have had (and lost) some tag matches, Rey Fenix has lost a singles match, and PAC's been defending his other belt against Orange Cassidy. The Trios belts are a complete afterthought. Do you think that would have been the case with The Elite as champions?

[Infinity Land]

On the Trios title. That does seem like sticking to a long plan causing the suffering. As the plan for the All-Atlantic title seems to be carrying on uninterrupted.

They should have put them on someone else or had PAC drop the AA title if they weren't having him do "double duty".

[Guest]

removed talking pish about their having been a defence when there wasn’t 
They titles and the all Atlantic should just be kept off tv until forgotten, pointless 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Louch
Talking pish

[Infinity Land]

12 minutes ago, Louch said:

Death triangle defended against best friends the tv after they won them.

Death Triangle v. Best Friends was on the Dynamite after All Out and was the vacant title since The Elite were stripped.

Despite having two champions and being in existence for a month. The Trios titles have never been defended. As they aren't on tonight's Dynamite and PAC is booked in an AA title match for Battle of the Belts. Looks like another week to wait before they will be.

[DavidB6937]

58 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

If anything, I'd say Tony Khan doesn't seem to micromanage (or delegate to someone who can do these jobs for him) enough. That's why you end up with far too much repetition of spots, sequences and even finishes across multiple matches, and too much repetition in general. It does sometimes make me wonder what any of their producers/agents actually do.

That's definitely something that interests me. Not only what they do, but how much overall communication they have with each other too.

I can see a lot of things being really great ideas in isolation but if you're not checking what else is going on in the show then you're risking diluting the impact of everything by too many samey things happening.

Surely these conversations must happen? But if they do and the repetition still occurs then it's very strange.

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

Death Triangle v. Best Friends was on the Dynamite after All Out and was the vacant title since The Elite were stripped.

Despite having two champions and being in existence for a month. The Trios titles have never been defended. As they aren't on tonight's Dynamite and PAC is booked in an AA title match for Battle of the Belts. Looks like another week to wait before they will be.

So it was, shows how pointless they are that I forgot that was to crown than a defence 

[LaGoosh]

2 hours ago, Tommy! said:

How much of the booking does TK do and who else is involved?

Does he micromanage it or just say what endpoint he wants and let's the wrestlers or other staff work out how to get there?

Depends who it is. Jericho has complete say over his storylines. The way he describes it is every 3 months he sits down with Tony Khan and says "this is what I'm doing" and Tony says "ok" and that's it. Omega, Hangman and The Bucks clearly have a say over their own stories. I imagine it's highly likely that Mox, MJF and Eddie Kingston have plenty of sway and feed in a lot. As for the rest of the roster it seems like if you bring Khan something and he likes it it'll get put on the show but if not you're going to get absolutely nothing. I haven't heard anything about him coming up with exciting angles himself, he seems to just rely on tournaments, eliminator matches and faction bullshit stories to fill in the rest of the gaps.  

Apparently QT Marshall and Brandon Cutler are involved in the booking too. 

To this day though people from the company still kind of brag about not having a creative team but with how rubbish the booking has been the past six months I reckon they should probably get one.

Edited October 5, 2022 by LaGoosh

[Factotum]

Tony really needs to drop the ROH stuff as well. No problem with Jericho holding that belt as it will lead to some fun stuff, but the rest can piss off. Use it as a developmental if you need, and exploit the library, but that's it.

[DavidB6937]

9 minutes ago, Factotum said:

Tony really needs to drop the ROH stuff as well. No problem with Jericho holding that belt as it will lead to some fun stuff, but the rest can piss off. Use it as a developmental if you need, and exploit the library, but that's it.

Its that question of where exactly does ROH fit in in 2022? It's influence is everywhere all over NXT and WWE and now AEW. It's not really an alternative now so what is it? Is there any point?

[Factotum]

1 hour ago, DavidB6937 said:

Its that question of where exactly does ROH fit in in 2022? It's influence is everywhere all over NXT and WWE and now AEW. It's not really an alternative now so what is it? Is there any point?

Yup. The only thing it would have been good for is maybe ROH Super Shows, where you could get lots of guys from different companies in, but WWE would never allow that now Khan owns it. It might have worked as a faction with the name, and that's about it.

[Keith Houchen]

3 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

If you could find a middle ground between Vince McMahon and Tony Khan I reckon you'd have pretty much the perfect person to run a wrestling company.

They’d still be a massive cunt, mind. 

[Infinity Land]

1 hour ago, DavidB6937 said:

Its that question of where exactly does ROH fit in in 2022? It's influence is everywhere all over NXT and WWE and now AEW. It's not really an alternative now so what is it? Is there any point?

AEW's NXT or NJ Strong.

They don't use Dark or Elevation to do competitive TV matches, cut promos, build angles on a particular scale. They're content factories as they don't want to burn out a live crowd on the road and have the ability to chop up the Orlando shows to fit in where they're needed.

A place to develop rough around the edges talents to fit into a more mainstream product.

As nostalgia doesn't stand still. It keeps the value in library by adding to it over the years. In the mid '00s people were buying the ECW, AWA, World Class, NWA DVDs, The network comes along and it's binge the Monday Night Wars and ECW. Now there are those looking back on the Ruthless Aggression era, WWECW, and even the first run of NXT.

[Tommy!]

2 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

 I haven't heard anything about him coming up with exciting angles himself, he seems to just rely on tournaments, eliminator matches and faction bullshit stories to fill in the rest of the gaps.  

 

2 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

To this day though people from the company still kind of brag about not having a creative team but with how rubbish the booking has been the past six months I reckon they should probably get one.

I don't watch it, I tried but Cody put me right off and I never got around to trying again, but from what I read part of the appeal early on was the "put X in with Y" type approach creating some nice novelty and fresh matches. That's great until you've done it a few times and you need something deeper (and in truth isn't really very good booking being critical) which is why I ask who actually does it.

 

[Quote]Jericho has complete say over his storylines. The way he describes it is every 3 months he sits down with Tony Khan and says "this is what I'm doing" and Tony says "ok" and that's it. Omega, Hangman and The Bucks clearly have a say over their own stories. I imagine it's highly likely that Mox, MJF and Eddie Kingston have plenty of sway and feed in a lot[/Quote]

I think it's positive to get input from the wrestlers and let them have some freedom but no one should ever be booking thier own shit in my opinion. Generally speaking wrestlers seem a lot thicker than they think and think they are a lot better than they are. 

 

[LaGoosh]

12 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

I think it's positive to get input from the wrestlers and let them have some freedom but no one should ever be booking thier own shit in my opinion.

Usually I'd agree completely but the Omega/Page story in AEW was a modern classic unlike anything you see traditionally in wrestling and Jericho has been doing great work that has elevated a lot of guys since day 1. I'm assuming regardless of how much the wrestlers put together Khan still has to ok it.