Kap & J. Hood
7/2 GKW - AEW's President & CEO Tony Khan
(upbeat music) - You're listening to Good Karma Wrestling. I'm Jonathan Hood. Thanks so much for being with us here on ESPN Chicago. A great partner of ours here at ESPN Chicago is AEW All Elite Wrestling. At the Wind Trust Arena, AEW comes back home to Chicago. It'll be Wednesday, July 3rd, Wind Trust Arena. For AEW Dynamite, go to allelitwrestling.com for tickets or get them at the box office. We turned to the president GM and executive producer of AEW. Tony Khan returns to us here on Good Karma Wrestling. Tony Jonathan Hood, thanks so much for your time. - Hey Jonathan, great to talk to you again. - Welcome home Tony. I mean, you could tell me about Champagne or Ben, or all you want, but you really are a Chicago guy. - I am, I'm at home right now and it's great to be here and I'm excited about this week, AEW in Chicago for beach break. - No question about it. I wanna ask you this, Tony, as a lifelong fan of wrestling, you know, putting this promotion on paper as a kid, what makes you happiest about what you do for wrestling fans and what you do for AW? - Well, great weeks like this. I think it's great to be able to have an event like Forbidden Door where great wrestling companies from all over the world come together and we bring the top stars. The first ever Forbidden Door was right here in Chicago at the United Center. We're back this week for Wednesday night Dynamite at Wind Trust Arena. And obviously we want everybody to come see the show live if you can make it over the Chicago wrestling fans or some of the greatest in the world. I love being here. If you can't make it over for the show this week, it's hours away from right now. We'd love for you to check it out. Coming up very soon on TBS, it's on its 7 p.m. Central, Wednesday night Dynamite. It's a great show. - Yeah, I want you to know that this is just part of the Fourth of July holiday now. What happens is, get off of work early. There's a little tailgating 'cause obviously we're Chicagoin, so it's a little bite to eat, a little, you know, some adult beverages. We go over to the Wind Trust Arena and then go kick it afterwards. I think it's a perfect night, what do you think? - I love it. I think we found something really special here, so. Hopefully we can make a great tradition here. We already have some great traditions coming every September and always the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Eve and every Wednesday night Dynamite we do. I always try to put on a great show, a great card. This in particular this week is one of the most loaded shows we've ever had on TBS and that's why I'm bringing it here this week to Chicago. - Can you give us a sneak preview of the card on Wednesday for A.W. Dynamite? - Yeah, it's gonna be tremendous. We have so many great things. We have the international champion, Will Ospreay, defending the title against Daniel Garcia. I think that's gonna be so great. And Ospreay is somebody who is just on fire. He had an amazing match in the main event of Forbidden Door. He was so close to becoming the AEW World Champion and we're really excited to have Ospreay versus Garcia this week on Wednesday night Dynamite, just hours from now at the Wind Trust Arena right here in Chicago. Also really excited about the Owen Hart Foundation Cup tournament. It's gonna continue through this week and we have huge matches coming to the Wind Trust Arena including Chris Statlander versus Willow Nightingale and Pac versus Brian Danielson. Some of the greatest stars in wrestling going one-on-one in this tournament plus Jeff Jarrett who entered this tournament. He's somebody who was a close friend of the late great Owen Hart. He's a sentimental favorite for many reasons in this tournament. They'll be taking on a wild card competitor, somebody who's entering the tournament, somebody sponsored by the elite. Should be a great, great night of wrestling. So many awesome things on the card. In addition, Dr. Britt Baker has returned to AEW. We'll hear from Dr. Britt Baker live hours from now right here in Chicago. It's gonna be really, really awesome. I can't wait for that. And in addition, we saw Britt Baker return to AEW just this past weekend at Forbidden Door and she interrupted the celebration post-match of Mercedes Monet as Mercedes won the New Japan Strong Women's Championship and became a double champion. She also holds the TBS title and we'll have Mercedes official double championship celebration. Should be interesting. Fireworks possible early ahead of the 4th of July with this show coming up Wednesday, July 3rd hours from now at the Wind Trust Arena as we've got Dr. Britt Baker and Mercedes Monet in the same arena at the same time. - Yeah, for a Forbidden Door, I want to talk to you about as well, but don't forget allleetwrestling.com is where you can get tickets or get in at the box office of Wind Trust Arena for Wednesday, July 3rd as AEW comes back home to Chicago at the Wind Trust Arena. I want to get your thoughts on Forbidden Door. So I don't think you've said it this way, but in my mind, this is what Forbidden Door is for me. Watching Sunday, a great card and a great show, of course it was going to be because you have all of these stars together. It feels like a wrestling All-Star game. Is that how you see it in your mind when you see CMLL and New Japan and AEW all come together for one card? - Well, that's a great thought. It's like an All-Star game or a Pro Bowl, but I think it's even more so not another level because it's really live rounds. I mean, sometimes in the great All-Star games or the Pro Bowl, people hold back, but at Forbidden Door, people go even harder. I mean, it was the hardest hitting, fastest paced action in all of wrestling. And it's why it's the best show you're in, you're out. All three Forbidden Door events. The inaugural show right here in Chicago last year in Toronto and this past weekend in New York, they've all been start to finish great action, great moments, memorable classic shows. And Forbidden Door is always an awesome event. And now coming off that show, I'm really excited to be back here. This week in Chicago, I promise it's gonna be one of our best shows that we're giving the fans just hours from now right here in Chicago. - Tony, I'm one of those sickos that you referenced on Twitter, like I'm a wrestling sicko and I love it all, right? But I won't gonna raise my hand and tell you, hey, my name is Jonathan and I'm a wrestling sicko. So my hand is raised. I'm a collision guy, I like dynamite, but I also am a collision guy. Is there a difference between the two for you? - Well, there's some difference in the formatting and obviously difference is in what we present, Wednesdays on TBS versus Saturdays on TNT. Sometimes there are different wrestlers involved. There are some people who tend to compete more often on dynamite or collision one way or the other. I love both shows. Collision also started here in Chicago and we've had some of our best matches there on collision on Saturdays. Really looking forward to continuing the Owen Hart Foundation tournament this week after this big Wednesday night show coming up very soon here in Chicago, we'll go to Memphis and continue the tournament there. Very excited for that. And lots of really good stuff happening on dynamite and collision and rampage. And I love the action we put on dynamite every week and dynamite now, it's crazy. We're approaching the five year anniversary of the show and dynamite episode 250 is actually just in a couple weeks. Whereas collision, we just celebrated the one year anniversary and it's still a great, great, great tradition we built. We celebrated the one year anniversary of collision on Father's Day with Christian Cage's Father's Day special. That was a big success. And both shows are really fun and we've had some great moments on dynamite on Wednesdays and on collision on Saturdays. - I'm interested in the business model for a collision because I've seen the cities that you've gone to, whether it's in the Ohio Valley or the Missouri Valley, a lot of wrestling cities that don't get a chance to get wrestling, they may not even get it once a year, maybe once every other year. Was that, tell us about the game plan of being able to come to some of these cities and say, "Hey, you don't get wrestling often, here's a big time show." - Well, it's a great question. We've made our debut in some great markets in the past year and some of them at dynamite, but a lot of them, like you said, have been at collision. And it's great to bring the show into new territories. And one of my favorite things about it, whether we're in a huge city like right here in Chicago or any of the other major cities, the kind of towns that have pro sports teams and major markets, it's always great to do the show in the top cities, especially the biggest and best wrestling cities like Chicago. I also think it's really fun to go to some of the smaller towns and debut there. And it's always really cool to see they've been watching the TV show very closely. You go to some of these new towns, they know all the stories, they know all the chants, they know exactly what's going on. And that's the power of wrestling television. And you have great partners like TBS and TNT. We've been able to show now five hours of wrestling every week across the country. And there's still so many more great towns and cities. I can't wait to visit. - Will you have Sky Blue just give us a wave here in Chicago? 'Cause I'm gonna be at the show. Will she be in attendance to give away? Because at this point in time, Tony, she represents the city. Like she's already done media and we've talked to her on good karma wrestling. I mean, she's just a fantastic representative of the city. Will she get, at least give a wave to say just hello to the fans? - Well, Sky Blue is a huge part of AEW's women's division, a great, great young wrestler and somebody right here from Chicago. So we definitely wanna get Sky Blue involved, always love to have her anywhere, especially right here in Chicago. And I love the fact that our roster, we've got people with roots all over the world, including right here in Chicago. And great to have one of the top young stars be a local Chicago wrestler. - Well, you're one, but she's definitely a close one, hey. I mean, she has to come out there and give us something because it's just awesome because she gets a pop and people know, and you know how provincial our city is. Like we just like our own, we love our own. So Sky just was a great representative of AEW when we talked to her and Kyle Fletcher had a lot to say about AEW and was just happy in their spot right now. So that's good to have them on the roster. - Yeah, absolutely. It's gonna be a really, really great week and both of them are doing great things. It's great to see Kyle and Sky out doing media for AEW ahead of this show and any of our events here in Chicago or anywhere. They do media, but in particular, like you said, the folks in Chicago here really support their own people and I've spent years living here and I was originally born downstate in Champaign and grew up there and have spent years of my life living here in Chicago. I love it very much and anytime I can bring a wrestling show back here, that's what I wanna do. This is a big part of the launch of AEW, a big part of our origin story is here, the original all in was here before we launched AEW and then we've been doing all out here every year since. It's been a great tradition and it's gonna continue this September, but long before then, just hours from now, we've got Wednesday night dynamite coming up at Wind Trust Arena. If you don't have your tickets already, the show's coming up very, very soon. You can still get tickets, you can still make it over for the show, but if you can't be there live, I know it's very, very soon, Wednesday night, July 3rd, that's literally hours from now. Check it out, 7 p.m. on TBS. It's a great show and in particular this week, knowing we were gonna be here in Chicago, I really loaded up the card and I'm gonna try and make it one of the best AEW shows we've done. - Tony, you always load up the card. You always load up the card. It's always something to watch. - So you're, I mean, it's by design, right? You always load it up to make sure that we, the fan, are satisfied. Just like, okay, that's a great story. That's a great match. Can't wait to see what happens next week. That's kind of what you do every week. - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That's all right. Try to do what I want all the shows to be great shows and I think in particular, this one is gonna be one of the best. - What is it that you wanna work on? Everything that you do from the soccer team to the football team, with Jacksonville, with AEW, you always wanna be able to top what you did before. So what is it that you wanna continue to do for AEW? What's your concern? You say, okay, we have to continue to work on this to be even better. - Well, it's a great question. I think for us, it's really, really important to continue putting on the best wrestling, to have the best paper views. I think we've built this great reputation and our pay-per-view business continues to get stronger and stronger. Anytime you order an AEW pay-per-view, you know you're gonna get a great show. And we've had four events this year. They've all done awesome on ticket sales and they all were great events and they all sold a ton of pay-per-views. This is gonna be our record year on pay-per-view. We're off to this incredible start, four for four. And now this feels like a pay-per-view show that we're bringing this week to Chicago. But everybody can watch it on TBS at 7 p.m. You don't have to pay a dime more than what you're already paying for your cable or streaming service. And I promise this is just gonna be an awesome wrestling show and it means a lot to bring it here to Chicago. - Tony, you may not have watched it, but you're aware of it. Who killed WCW? - I don't know, I am a historian of wrestling and that was one you could do an entire college class on. I could write 47 page dissertation on it. And there's a long, long answer to that, probably a lot longer than we have to talk today. - Listen, you, look, you're a wrestling historian. We've all watched it. I just think it's, I think it's all fascinating. I think there's some things left out of the documentary. I don't know if everyone watched it. There's listening on ESPN and Chicago, but there's a lot of suspects. I would say that was in the documentary that could be responsible for that. True? - Maybe, I haven't had a chance to watch it. - Yeah, well, it's fascinating, I'll tell you that for sure. Who killed WCW? You're right, that could be a class at Illinois. Well, maybe you could teach it at one point. Maybe you could have a curriculum for that because there was so much wrong. And I've heard you talk about it. You say, "Hey, we've had million-dollar gates. We've had success with AEW. You've lapped a lot of promoters that could not be able to have the success that you've had so far." So you actually could teach the class on it. - Well, I think it's a tremendous idea. I don't know if I have the time or necessarily the inclination to do that, but it is definitely a great idea. And certainly I always love wrestling history and studying the history of this business. We wrestling fans, we love dates, we love history, facts, figures. It's really, really something to connect the wrestling fans. And I just love that. - All Elite Wrestling, coming back to win trust arena again, July 3rd, win trust arena for AEW Dynamite. All Elite Wrestling.com is where you get your tickets and of course, the win trust arena box office. Tony Khan, we appreciate your time on good karma wrestling. Let's do it again. Hopefully you'll round September. Can't wait for AEW to return. - Yeah, it was great catching up with you, John. Thanks for having me on. And again, win stage July 3rd, now, that's ours from right now. So you can get your tickets and if you can't make it over to win trust arena, please join us tonight, 7 p.m. on PBS. We'd love to see you. - Tony, thank you very much. - Thanks, John. - It's Tony Khan with us on Good Karma Wrestling, right here on ESPN Chicago. ♪ I'm gonna happen in the need ♪