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Yeah. I just I look at it more like I was, I thought I was, I thought I was coming in to, to help business if I could teach something, great and I think I was just brought in for other reasons. Like the their business. And I know a lot of people are going to be upset. It's just not predicated. It's not a real business. It's not It's not about selling tickets. It's not about drawing money. It's not about making money. It's just not. What's it about? I don't know.
CM Punk to Ariel Helwani last week.
Before I go any further, I want to make something clear. I have never had any contact in my life with CM Punk. While I like the way he’s a no bullshit guy who shoots straight and tells you exactly what he thinks and has no time to waste on dealing with childish people (which I’m sure makes it easy for many of you to see why I identify with him), we have never talked, texted or done any kind of direct in indirect communication. When he made the above quote, a lot of people wrote to me and said some version of, “Punk is saying what you have said all along about AEW!” Some people asked if he was the one who told me whatever I heard to get to the position I have taken about Tony Khan and the way he runs his company.
So here’s the answer, no he didn’t. He didn’t have to. I have eyes. I have ears. I have a pretty good brain that functions well. I am able to see through false actors when they lie about events that never happened to protect their agenda and/or their friends inside the AEW locker room. I am able to see how Tony Khan himself conducts his business, or in many cases doesn’t conduct his business. I am able to look at data and trends and honestly evaluate them instead of skewing them to fit my narrative as some faux journalists that Tony goes to for support do on pretty much a daily basis.
In this particular case, given what Tony has said and done for years now, my coming to the conclusion that Punk stated above was about as hard as watching a 500 pound man eat 20,000 calories at a buffet and come to the brilliant conclusion that he has a big appetite.
Anyone who actually wanted to see the reality of what AEW has been for a few years could clearly see it. Houses are down. Ratings are down. Interest is down. Buzz is down. Hell, even at this point fervent, radical support is down.
Over the last few months, a lot of people who have argued with and attacked me for years about my takes on AEW and Tony Khan have reached out to tell me that I was right all along. I wish that I wasn’t. I wish that Tony Khan had taken every constructive criticism that I have ever made about AEW and shoved those words down my throat, I truly do.
If he had done that, a lot of good people who work in his company and love, or at least loved, his product would be in a much better place today than they were yesterday. I truly wish that he had taken his product to a place that would make me look like a fool instead of a prophet. If he had, it would have been good for the business and I would have said that I was wrong and happily done so.
But, I won’t be doing that today. After Tony Khan’s monumentally stupid decision to air footage from All In Wembley and have Will Ospreay, who I lost a lot of respect for last night whether he came up with it himself or was told to say it (I would have refused), tell us that he thinks he is “grinding” because he chooses to fly back and forth from England to work one day a week due to not wanting to move to the States, do I really need to make any biting criticisms of what went down on Dynamite? Sure, I will do it on Saturday with Mike Epsenhart and we will have fun, but today? I guess I should at least cover the obvious.
We learned:
*Tony Khan is a thin-skinned baby who lacks awareness. We learned that because he aired the video, which does nothing for his business other than undermine it, because, I guess, he was upset about a reality that he can't grasp. He did so, I guess, because he was apparently so upset that CM Punk told the truth about what happened at All In Wembley that he had to….I don’t know, prove Punk right? I can't make sense of the nonsensical folks. But, we did learn that Punk was completely honest with Helwanit in his account of what happened. If Tony thought he had a smoking gun, he shot himself with it. On a side note, we also learned that there was no moment where any adult would ever be afraid for their life the way that Khan said that he was, on national TV no less. Maybe that’s the reason he chose to air the video. Maybe he is just a narcissist who has no grasp of actual reality. That makes as much sense as anything else that I can come up with.
*Will Ospreay is a goof and I bet that WWE is glad that they passed on him. The only needle direction that he has moved so far is backward. Maybe if he actually would grind a bit, he could help the company. So far him wrestling a 20 minute “banger” with a friend of his who he should have beaten in less than five minutes has done nothing but to drive people to change the channel. The only people that tune in to Dynamite to see that kind of stuff are a splinter group, which I will talk about below, that are currently the only people watching the AEW product. That does nothing to grow the business, or even get back the people who stopped watching because you give them things like a 20 minute Ospreay match against someone he should beat in five minutes. The 5 star fans may like that but to the fans that just helped set records for WWE last week, it makes Ospreay look weak needing so much time to be a low card guy. It also makes them say "click" and change the channel.
*And after all that hubris and stupidity from Khan everyone in the company knows it’s a failure. Maybe even Khan does (and if he read his Twitter page he sure as hell should). The pained looks on Taz and especially Tony Schiavone’s faces after the video aired said it all. I bet Excalibur was really happy to be masked after sitting through that dreck. Even The Bucks, who I was told didn't want to do it but Tony insisted, seemed to know that they had not just farted in church but had full on diarrhea. The fans made it clear who they thought the babyface was when they chanted for CM Punk and he trended on social media. That’s called a big backfire Tony and you realized that, or at least someone you will actually listen to did, because the backstage video was cut out of what you released on YouTube. Was it a Finger Poke Of Doom moment? Time will tell. But one thing I am confident of is that it sure as hell wasn’t a Montreal Screwjob moment. It sure as hell won't turn your business around.
In the end, it’s just sad to me.
AEW started with such promise. Vince McMahon was booking a truly bad product and Tony Khan used that void to give us a solid, and at times very good, product that we could invest in. For a year or two, it was all good, or at least solid. And then, it wasn’t.
So what changed?
1) Tony showed that he wasn’t a leader or a booker. At first, he started from scratch so putting guy A vs. guy B was acceptable. We couldn’t expect any nuance from a show that just started so he got a pass at first as he started to tell stories. To be fair, there was a time back then when Dynamite was easily my favorite show to watch every week. I gladly paid to watch the PPVs. It wasn’t bad from the start, but over time, his booking went to hell. Worse, we found out he was born without a proverbial spine and he allowed the inmates to run the asylum and work the money mark. You all know the history by now. On top of that, my feeling now is that he treats this like his own version of a wrestling video game. It's not about running a money making, successful business in my opinion.
2) Tony went from putting on a show that appealed to wrestling fans and began to book for a splinter group of the base. He went from trying to appeal to the masses to marketing specifically to the wrestling version of loud-mouthed, crass outcasts that normal people avoid at all costs. He is now booking for a group that doesn’t care about anything other than “bangers”. Characters? Who cares! Why are they fighting? To have a banger you idiot! Tony made the bad, bad mistake of listening to what his Crazy Uncle Dave thinks wrestling is. Maybe he thinks the same way, I can’t say. What I can say is his Uncle Dave is one of those misfit fans that us normal folks want nothing to do with, and what he likes is not what got over 200,000 people to WWE events over the weekend. It’s what draws you much smaller than capacity houses everywhere you go and helps you do things like garner your all-time worst numbers for Rampage on a night that WWE did monster numbers for Smackdown.
So what does it mean, is this the end of AEW? No, it isn’t. Tony has said many times that he has the money to spend his way out of problems. Hell, just look at the bounty he just bestowed on Kazuchika Okada, Mercedes Mone and Ospreay (and also the complete lack of return of investment delivered thus far). He is clearly still able to throw money around and will continue, to paraphrase The Beach Boys, have fun, fun, fun ’til daddy takes the checkbook away. But if Tony wants this thing to be successful on an actual scale, what he misses with that approach is the same thing that people who act like sleazebags all week and then think they are absolved of bad behavior because they go to church on Sunday never comprehend. Just like the idea of being forgiven for your sins doesn’t mean you should just go out and do them again and again instead of trying to reform, spending your way out of problems that continually create because you didn’t learn from the last time you spent your way out is just a stupid, stupid approach to your business.
While I truly believe it's too late for Tony to change his ways and see the light that could maybe turn his business around, I would hope that what happened last night would resonate with people, especially someone like Drew McIntyre who very well may be deciding on whether to stay in WWE with the winners, or go to AEW with, well, Tony. As Punk so eloquently stated above, no matter what your intentions are when you go to AEW, in the end you are going to be part of a rich kids play toy and there is no disputing that now.
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