Backstage WWE Talk On Tony Khan Spending Too Much Money
October 15, 2021Some in WWE think they have been forced to spend more.
When it comes to the current war of sorts between WWE and AEW people don’t just talk about the rosters and who has the better wrestlers, but some also talk about the new battle of the billionaires. Vince McMahon is currently estimated to be worth $2 billion while Shad Khan, the father of Tony Khan and main financial backer of AEW is worth around $8 billion. This week, which family has more money come up when Tony Khan talked about the final half-hour of Smackdown going commercial-free tonight on FS1.
Tonight Smackdown will air on FS1 and get an extra 30 minutes at the end of the show. Not only will these extra 30 minutes go head-to-head with AEW Rampage, but it will air commercial-free. Tony Khan took exception to that saying if WWE wants to spend the money to go commercial-free he can play that game as well since he has more money to work with than they do. Khan started the following while speaking the New York Post,
“Whatever people what to watch, I want them to watch it. Unfortunately, if we are on at the same time it’s harder for people to watch their wrestling, at least live. We can take the commercials out of it. If you want to take the commercials out of it, I can do that too. It doesn’t seem very civil but I have more money than they do so I can afford to do that longer than they can. But that’s how we make money at the end of the day, so I was surprised when they took those out.”
Regarding Khan having “more money to spend” that has reportedly been a topic of conversation backstage within WWE. According to Dave Meltzer in the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the perception in WWE is that Tony Khan will spend so much and lose much money in the long run. Some at the top in WWE have event said some of the same things they said about WCW during the Monday Night Wars to the extent that they “have” to make money yet AEW doesn’t have to worry about making money to survive and that is unfair.
Tony Khan has talked multiple times about spending and spending big despite AEW yet being profitable. Khan recently stated that AEW was on track to be profitable in 2021 but instead of having an actual video game studio create the AEW console game, he spend money to start his own games division to keep most of it in-house.
Meltzer also stated in the Observer that the thought from Vince McMahon when it comes to AEW and Tony Khan is “we beat Ted Turner and Ted Turner is smarter than Tony Khan.” Yet the difference here is that Ted Turner was someone with a lot of money who owned a wrestling company and hired others to run it for him. Khan is not just a figurehead and face for the business side of the company but does all of the behind the scenes stuff the president of a wrestling company should.
Tonight as stated above for the first time AEW programming will go up against WWE main roster head-to-head and this is going to be very interesting to sit back and watch how it all goes down. For coverage of tonight’s Friday Night Smackdown and AEW Rampage, we will have it here and on the PWUnlimited YouTube Channel.
