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TONY KHAN ON AEW DYNAMITE 200, WHY TONIGHT IS THE RIGHT NIGHT TO BEGIN REVEALING PLANS FOR ALL IN, WBD RELATIONSHIP, COLLISION AND MORE

As noted earlier, I sat down this morning with AEW President Tony Khan to discuss AEW Dynamite hitting 200 episodes tonight.  Here is a snippet of that conversation:

Tony Khan: Hi, Mike. I'm so excited. It's so amazing that tonight is AEW Dynamite episode 200. It's a dream come true. I've known you for most of my life, almost since I first became a wrestling fan, and I've known you since I was 12 years old and it was around when we first started talking that I first had the idea for a wrestling show called Dynamite and wrote those shows in my notebook. And it's pretty crazy to think here we are, Dynamite is a real show on TBS and here we are at 200 episodes. And I think we've had some of the best pro wrestling over the past several years on AEW Dynamite, and we've built ourselves a great audience on Wednesday nights on TBS, and tonight will be a great celebration of AEW on episode 200.

Mike Johnson: So let's go back to the origins here. When you think about the original concept for Dynamite, even back when you were doing the fantasy writing.   When you think about this, the 200 episodes that have come to fans over the course of TNT and TBS, how far has the show come in your mind personally, it's always a work in progress but how do you look upon the show now compared to the beginning at that first episode in Washington, D.C. where obviously the weight of the world and the pressure was on everybody in the company to come through that first night. How do you compare then and now, and how do you compare how far Dynamite as a brand and as a series has changed from those earliest days of TBS, or I should say earliest days of TNT, not TBS, you're on TBS now?

Tony Khan: Tonight's show on TBS is going to be a great, great episode, but it will also be great to look back at what we've done over the first 199 shows. I think it's amazing that AEW's grown to where we're in 150 countries around the world and now AEW Dynamite 200 I believe is a perfect place to take the next step building towards the biggest wrestling event in AEW history and one of the biggest wrestling events in the history of the world. It's already the biggest wrestling event in European history and in addition to being Europe's biggest event, it's still on the table that it could be the highest grossing pro wrestling event ever in the world. I'm talking about AEW All In, and as we sit here today approaching tonight's episode, which is episode 200 for Dynamite, there are four Dynamites, four Rampage episodes, and four Collisions ahead of AEW All In and. With four weeks of TV and tonight being AEW Dynamite 200, I believe tonight's the perfect place to take the next step towards building that card, finding out what's to come at AEW All In.

We'll talk more about it tonight and people have asked when I would start making the matches and it feels like AEW Dynamite 200, four weeks out is the perfect place. And I'm very excited for tonight's show and it feels like coming out of tonight, it'll be the next step towards 200 more episodes of AEW Dynamite and hopefully a lot more. On top of that, many years to come of this great show and this great tradition we've built on Wednesday nights on TBS with Dynamite. And in addition to being a great show tonight, I think it's also going to be an important symbol and an important step on a big journey, the biggest journey to AEW All In at Wembley Stadium and all the huge records we're going to set and what a big night it's going to be. So I think tonight is the perfect stage with the 200th episode of Dynamite, very fitting.

Mike Johnson: All right. I don't want to go too far off into the side quest here for you video game fans, but since you brought up AEW All In London, obviously tonight we'll start to see some of the creative seeds planted for what's going to happen with that show. But there's still a lot of speculation and a lot of rumblings about where and when we will find out where that show will be distributed and how it can be watched worldwide. I don't expect you to give me the entire details here. I know how you like to parse out your information, but when should fans expect that they'll know that information officially as to where and when they should be tuning in, watching and/or ordering that show from Wembley Stadium?

Tony Khan: Well, first of all, I'm really excited about what you mentioned before we started talking about the distribution of the event. Seeds had been planted for this for months and in some cases years, and I'm very excited for the next step and I think tonight the card will start to become more clear. Four weeks out, it's the right time because really if you look at what we've done the last few weeks, episode 198, the week before last was an incredible episode of Dynamite. There was a lot on that card, a lot of great wrestling and important moments, and coming out of that Blood and Guts episode, AEW Dynamite took another step towards 200 tonight and that episode 198 was a big commercial success too. I think a lot of people probably saw the numbers the network sent out. It did very well and was a most watched show on TBS in months.

And then we had this really exciting episode of Collision this past weekend in Hartford. So much great wrestling on the show throughout that card there's a lot to talk about on that great episode of AEW Collision and what we've been doing on Saturday nights, and I think a lot of people believed that was the best episode yet. And it was our highest rating, our biggest audience we've had since the debut episode too. So it was a really, really exciting show on Saturday and I think coming out of that Blood and Gut and that great episode that we did Saturday, now we go into AEW Dynamite 200. All of this is by design and tonight is a perfect place to take the next step and the weeks to come will be very exciting weeks in AEW. And as far as the distribution, I've seen some reports about different outlets talking about it already, so we'll talk more about that tonight. But everybody's going to be able to watch the show and we will have all those details tonight on Dynamite 200.

Again, it's a big stage for us. It's one of our biggest stages we've had to have AEW Dynamite 200. So on this massive TV stage, I think it's the perfect place to have more details, more conversation about the biggest show we've ever done, which is AEW All In at Wembley Stadium August 27th. You'll hear a lot more about that tonight. We wanted to steer all the eyeballs for tonight on Dynamite, and I think that'll be a great place to take the next step toward talking about the dissemination distribution of the event, as well as talking more about the card.

Mike Johnson: The entirety of AEW on broadcast cable would not be possible without your partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery. They have been an important partner for almost the entire existence of AEW, AEW probably wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the former management of what was then Warner Media. When you look back on the last couple of years as we go into episode 200 tonight, how do you look upon that relationship with Warner Bros. Discovery and how it's grown and evolved even since the recent merger and them taking over Warner Media?

Tony Khan: I'm very excited about our partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery. The relationship is stronger than it's ever been and I'm very grateful that the leadership team has given us some great opportunities, including expanding the TV schedule every week with Saturday night AEW Collision, which was the idea of Mr. Zaslav. And David Zaslav himself came out and told the top executives that he thought we should do two hours of wrestling on Saturday night. And it's been a pleasure working with a great leadership team to develop that show, including Kathleen Finch, Jason Sarlanis, and Sam Linsky and all the great executives at TBS and TNT. And doing another two hour show on TNT where it all started felt right, and we've been able to have great ratings on Saturday nights. We've built great momentum and I think we've done some really great shows.

It's really debatable which was the best one too, because there've been several great ones. I thought this week's episode in Hartford was excellent. We had a great episode in Newark and then before that, what a great show in Calgary and certainly the inaugural few shows were also great. So it's just been really strong wrestling on Collision and AEW Dynamite has had some episodes that have been just electric, I think recently. I really enjoyed the Blood and Guts show that we did, which was again, episode 198, and now here we are at 200. And there's been so many great moments and great wrestlers and matches and stories on Dynamite. But I do feel like right now as we approach episode 200, it's the biggest milestone ever on the show. So again, it's just great timing for us. I thought in particular how fitting it is when I was looking at the calendar and planning out some of these match announcements and building towards the stadium show, it felt very fitting that episode 200 would be the perfect place.

Four weeks out with four Dynamites remaining, four Collisions, four Rampages to take that next step in developing the show and taking the building blocks of the shows we've been doing recently. Some of the great things like on that Blood and Guts episode, obviously the double cage match itself was tremendous, and now that was the end of a story for a lot of people involved in that match in the beginning of a new chapter in their professional wrestling career. Also on that episode, a great tag team match with MJF and Adam Cole versus Sammy Guevara and Daniel Garcia. We'll see Sammy and Danny wrestling tonight on AEW Dynamite 200 against their mentor Chris Jericho and Takeshita. And I think it's really interesting what's happening with Don Callis and Chris Jericho right now. Also interesting to look back at Jericho's relationships with his proteges, Daniel Garcia and also Sammy Guevara. And also it's come full circle in some ways. We see the protege versus the mentor in Sammy versus Chris tonight on Dynamite 200, and it was on the very first episode of Dynamite that they forged that bond between Jericho and Sammy and worked together.

And here we are at episode 200 and I thought that was very interesting indeed. And now on this great show tonight, in addition to the great wrestling, the great matches. We'll also hear from MJF, which I think is going to be excellent because MJF, anytime he picks up a microphone, it's very interesting, but there's also a lot of excitement about what's happening around the AEW World Champion MJF and his tag team partner Adam Cole. They've had a great run right now on TV across Dynamite and Collision as a tag team, Better Than You, Bay-Bay. It's also been very successful commercial merchandise really in addition to the great TV ratings, I have to say that Adam Cole and MJF as a team have sold more merchandise just in these past couple months as a team than any other act in AEW all year.

And it really speaks because we have a lot of people driving a lot of merch sales. It's a big part of our company, it's a big revenue stream, and we've tapped into something where whether it's in the arenas with the fans and the reactions, whether it's the merchandise sales or the TV ratings, we're getting a really positive delta from, Better Than You, Bay-Bay, Cole and MJF. So coming off that great match they had against the World Tag Team Champions FTR, I think that's very interesting and I'm excited to hear from MJF tonight on episode 200 of Dynamite

Mike Johnson: While we're talking about Collision and Dynamite, obviously, anybody's watching these shows can tell there's been some hard work put in to keep each show very unique in identity and its presentation and even in the rhythm of the shows. What's it been like overseeing two different brand, two different styles of branding for AEW where you want both to be successful but you want them both to be unique from each other? What has that been like in terms of overseeing and producing each individual show versus just doing Rampage and Dynamite, and then a pay-per-view every month? What has been like trying to create a unique entity in Collision and make that its own freestanding A-level show?

Tony Khan: Well, we have these two incredible live shows, they're both two hours. They're on different nights and different networks, but they're related to each other yet they're very different from each other. And I'm talking about Wednesday Night Dynamite on TBS celebrating our 200th episode tonight and I'm talking about Saturday Night Collision and we're heading into our eighth episode. So they're in very different places as far as their duration on TV, yet they have very exciting things happening on both shows and they have their own identity, their own format. I spent a lot of time working on that, working and thinking with really smart people on both sides. And we have great groups of people. I'm a common link between both shows and I think what I like to do in the writing process is utilize the best ideas but also try to utilize the best formatting thoughts.

And we've found really good, really unique ways to make the shows different from each other. And I think it's a different experience you get when you watch Dynamite versus Collision, and that was what we set out to do when I first told Mr. Zaslav and Jason Sarlanis and Kathleen Finch and Sam Linsky, when I visited with them about this idea of bringing Saturday Night Wrestling to TNT, I assured them, if "You want to give us two hours, I'm going to make it the best two hours I possibly can. And I'll do it in a way that I'll create something completely different on Saturday nights on TNT, and it won't take away from Dynamite in any way." Dynamite's still going to be the same great show it's been. And I'm very excited about the history of Dynamite and the future of Dynamite coming out of tonight's episode 200.

But I believe we had a chance to build a strong brand and effectively double the penetration of our live wrestling going from two hours of live wrestling a week to four hours live wrestling a week, and going from three hours of TV to five hours of TV. So it's a big jump and I was really excited about the idea to bring Saturday Night Wrestling back and it was very fitting to do it on a Turner network and to correspond with the personalities, the identities of some of the wrestlers I'm working with. I want shows to have a different feel and I think it works perfect, and I enjoy hearing ideas and suggestions from different people on each show. And what's great is we have so many wrestlers with different voices and I believe it's very effective when I'm able to communicate with these different wrestlers on their ideas, their thoughts that we can make their presentation right for them.

And I think that we've got wrestlers on Collision right now that have a presentation on Collision that helps them and hands them, but also fits the show and fits what we're doing on Collision. It's been great having CM Punk back in AEW, I really enjoy working with CM Punk and it's been so great to have him back and fully cleared and back from the tricep injury and back wrestling again. And it's been really good for AEW and I believe it's been good for CM Punk and it's been great for the wrestling fans, which is the thing that all of us care about the most.

And I think Saturday Night Collision, thanks to all the people wrestling on the show and all the fans that have been tuning in and the great staff that we have, people working really hard to make that possible. On top of the three hours we were already presenting with Wednesday Night Dynamite on TBS and Friday Night Rampage on TNT. Now, I feel like the company's in the strongest place we've ever been. It's incredible to think we have five hours of TV now. It's a real thing and it's taken off and we have so much momentum going into all in, so it's really exciting.

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