Tony Khan is very excited about the launch of AEW Collision this Saturday night.
All Elite Wrestling President Tony Khan was a recent guest on Barstool Rasslin’ to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about introducing a new weekly show on Saturday nights, like AEW Collision being uncharted territory for a wrestling company, Khan said he believes this is a great opportunity to make Saturday nights a staple for pro wrestling again.
“I agree with everything you said, but when we launched AEW, it had also been nearly 20 years since wrestling had been on TNT, and by the time we made it back to TBS, it had been over 20 years since TBS had wrestling, Tony Khan said. “Now, it’s a big success with wrestling on TBS every Wednesday night for Dynamite, and we have Friday night Rampage on TNT, and now for the first time ever, Saturday Collision starts this weekend on Saturday night.
“I believe it’s a great opportunity to make Saturday night a weekly staple for pro wrestling again. As you said, there’s been big wrestling events, including a lot of great AEW shows, on Saturdays at times. But we’ve been doing a lot of our pay-per-views on Sundays. So a Saturday night show made a lot of sense for us. Plus, the boss of the studio is very happy with the performance of AEW, and it was his idea; it was a great if’s to put AEW on TNT on Saturday nights.
“Much like it boded well at the time for the company on the Turner networks in the 90s when the boss of the studio said, ‘Hey, I believe it would be great to put the show on TNT,’ at the time, in 1995, that was Mr. Turner, and now Mr. Zaslav, as the head of this massive Warner Brothers Discovery company, has confidence in AEW. When he said that, it got me really excited, and I believe for us to have such a positive relationship with the strong management team at Warner Brothers Discovery bodes really, really well for AEW and our future. We’re doing really special things, and they see that.”
“The fact is, we have Forbidden Door coming up, sold-out, it’s a huge event, and it’s a really landmark event, unprecedented to have this kind of partnership between international promotions, especially two of the biggest promotions in the world partnering for a worldwide event like Forbidden Door. The historic milestones we’ve hit for AEW All In, they’re unprecedented, truly.
“It’s the biggest grossing live event in pro wrestling in the history of Europe, and it’s months away, and we haven’t a single match yet, and we’re gonna continue selling tickets and raising that revenue as we get closer and closer to the show at Wembley Stadium. But it’s certainly a historic event, and now it stands next to only a few of the highest-grossing WrestleManias ever as one of the top-grossing events in the history of pro wrestling. When it’s all said and done, it’ll be right there amongst the top few ever.”
“It just feels like the month of June is so many big landmarks, milestones coming out at once, and then building to a huge event later this summer, as we talked about with All In. But Saturday nights, I do believe it’s possible, and again, when we brought AEW back to the Turner networks, it was doing something that hadn’t been done in a long time, and it was a very familiar tradition to a lot of people, to watch wrestling on TBS and on TNT.
“We are playing into that, and we like that familiarity. I love being at TNT and TBS because it’s a place I grew up watching wrestling, and I know a lot of people across America did, and all over the world, and I think for Saturday night, it’s been a big night for wrestling, and in America, there’s a big tradition of that.
“I believe we can make a new tradition with Collision, but something that feels familiar and nice because so many companies and so many different shows that run on Saturday night in pro wrestling, and a lot of great ones that people have great memories of, and I think it’s great for us to have this real estate. It’s a great space for us, so that’s kind of the idea of it.
“I know for you, you’re somebody who grew up watching wrestling on TBS and TNT, and you’re somebody who also grew up watching wrestling on Saturday. So if I can get you interested, I can get a lot of people in this same demographic that would watch the show. I think it’s really interesting and exciting for us.”
READ MORE: Tony Khan On CM Punk’s AEW Return: I Expect A Very Positive Reaction
What do you make of Tony Khan’s comments? Are you excited about AEW Collision this Saturday night? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit Barstool Rasslin’ with a link back to this article for the transcription.
