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Tony Khan recently made an intriguing comparison between AEW's current lineup and WCW's roster from 1997, owing to the mixture of the veteran and young stars in both.
Ahead of All Out 2021, Khan appeared on Busted Open Radio, where he spoke about several topics, including how AEW has built many homegrown stars. Though he made the aforementioned comparisons between WCW and AEW's rosters, Khan was also quick to point out that the former didn't do a great job of utilizing their youngsters, as his does.
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Khan explained that guys like Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Jericho didn't get the same opportunities in WCW as the well-established names. The AEW President stated that WCW could have made big money had they developed their young guys, thus saving themselves from going out of business.
“I like to compare our roster sometimes to what I think was the hallmark great roster, which is 1997 WCW. You had all these stars and all this young talent, and I really do my best to try to utilize the roster even better than they were doing when they were a successful company, printing money in 1997, 1998. Because they had a lot of young talent that they didn’t really utilize, and they could’ve built for the future to help make it a profitable company that they never would’ve wanted to shut down. They could’ve made it a money printing machine if they had developed the young talent in house that they had, like Chris Jericho and Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio," said Tony Khan. (H/T - Fightful)
Tony Khan thinks AEW has successfully built the stars of the future
Furthermore, Tony Khan added that he's focussed on pushing and putting the spotlight on the younger performers in AEW. He cited the example of All Out 2021, where stars like MJF, Darby Allin, and AEW Women's Champion Britt Baker would be competing in marquee matches.
"I do try to build stars for the future, and that’s why you have so many great homegrown stars that are being featured at All Out, like Darby Allin, MJF, and Dr. Britt Baker," said Tony Khan. "There’s really great opportunity here and I don’t think Jericho, Mysterio and Guerrero necessarily got the same opportunities when they were on a roster with all time names like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Randy Savage, Roddy Piper and all the people that were on the 1997 WCW roster."
In closing, Khan stated that this was the biggest undoing of WCW as they were always hell-bent on pushing aging stars like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, and Randy Savage over their young talent.
Do you agree with AEW President Tony Khan's take on where WCW went wrong? Do you think AEW has done a good job of using its homegrown stars? Sound off in the comments section.
