Tony Khan addresses WWE counter programming against AEW

Overview

• In the Ariel Helwani Show, Tony Khan opened up on WWE's strategy of counter-programming against AEW
• The AEW Boss understood how counter-programming works in Wrestling and noted it has been an age-old practice
• He claimed it was done on purpose and regarded it as a part of the Wrestling business, which was the case even in the past

In the Ariel Helwani Show, Tony Khan opened up on WWE's strategy of counter-programming against AEW. The AEW Boss understood how counter-programming works in Wrestling and noted it has been an age-old practice. He claimed it was done on purpose and regarded it as a part of the Wrestling business, which was the case even in the past.

Khan noted that the rival promotions often use it as a strategy to try and get better ratings than their counterparts. Tony noted that WCW tried it against Jim Crockett Promotions in the past in the 1990s. He claimed to have expected counter-programming, given how the Wrestling business works.

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"I do think it’s done on purpose, and I understand it, and it’s part of wrestling. I think we've seen a lot of it, but I think other wrestling promotions that have been the challenger wrestling brand in our lifetime have seen a lot of it. Jim Crockett Promotions, which was the forerunner to WCW, saw a lot of this," Tony said.

"We've seen that kind of counter programming in the past," - Tony Khan

In 2025, particularly, WWE has scheduled many shows, some even being PLEs, on nights when an episode of AEW was scheduled. In some cases, WWE tried to put pressure on its rival brand by countering programming against one of its major PLEs like All In. 

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Tony understood the concept, being a Wrestling follower himself. He was up for it and felt it would continue to happen in the near future. "I do think that we've seen that kind of counter programming and those things, and I understand, and looking back at wrestling history, kind of expect that," Tony added in his statement.