Tony Khan Takes Aim At Monday Night Raw – “It Sucked”
AEW President Tony Khan has continued firing shots at WWE, this time panning a recent episode of Monday Night Raw saying that “it sucked.”
Tony Khan was speaking ahead of a big weekend for AEW which will see one of the company’s shows go head to head with main roster WWE programming for the first time. On October 15th, WWE Friday Night SmackDown will last for two and a half hours, meaning the last half an hour of the show will be up against AEW Rampage.
In addition, AEW Dynamite which is usually found on Wednesday nights is set to move to Saturday for the next two weeks due to the start of the NHL season.
In the lead up to Rampage, Khan has spoken of his desire to beat SmackDown, while admitting he wants to “recrate the spirit” of the wrestling war of the 1990’s.
Speaking to Robbie Fox on My Mom’s Basement, Khan said that he was disappointed at having to temporarily move from Wednesday nights in light of Dynamite’s recent success.
“It sucks to not be on Wednesday night, this week [especially] to be honest,”
We’re on this great run recently. We had six straight weeks as the number one show on cable and satellite on Wednesday night. The show is huge thanks to the great fans and the great support of Barstool and outlets that give AEW coverage and have allowed AEW to come from nothing, nowhere two years ago to now in the eyes of many, over a million fans, the number one wrestling company in America.”
However despite this, Khan explained that there are positives to being able to create a big weekend of wrestling.
“I’m just really fired up, even though we’re not on Wednesday the next couple of weeks. It allows us to make these big weekend events,” Khan said. “We do Friday Night Rampage every week on TNT, but this week we get to do Friday Night Rampage and Saturday Night Dynamite.”
The AEW boss continued by revealing that he made a conscious decision to air Rampage directly after SmackDown.
“We’ve really allowed the shows to co-exist. I put my show on consciously after SmackDown, knowing that there’s a huge audience that watches that show and many of those people are going to watch Rampage,” Khan said. “It’s been a huge hit for TNT. We’ve had nights where we were number one. We’ve been in the top 10, top 20 consistently.”
“I want for the fans to be able to watch all the wrestling. I’ll coin a phrase right now that I’ll use from now on: WYW. Watch your wrestling. Whatever you want to watch, watch it. A lot of people have chosen to watch AEW because it’s the best show.”
Casting an eye to October 15th, Khan pointed to the fact it was the second time that WWE have chosen to compete directly with AEW. He also reiterated his aim to make Rampage as big as AEW’s flagship show Dynamite.
“It’s the second time they’ve chosen to put their wrestling head-to-head with mine. The last time they did it, it didn’t happen overnight, but really from the start AEW consistently did better numbers than NXT, and we won that war. AEW is now the Wednesday night show.”
“I want Rampage to be just as big as Dynamite in time. Dynamite has consistently been number one,” Khan said. “My goal is for this show to be the top cable show. If they’re going to do a show on cable, that’s great. We’re competing for that.”
While Khan remains unsure as to whether Rampage will come out of the head to head with a bigger rating, he’s determined to put on a better show. Especially as he says a recent episode of Monday Night Raw “sucked.”
“We’ll see what happens. I’m not saying for sure we’ll win, and maybe the odds are against us in some ways,” Khan said. “But we’re going to give a better show. I know. If you don’t believe me, watch the go-home show they did last night, because it sucked.”
The October 15th edition of AEW Rampage will feature a Buy In for the very first time. On the show Bryan Danielson will compete in a dream match against Minoru Suzuki, while Bobby Fish will also be in action.
The AEW Rampage Buy In will be shown on YouTube, starting at 9 p.m. ET. The special live edition of Rampage will follow at 10pm ET. on TNT.
H/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.