Speaking on Barstool Sport’s Pardon My Take podcast Tony Khan discussed learning from the past and from the mistakes of others in the wrestling business.

>“I’ve learned from the pros and the cons, and I think some of the things that went wrong for WCW, in my opinion, were the creative control. They gave creative control to a lot of the wrestlers, and some of the storylines were asinine. Some of the ideas were great, but it was a very disorganized show. And when they brought someone else in from the WWF to be a writer named Vince Russo, he made it ten times worse. He took a problem, it’s like they had a massive hangnail and he just chopped off the arm. So that was part of the problem.”

>“Another major, major issue for them, in my opinion, was the management. Most wrestling companies that have been really successful over time have had one supreme commander at the top, who’s like owned it, booked it, done everything. Run the place, run the management. Whether it was Vince McMahon for years, organizing everything, Cowboy Bill Watts, Eddie Graham, Fritz Von Erich, and countless others. And so I think that made sense as a business model, and I told Kevin that. It’s like the strong management WCW didn’t have, I can provide.”

“I’ve done stuff on other wrestling shows that kind of promote AEW and cross over. But that’s kind of the line I don’t want to cross because I feel like you disappear up your own butt when you start writing that way.”