Tony Khan's AEW has taken quite a lot of flak in recent months due to booking mishaps and match quality, and the promotion's TV deal has even recently been in question. Despite this, a WCW veteran believes that the AEW President has more options than people realize.
AEW was formed in 2019 and has since signed some of the biggest names in wrestling. With CM Punk currently the face of the promotion, people have grown more critical toward Tony Khan than ever before.
During the most recent Keepin' It 100, WCW veteran Konnan suggested that Tony Khan has more options than his skeptics might realize.
"I look at the ratings and they were number one a couple of times over Sean Hannity and shows like that, I was like holy s**t," Konnan said. "So I don’t know at what level they underperformed, but I will say this: if they don’t get a better deal like they’re expecting, at the end of the day he’s got a lot of connections that he’s probably fostered through AEW and his dad. There’s still Hulu and Amazon, you never know bro, somebody might bite." (07:03 onward).
In light of WarnerMedia recently shelving a few of their upcoming DC shows and movies, fans have been wondering if AEW would be on the chopping block as well.
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Disco Inferno believes that Tony Khan's focus on the key demographic instead of total viewership will come back to bite him
Throughout AEW's Wednesday Night Wars with NXT back in late 2019 until 2021, the promotion touted the key demographic when it came to establishing who was in the lead. During this period, Chris Jericho began to call himself "The Demogod" after AEW began to beat NXT in the ratings week after week.
During the same episode of Keepin' It 100, Disco Inferno gave his take on what Tony Khan is missing when it comes to rating his performance.
"They're talking about the demo now on how they perform in the ratings, they've completely gone away from total viewership. These people are gonna realize that the wrestling audience? Half the audience is over 50 years old!" (07:55 onward)
Unfortunately, wrestling has slowly become more and more of a niche pastime over the years, but the sport still retains many hardcore fans from the 90s onward. Tony Khan clearly believes that AEW is succeeding week after week, could the dependency on the key demograph slowly alienate actual wrestling fans?