When Vince McMahon retired, and Triple H took over WWE's creative control, one of Tony Khan and AEW's most significant competitive advantages vanished overnight. Khan has been remarkably candid about what those changes mean for him and his wrestling promotion, giving fans a rare insight into how he's feeling about the ongoing wrestling wars. There's been much less talk about competing with WWE lately and more chatter about AEW's viability as a second pro wrestling company. That's for a good reason.
WWE's media footprint is massive as it is. Not only do Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown typically do good numbers, but those solid ratings have also been coming despite Vince McMahon, not because of him. With him out of the picture, and Triple H's vision for the company already in full swing, suddenly, AEW is feeling a lot more pressure from the behemoth. Hunter has been placing more emphasis on wrestling, and his creativity in how to piece shows together is an advantage that can't be overlooked.
In a conversation on the Superstar Crossover podcast, Khan opened up about WWE putting on better shows over the last few weeks since McMahon abruptly retired: "The shows [WWE has] been doing are generally better than the shows they were doing before the change, which is good for the wrestling business. It's a little bit different than what we were going up against before. In terms of me being the CEO of AEW, I see some positives and some negatives, but I see a lot of positives. There are a lot reasons why it could drive some interest in wrestling and people coming back to watch more wrestling, and those people are inherently going to most likely also check out AEW." He went on to explain that some of All Elite's top stars, such as CM Punk and Chris Jericho, should be familiar to WWE audiences and that returning relapsed fans for that company could mean more eyes on AEW. (h/t and a thank you to Fightful.com for the transcription)
To his credit, Tony Khan doesn't seem to be panicking about WWE's sudden foray into putting on strong professional wrestling shows instead of producing sports entertainment spectacles. Of course, that'll always be a part of WWE's DNA (anyone who watched SummerSlam can attest to that), but it's not as if AEW shies away from gimmicked matches and the occasional non-finish.
AEW has struggled to increase its ratings over the summer, but the roster has also been decimated by injuries. Khan has said that he's happy that Dynamite has managed not to lose any ground while Punk, Kenny Omega, Adam Cole, and numerous other main eventers are hurt. That's another good perspective to maintain. It'll be interesting to see how AEW builds up to All Out, which may be the company's most important pay-per-view of the year.
Sources: Superstar Crossover, Fightful.com