Tony Khan says he did a ‘much better job’ of trusting his instincts in 2025
By Shawn Garrett (aka Bryan’s friend Shawn from the Bryan & Vinny Show)
A condensed version of this appears on Seattle’s KING 5.
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Tony Khan, speaking ahead of Wednesday’s AEW’s Dynamite Spring BreakThru show at Angel of the Wind Arena in Everett, WA, framed the event not just as another television taping but as part of what he sees as the momentum carryover from what he repeatedly described as a banner 2025 for the promotion.
He pushed the show as the one year anniversary of Dynamite becoming, in his words, “the longest running prime time pro wrestling show in the history of TBS and TNT,” and said the Everett card would feature multiple championship matches topped by MJF defending the World title against Darby Allin in a rematch of one of the company’s foundational rivalries.
Khan was especially strong in putting over the idea of Allin vs. MJF as an “original AEW” matchup with added local significance because Allin is the hometown favorite.
He described Darby as being on a “phenomenal winning streak” and said the match was “gonna be a lot of fun,” very much presenting it as a big match title defense rather than a routine TV main event.
On the undercard, he also heavily emphasized Kevin Knight vs. Claudio Castagnoli for the TNT title, noting that Knight had just won the championship at Dynasty, that Claudio had been “loaded up, ready to fight,” and that there has never been a one-on-one match between the two.
Khan also leaned into Castagnoli’s resume, calling him one of AEW’s top stars and a former CMLL World champion and AEW Trios champion, while stressing the kind of unpredictability AEW has tried to establish around title reigns.
He also plugged Willow Nightingale’s return, tying it into Kamille’s comeback angle and noting that Kamille had been away filming American Gladiators, where he said she plays Hurricane.
Khan referred to Willow as “the face of TBS” and essentially pitched that match segment as another one of the major hooks for the Everett show, saying “The face of TBS is fighting on TBS this Wednesday night at Spring BreakThru.”
The more interesting part of the interview, though, was Khan talking philosophy.
He went back to the fact that he was fantasy booking long before AEW existed, saying he started writing a show called Saturday Night Dynamite in 1995 when he was 12, posting it on message boards and sending it to friends.
He clearly still sees a straight line from that kid booking imaginary shows to the actual AEW schedule that includes Dynamite and Collision.
But he also made the familiar distinction that writing wrestling as a fan and running a company are completely different things, comparing it to the difference between running a fantasy football team and running an actual football team.
His point was that ideas and instincts matter, but working with real people, managing personalities and evaluating how somebody fits into the locker room is where the real job begins.
That flowed into his comments on talent evaluation where he said “AEW is where the best wrestle,” but also made clear that ring work alone is not the only criterion.
He said the company wants the most skilled athletes and people who love wrestling, but also the kind of person who can be “good for the locker room” and potentially become a star on television.
He added that there is no single template for what makes an AEW wrestler because top talent can come from completely different backgrounds, sizes, personalities and career paths, tying it directly to how he evaluates people coming from wrestling, football, and soccer executive experience.
Khan then got into saying 2025 was a year where he deliberately re-centered AEW around his own instincts.
He said that after learning a great deal in AEW’s first year in 2019 and applying those lessons successfully in 2020, he felt he had drifted away from that approach in later years.
He said he went “soul searching” at the end of 2019 and made the rule for himself on January 1, 2020: “I will only trust my instincts. I will only execute the ideas that I believe in. If I don’t believe in something, then I’ll pull the plug on it.”
He said that same philosophy was consciously reapplied at the end of 2024 heading into 2025, and he plainly believes that shift is a major reason AEW had the year it had.
He also acknowledged the management side of that process, saying the easiest thing in the world is to go with ideas from people you trust because it makes them feel good, while the harder part is saying no when you disagree.
Khan said he thought he did “a much better job” of that in 2025 than in the previous few years, and he linked that directly to stronger decision-making.
He specifically said there were so many things happening outside the ring in 2022 that his usual rule of thumb was not always front of mind, and that by the end of 2024, he felt he needed to take what he learned in year one of wrestling and reapply it to year six, essentially saying the 2025 creative rebound came from him tightening his grip and trusting himself more.
When asked about the highs of 2025, Khan gave a detailed answer that, more than anything else, showed what he thought AEW got right last year.
He raved about Toni Storm, calling her “incredible” and that her run was one of the major highlights of the year, particularly her going home to Brisbane, regaining the title at Grand Slam Australia in front of her family, and building to what he called one of his favorite AEW matches ever against Mercedes Mone at All In Texas.
He also said AEW misses her and can’t wait until she is back.
He also put heavy emphasis on Hangman Page and MJF, framing their 2025 rivalry as a payoff to the original AEW vision.
Khan went back to the first unveiling of the AEW World title when Bret Hart revealed the belt and Page and MJF were presented as the two future contenders AEW wanted fans to identify with from the beginning.
Khan said both men more than lived up to that billing by becoming multiple-time world champions and said their rivalry throughout 2025 was “fantastic.”
He sees them not just as top stars now, but as proof that the long-term AEW vision on homegrown headliners actually paid off.
The longest and most passionate section of Khan’s answer dealt with Jon Moxley, and specifically what he called “Moxley’s metamorphosis.”
Khan described Mox as the darkest villain in AEW at the start of 2025, the man who had effectively made himself the mountain everyone else in the company was trying to climb.
He talked at length about the alliance that formed between Page and Will Ospreay while chasing Moxley, saying the bond between them as rivals who agreed one of them had to beat Moxley was “one of the most incredible things I’ve ever witnessed” and one of his all-time favorite stories to work on.
He also referenced Ospreay being taken out by Moxley and then returning to get revenge, which he tied into the more recent Dynasty match.
Khan’s view was that the Continental Classic changed Moxley. He said the tournament “unlocked something in Jon” because it forced him to wrestle without the Death Riders, without interference, without the briefcase, and without outside help.
Khan said that stripped everything back to Moxley’s love of wrestling and reconnected him with the audience exactly the way he predicted it would.
He specifically pointed to Moxley vs. Kyle Fletcher in the semifinals as the moment when the crowd’s perception changed in real time and they realized they were cheering for Moxley as the underdog.
From there, Khan described Moxley beating Fletcher and then Kazuchika Okada in the final as an emotional climax, especially because he framed Okada as the greatest tournament wrestler of all time in a format he had dominated.
He then went even further, saying Moxley’s post-tournament speech embodied the exact opposite of everything the character had been saying about AEW throughout the previous year.
Khan clearly sees that promo, and the fan response to it, as one of the defining emotional beats of the company’s recent creative direction.
He called it a perfect ending to his favorite year of AEW from start to finish and even went into how much it hit him personally, noting that he red-eyed from Worlds End to Indianapolis for Jacksonville Jaguars business, then later went back and watched the Moxley-Fletcher match, the Okada final, and the speech again because of how strongly he felt about them.
Khan was similarly enthusiastic talking about Kenny Omega’s resurgence.
He said he felt strongly that Omega was going to “find himself” in the WrestleDynasty 2025 match with Gabe Kidd, which he described as part of the AEW/New Japan relationship in the spirit of Forbidden Door.
He then ran down a long list of Omega-related highlights from 2025: Maximum Carnage, Revolution vs. Takeshita, the Dynasty three-way with Ricochet and “Speedball” Mike Bailey that Khan called one of the greatest three-way matches he had ever seen, Anarchy in the Arena, and finally promoting Omega vs. Okada for All In Texas, which he said was part of the biggest show AEW has ever done in North America.
He also referenced the lights out cage match and said he had “so many incredible memories” of Omega last year.
Beyond the top line stars, Khan also mentioned the Young Bucks having one of their best years in wrestling and a return to form after time away, plus Fight for the Fallen in Asheville with Adam Copeland and FTR for what he described as a meaningful hometown cause.
He also touched on the later Copeland & Christian Cage/FTR developments and said reuniting Copeland and Cage was another of his favorite memories from the year.
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