Tony Khan will continue to focus on his own product.
Though Vince McMahon has said that he doesn't view AEW as competition, Khan isn't so sure that is the case. Khan brought CM Punk back to wrestling on August 20 and one night later at WWE SummerSlam, WWE brought Brock Lesnar and Becky Lynch back into the fold.
Does Khan believe that was a direct response to Punk's return?
“I can’t say for sure what’s on their minds," he admitted in an interview with DAZN. "Summerslam is a big deal for those guys over there so maybe they had it long in their plans that it would be the place that Brock and Becky returned. We’ve got to keep doing what we’ve been doing so far and that’s trying to give people, our fans, the best possible wrestling product we can. That’s what drives us. We can’t base our product on what WWE are doing. How can that ever work?"
Khan continued by saying, “Do they see us as rivals or competition? They say we’re not, but I've heard that AEW shows are on monitors in the Gorilla position over there, so I take that as a compliment if they’re watching us whilst trying to run their own show. I also admire them for that because trying to run a show whilst watching another show is something else. I put everything into producing our shows so there’s no way I'd be watching something else whilst trying to get on with things.”
AEW ran head-to-head with NXT from October 2019 to April 2021 in the Wednesday Night Wars, which was won by AEW as NXT moved to Tuesdays.
AEW and WWE SmackDown will be head-to-head for 30 minutes on Friday as SmackDown airs on FS1 until 10:30 p.m. ET, putting it against AEW Rampage, which begins on TNT at 10 p.m. ET.
Khan commented on the battle, saying he can't wait for Rampage to beat SmackDown. You can find his comment by clicking here.
