BONUS Wrestling With Marc - The Boss
Marc:Okay, people, so this is our fourth Wrestling with Mark bonus episode.
Marc:You with me?
Marc:If you are keeping up, right after Chris Jericho came over, came into the garage, then Brendan was excited again and said, wait, there's more coming.
Marc:And the CEO of All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan, walks in.
Marc:Don't know this guy.
Marc:Don't know him at all.
Marc:But I was excited because Brendan was excited.
Marc:And I knew that I was going to learn more about wrestling, which I knew pretty much nothing about.
Marc:I didn't know anything about AEW or how it got started.
Marc:So he was basically there to explain that to me, just like Chris was there to explain wrestling to me, as was Brendan.
Marc:Basically, what's happening in this conversation is Tony is going to explain to me his job, which is...
Marc:Not unlike any show, he's the showrunner.
Marc:He's the one who decides how it's all going to play out week to week.
Marc:And there is continuity to all this.
Marc:And also, as I mentioned before, Brendan is here as well.
Marc:Brendan is in the room to give me some perspective.
Marc:As a fan, I can hear him engaging with Tony as a guy who knows what's going on and then feel more of that excitement, get a little more of that contact buzz from Brendan's excitement about everything unfolding.
Marc:So this is me and Tony and Brendan on the mics.
Music
Guest:So where do you come from?
Guest:I originally am from Champaign, Illinois, where the University of Illinois is.
Marc:That's where your family's from?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Originally, my parents met there.
Guest:My dad's from Lahore, Pakistan, and my mom's originally from around Chicago.
Marc:And you're not unlike Brendan in that from how old were you when you started to love wrestling?
Guest:Uh, probably about seven years old.
Marc:Seven.
Marc:Same.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that's when it happens.
Guest:You know, it's, and, and Tony, how old are you?
Guest:39?
Guest:I've just turned 40.
Guest:Just 40.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So you, so we're roughly around the same age.
Guest:I think what you were probably, you know, getting in right at the kind of tail end of Hulkamania era of WWF, right?
Guest:Is that about?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And.
Guest:The funny thing, I read an interview you were doing with The Ringer, I think it was.
Guest:And, you know, I've been an AEW fan, so I've been interested in following the story of how it was created and getting a little background on you.
Guest:And the hilarious thing was this interview, you're talking about the things you were watching at the time when you first started to become a fan, and you're bringing up
Guest:this thing kind of casually.
Guest:You're like, yeah, well, there was a thing I watched on pay-per-view.
Guest:I think it was called Hot Ticket, and there was WrestleMania, Best of WrestleMania matches, and then there was one with Hulk.
Guest:I'm like, this guy, I know he knows exactly what the whole thing was.
Guest:He remembers it precisely, because I do too.
Guest:I remember buying that thing.
Guest:I remember I invited over that we would watch Hot Ticket with the best of WrestleMania and the best of Hulkamania.
Guest:And like it was to a letter the exact same experience that I was having as a kid.
Guest:The only difference is Tony then went and started a wrestling federation, which I didn't do.
Marc:But where do you – how do you –
Marc:Like, what do you do in school?
Marc:How do you manifest this?
Guest:Well, I always wanted to write wrestling shows.
Guest:And actually, the show we do every Wednesday on TBS is called Dynamite, Wednesday Night Dynamite.
Guest:Dynamite is a show that I started writing in notebooks and on the back of pieces of paper in middle school in 1995.
Guest:Dynamite.
Guest:Yeah, Dynamite.
Marc:And it was wrestling scripts.
Guest:Yeah, wrestling scripts like, you know, matchups every week and stories that go week to week.
Guest:It was a weekly wrestling show called Dynamite.
Marc:With the guys that you were watching on TV.
Guest:Yeah, the people at the time.
Guest:And now it's, you know, the biggest stars of today every Wednesday on TBS.
Marc:So how'd you like what's your old man's in the auto parts business, right?
Marc:Yes, sir.
Marc:But in a big way.
Marc:In a big way.
Marc:So you were expected to follow suit, right?
Guest:Not exactly.
Guest:I don't think my dad ever really even wanted that because, first of all, my dad is really a very, very lively person.
Guest:He's just as active in the auto business as he was when I was a kid.
Guest:He's in his 70s now, and he's one of the healthiest, most vibrant people you'll ever see.
Guest:And I don't think that's really ever what he wanted for me.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's certainly not ever something he tried to force on me.
Guest:And I think he wanted me to do what makes...
Guest:Me happy?
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:I'd like to think, yeah.
Marc:You didn't get that pressure?
Marc:Because a lot of times I've talked to people that come from immigrant parents primarily, and the pressure is relentless.
Guest:I was under a lot of pressure, but not necessarily pressure to work in auto parts.
Guest:But I think I was definitely under a lot of pressure to succeed in some meaningful way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But not necessarily do the same thing as my dad.
Marc:Yeah, what were you expected to do?
Marc:What did you think you were going to do?
Guest:I really wanted to work in sports my whole life.
Guest:And I've had this great opportunity for over a decade to do it now.
Guest:My dad, you know, his dream was to buy a football team.
Guest:And just like I think my dream was to launch a wrestling promotion.
Guest:And so I got to be a part of that.
Guest:And for 11 seasons now, I've worked in the NFL and been working on football stats, which is something else I really love.
Guest:Wait, so your dad owns a team?
Guest:Yeah, my dad owns the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Guest:You're doing that as well?
Guest:Well, I do football statistics and put together scouting reports based on data and put together information on the draft and our games for the coach and for the general manager.
Guest:I do that.
Guest:Also, I'm the general manager and sporting director of Fulham Football Club in the Premier League.
Guest:That's in the U.K.
Guest:?
Guest:So he's literally going, he's got a team in Europe, a team in Jacksonville, Florida, and this National Wrestling Federation.
Marc:So wait, so now is the wrestling like a hobby?
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:It's a full-time thing.
Guest:It's like I juggle all this work, but I really love it.
Guest:And I used to be in the NFL office like 80 hours a week before I started working in English football for Fulham.
Guest:And then I was really splitting my time.
Guest:And now I've got a great team I work with at Jaguars that really a lot of the scouting reports and data, they generate week to week.
Guest:So I'm not having to do that every single week anymore.
Guest:And I'm still working on the data, but I'm not in the office 80 hours a week in Jacksonville anymore because I'm on the road.
Guest:We do 52 weeks a year wrestling.
Guest:It's a never-ending tour.
Guest:So I'm in different cities every week.
Guest:And it's great.
Guest:I'm just working all the time, and I love it.
Guest:Do you have a life?
Guest:No, not as much as I would like, but I love the stuff I do.
Guest:And it's fun.
Guest:I'm very obsessed with wrestling and football, and that works good for what I do.
Marc:Well, it seems like you've gone as far as you can go for someone obsessed with wrestling and football.
Marc:Yeah, I've gone far.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:In the sense that you can feed that obsession without necessarily playing or getting hurt.
Marc:You can live in it.
Guest:It is very sustainable, I think, what we have going on.
Guest:And I love working in it every week.
Guest:And during football season, it's pretty crazy because you have the games every weekend.
Guest:And then we have wrestling every week on TBS and TNT.
Guest:But I love it.
Guest:When did you start putting together the Wrestling Federation?
Guest:About four years ago, I started working on it.
Guest:And I started working on it about five years ago.
Guest:And we launched actually four years ago this week.
Guest:What made you think you could take it on?
Guest:Well, it's interesting.
Guest:I was at a party with the president of TBS and TNT at the time.
Guest:For football?
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:It was actually – it's a great question because a lot of those events where you see those people, it wouldn't normally be at like a big football event.
Guest:This wasn't.
Guest:It was like a social thing out here in L.A.
Guest:And my friend Kevin at the time was running TBS and TNT, and I saw Kevin.
Guest:I knew him socially, and he's a great guy.
Guest:And at the time, he was running the two networks, and he –
Guest:started having a conversation with me and I mentioned wrestling TV rights.
Guest:And he said he was actually looking into that at the time.
Guest:And I mentioned, you know, it could be a great time for me to start a wrestling company and for you to carry it.
Guest:And that turned into a real conversation.
Guest:And then we had meetings and followed up on it.
Guest:And then it ended up happening.
Marc:So you judged interest by that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like I kind of felt him out.
Marc:What could you deliver at that point?
Marc:You didn't have wrestlers.
Guest:That's a great question.
Guest:So there were a number of big stars just off the top of my head that were going to be free agents that next year.
Guest:So I was able to build a great roster taking like Chris Jericho, who's a huge name that was going to be available as a free agent, and then a lot of the top young wrestlers.
Guest:And there were a number of people competing for a company called Ring of Honor at the time.
Guest:Now that's actually I bought Ring of Honor pretty recently.
Guest:What was that?
Guest:It's a management company?
Guest:That was a wrestling company that was probably at the time the number two company in the U.S.
Guest:In terms of promoting?
Guest:In terms of, yeah, in terms of attendance and pay-per-view buys and stuff.
Guest:I think they were at a time they were a number two, but they never rose to the heights of AEW.
Guest:And that's one of the reasons why I thought there was an opportunity for AEW to come in and be a strong challenger brand.
Guest:And that's an expression that Kevin and the people at the time at TBS really taught me and we've used in our marketing.
Guest:For example, like a challenger brand, a good example, Pepsi is the new generation.
Guest:Pepsi is a challenger brand like AEW.
Guest:And when I launched this, I was like, okay, I'd like to be the Pepsi of pro wrestling.
Guest:Would you be interested in that?
Guest:Everyone said yes.
Guest:Then they showed me a marketing deck about what it means to be a challenger brand.
Guest:And the best examples they gave me were like Burger King.
Guest:What's their marketing?
Guest:A lot of it is like, hey, McDonald's sucks, guys.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's when people ask why I go out and talk about the competition and wrestling.
Guest:I mean, that's why, because it was handed down on high to me from the network.
Marc:So in terms of business, I mean, you're doing well.
Guest:Yeah, we're doing really well.
Marc:With WWE, is there an active rivalry?
Guest:Yeah, I think there is.
Guest:And week to week, it's very competitive, but we're a challenger brand, and I think nobody's come into the space and done as well as us taking on the industry leader for many, many years, for decades.
Marc:But when does that war become part of the Scripps?
Guest:Well, I mean, it's complete.
Guest:I think it's to some extent, I do think like, at least on our end, we try to acknowledge it.
Guest:That's like I said, the DNA of a challenger brand.
Guest:You have to acknowledge that there's another big player in the industry, but that we're a major player, too.
Guest:So a challenger brand is not the industry leader, but it's also not a niche brand.
Marc:But it seems like it's inevitable if you're going to honor the sport that you compete with them, like in an active way.
Guest:But that would require a cooperation that them as the dominant brand are not going to want.
Guest:Yeah, until they're hurting.
Guest:Well, I don't think that's really the case.
Guest:I think right now it's such a strong time for the wrestling business.
Guest:So, you know, who knows?
Guest:But it's something I would certainly be open to.
Guest:And I think it's an interesting thing for the future because it's not something that's ever really been done.
Guest:They've kind of existed in their own space.
Guest:We are working with a lot of wrestling promotions.
Guest:And at times they've done stuff like that.
Guest:But it would be a really interesting thing to see.
Marc:Because there's so many of the wrestlers have stories in both places, in both spaces.
Marc:And rivalries that are like, you know, decades old, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:But I think it's like same as, for example, now this is, I'll get killed for making this comparison.
Guest:So, you know, what I usually say is...
Guest:Pepsi and Coke, and I think you wouldn't really see them working together, just like I think it's like Marvel and DC.
Guest:Like, you know, you don't see those superheroes really crossing over very much and haven't seen that.
Guest:And probably I think there'd be a lot of jostling for who's going to be positioned stronger.
Guest:It would get very political.
Guest:And that's why typically these things exist in their own universes, and they try to build their own universe as they have, as they call it, or as I'd call it, maybe a galaxy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, something Mark wouldn't know about, though, is that you did this with New Japan Pro Wrestling and you had a pay-per-view in June of last year that, well, for my money, was a great show just as a show.
Guest:I know that it was difficult to put together just because of injuries and losing certain guys at certain times, but it does seem like it was a successful show to co-promote and you got...
Guest:guys from AEW to be victorious over guys from New Japan and vice versa.
Guest:And it did feel like a real kind of crossover, cooperative environment.
Guest:And I know that it's different with them being an international company.
Guest:And, you know, they're also trying to get a foothold here in America.
Guest:But it does show a kind of blueprint of how it can be done.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:That's a great point, Brendan.
Guest:And that now is a great example of two companies collaborating and coming together and that it really can be done because we worked with New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Guest:But again, that might be more akin to...
Guest:Pepsi and RC or, you know, Burger King and Subway coming together, Burger King and Arby's or something like that.
Guest:Because I think there's one player in the industry fighting against a lot of different players.
Guest:We've came together, put a show together that a lot of people thought was the best wrestling show of the entire year.
Guest:And it's won a lot of the polls already for the 2022 show of the year was when AEW and New Japan
Marc:What'll happen is eventually WWE will want to engage because they need the juice.
Marc:I don't know if they need that.
Marc:Not now.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:If you keep doing this, eventually they'll be like, fuck you.
Guest:I hope, man.
Guest:That would be really cool.
Guest:But on the other hand, it's been all these years, and I don't know if you'll ever see Pepsi and Coke doing anything together, not to keep making that comparison, but it's like...
Marc:Yeah, but the truth of the matter is that there are Pepsi people and there are Coke people.
Marc:There's only one wrestling people.
Guest:That's not true.
Guest:No, there really are camps.
Guest:It's really for real.
Guest:Tribal?
Guest:Oh, yeah, big time.
Guest:It's so tribal.
Guest:It's funny you say that word, too, because that's the word they use to describe it.
Guest:It's very intense rivalry, and there are people who watch both, but there's a lot of people that are very loyal, like a sport where it's like a fan of the team.
Guest:team well what i would say it's for me i was a so i'm very much like tony in that i got into this as a kid and so for me it's not a tribal thing i god bless wwe i grew up on it i love it it's been in my heart but i don't watch it anymore it's just not for me and so like when you talk about is there coke and pepsi people like i would be like i'm a pepsi guy and it's like no no offense to coke people but i don't like the taste of it
Guest:It would be the same thing for me with AEW and WWE.
Guest:I don't dislike anybody for watching it.
Guest:It's wrestling, but I'm not going to watch it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I do feel like there are a whole tribe of Coca-Cola drinkers who really hate those Pepsi people.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:I mean, that's like there's going to be people at war until the end of time because they don't like the thing the other person likes.
Guest:Yeah, or they have to not like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I really love all pro wrestling.
Guest:And no matter what company it is, we respect the people who come in.
Guest:And if people wear shirts from a different wrestling company, you know, that's cool.
Guest:I have no problem with that.
Guest:So let the audience handle it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's interesting, though, because sometimes there have been cases where promotions do.
Guest:I mean, it's not just WWE would be back in like, you know, WCW days like they would make people take off.
Guest:Steve Austin shirts if they were on WCW Nitro or whatever.
Guest:They don't want to advertise the competing brand.
Guest:For me, I'm getting older in my years.
Guest:I don't have time to worry about fights over wrestling.
Guest:I just want to watch the show that I want, which is why I, you know, I could have introduced Mark to wrestling in any way.
Guest:We could have went back and watched old Ric Flair matches or something.
Guest:But what I wanted him to watch was what I was engaged with now.
Guest:And I was I'm engaged with this product because it's telling good stories.
Guest:Thank you so much, Brendan.
Guest:That's awesome, man.
Marc:And when you conceived of these of the dynamite stories.
Marc:So you didn't have any wrestlers in mind, and now you have how many wrestlers at any given time?
Guest:Oh, dozens of wrestlers across both shows.
Guest:Dynamite, we have a second show now on TNT on Fridays called Rampage.
Guest:So we have two shows, and we have dozens of wrestlers, men and women, now across both shows.
Guest:The roster is much bigger now, in part because we have more programming than we started.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We started with two hours on TNT.
Guest:Now we have two hours on TBS plus one hour on TNT.
Guest:And we have quarterly specials on TNT.
Guest:We had four big pay-per-views.
Guest:And I'm trying not to oversaturate the pay-per-view market.
Guest:We still have those big four pay-per-views.
Guest:And we added a fifth, which is, like Brendan said, the partnership with New Japan, the Forbidden Door, we call it, where we go through the Forbidden Door is the name of that show and fight each other.
Guest:And who does all the writing?
Guest:I put the matches together, and I try to work with all the different wrestlers to put their stories together.
Guest:So I don't hand them scripts.
Guest:I think that's one of the things that makes the two shows really different.
Guest:There's writers, including people you know.
Guest:A lot of people that are names in Hollywood have written for WWE, and it's great.
Guest:And I think, like Brennan said, it's just a different feel of show because you're more likely to get handed a script.
Guest:When Chris Jericho, who you just talked to earlier today, came to AEW, he told me, he was saying, this is really trippy because I haven't done an interview without a script in 20 years.
Guest:And all I was giving him is the bullet points.
Guest:It's like, look, here's who you're wrestling.
Guest:Here's the date and time.
Guest:I think we know there's been an issue.
Guest:There's a brawl here, but we're building to this big match.
Guest:At the time, it was Chris versus Hangman Page that summer in 2019.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were fighting to be the first ever AEW world champion and just kind of setting up the story of it.
Guest:And Chris really did a lot of digging into his own psyche and use his own words.
Guest:Because I think one of the things you hear in wrestling interviews when they're completely scripted for the wrestler word for word is people using words, vocabulary that they would never use themselves.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they may not be very good actors.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, sure.
Guest:There's that, too.
Guest:I think wrestlers have great acting chops, really.
Guest:In a different style.
Guest:It's like an improv style.
Guest:Let's say curb your enthusiasm or a lot of things, I think, where there's an outline, and then you're able to use yourself.
Guest:your own words as opposed to somebody telling you.
Guest:And so I would much rather give somebody an outline because I know that when I grew up, I feel like the wrestlers had more freedom to give their own interviews.
Guest:And it was, you know, you heard people speaking in their own words more freely than today.
Guest:And I believe in the late 90s into the early 2000s, they got into a habit of scripting.
Guest:So I still put outlines together, but I really want the wrestlers to feel good about what they're saying and believe what they're saying.
Guest:So that's why we do it that way.
Guest:Well, when you used to do these scripts for, I'm gathering when you're saying scripts, you mean for like eFeds, right?
Guest:My friends and I, it wasn't as much, it was sort of, yeah, we would like kind of draft up the world of wrestlers.
Guest:Sometimes we would change up what it was.
Guest:Sometimes it could be anybody from any era or it would just be present day.
Guest:but um that was the idea we would draft out and each build our own federation our own company and we would write shows right and mine was always dynamite and it was on different nights now it's like in real life it's wednesday night dynamite yeah and uh i came up with it when i was 12 years old because it rhymed with with night so it was a it was a cool title and you know never in my wildest dreams did i think it would be a real show that's on every week on tbs but
Guest:But that's some reps.
Guest:Like, it's funny, because we had Chris in here talking about, you know, paying his dues and getting his reps in Japan, in Mexico, in, you know, northern territories and that.
Guest:And, you know, there's no...
Guest:There's no training for being a wrestling promoter other than just doing it.
Guest:And so here you are in a world where there is no secondary national wrestling promotion.
Guest:You're creating it from scratch.
Guest:The only reps you have at your advantage are, you know, things you wrote for fantasy purposes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which would be, you know, the only thing available to you at the time.
Guest:But that's no crazier, I think, than a lot of people in Hollywood.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who just wrote stuff in their own home and worked their way up.
Guest:And so I think it's like to me, it's a very different situation because in wrestling.
Guest:You know, it's not just one person building their own act, building their own repertoire and starting their own career.
Guest:You need to build it and really launch a lot of careers all at the same time.
Guest:And it's like starting a sporting league and like starting almost like a Broadway show where a cast, but also people fighting for the spots.
Guest:So it's competitive for the spots, but it's also a sporting enterprise, like a team.
Guest:So I think it's a combination of the two.
Guest:So, I mean, it was really, like you said, it was the only reps available.
Guest:But really, I didn't become more hands-on until really the second year.
Guest:And it was really at the end of 2019, I decided to get much more involved.
Guest:I was already kind of overseeing a creative process, but I really became a lot more hands-on with it going into 2020.
Guest:So it was Christmas 2019.
Guest:I was kicking myself because I really didn't like –
Guest:The way the show went the week before, and I really didn't like the rating and I felt like we could do better.
Guest:And I just wanted to hold myself and everyone accountable.
Guest:And so did you think it was that it needed there needed to be a consistency to it?
Guest:There was continuity problems and there was a sense of things that it just needed to flow through one person.
Guest:And then that one person was going to be you because that's where the buck stopped.
Guest:I do think there's some of that, but I do think I just felt like, yeah, I could put together, and it was going to be good for everybody because I thought that I could put together a better flow and get the shows going into 2020 could be stronger, sharper, and that building to the first revolution pay-per-view, I really believed we had this great opportunity because we had great ideas and stories in place.
Guest:Like you said, we were not far off at the end of 2019.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we had great interest, but I felt I didn't like the direction we were heading at the end of 2019.
Guest:And I felt like, look, 2020, this is a great opportunity.
Guest:And to this day, the shows that we did at the start of 2020, people still talk about that as one of the strongest periods because I think we came back January 1st with a renewed sense of energy.
Guest:I haven't had a Wednesday off since Christmas 2019.
Guest:But then the COVID hit.
Guest:And then the COVID hit.
Guest:And that was really interesting because fans at the time were saying, God, AEW just got all this momentum.
Guest:They had really at the start of 2020, they did their best shows.
Guest:And the company's in such a hot period.
Guest:What are they going to do?
Guest:It ended up becoming – you don't look like a Star Trek guy to me.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah, you're not a Star Trek guy.
Marc:Don't stop the flow, though.
Guest:Do you want to be given – I've said this – Brendan, you look like more of a Star Trek guy to me.
Guest:In a way, yes.
Guest:Okay, good.
Guest:I am also, although I don't know if I look at it.
Guest:I might.
Guest:But so there's like this –
Guest:analogy or comparison I've given before, where there's a moment where in Star Trek, Captain Kirk's ship is really beat up, the Enterprise, and they're outgunned, and their ship is a lot more depleted than their opponent's ship, Khan, in the Wrath of Khan.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:In Star Trek II.
Guest:And so he steers the ship into the nebula where it's a much more uncertain thing.
Guest:Nobody's viewing.
Guest:Nobody's scanning.
Guest:None of it's going to work.
Guest:It's the same level playing field in a lot of ways.
Guest:And that's what the pandemic was because we were not as big of a company at that point.
Guest:But really the pandemic allowed us a level playing field to put on shows in a lockdown environment.
Guest:So neither wrestling company really stopped.
Guest:We kept doing shows.
Guest:And I made it completely voluntary.
Guest:for everybody to come in.
Guest:So we only had the first week, maybe half the roster.
Guest:And then by week three, we only had 29% of the wrestlers there.
Guest:What I did is I set it up at first for the first few months.
Guest:Our shows were different.
Guest:And I think they were better because there were, you know, as opposed to being in a completely empty environment, I took the wrestlers either that were not participating in matches and in a lot of cases out of work, independent wrestlers that couldn't get any work because there was no independent wrestling.
Guest:The only wrestling was TV wrestling.
Guest:The whole indie scene, all the live shows shut down.
Guest:All there was was TV studio wrestling.
Guest:And the only three sports or sporting shows really that kept going were AEW, WWE, and UFC.
Guest:But I think you guys probably were a boon to the respective networks that you were signed with at that time who were hurting for any kind of production.
Guest:There's no sports.
Guest:Live production, too.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they've got they know that even when stuff gets back to production unscripted, it was going to take time to ramp up the content.
Guest:So they had you guys going every week for what was a very dire time.
Guest:We never stopped.
Guest:And it was like to this day, people all over the world, especially in places where there were strong lockdowns in Canada or even here in California, but especially in Canada and England.
Guest:so many people come up to me all the time and say and come up to the wrestlers all the time and they still talk about like you got me through the pandemic like you got my family through the i notice your your performers wear it as a badge of honor like i'm noticing it more and more on the air too like that it'll come up in promos and around character that you know you have certain characters saying like i was here during the pandemic i was i stay i fought every week or whatever and
Guest:And I don't take it lately.
Guest:Like, I think they really feel like, hey, that was an important time for my growth as a performer.
Marc:It was also an important time for an audience.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, if you were out doing anything, that's where that Instagram Live stuff started to happen is that people were so needing to engage with something happening in the present that wasn't horrible.
Yeah.
Marc:And it made a big difference.
Marc:Right.
Marc:In their lives.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, just to to sort of like it was it gave them hope somehow that, you know, it was going to be OK that people were working that, you know, somebody had the the courage to sort of like, you know, just do it.
Guest:Well, we tried to do it safe, and we really did do it safe.
Guest:We came back with a bubble, so we tested everybody coming into the show as far as all the wrestlers.
Guest:And, you know, the couple times, very rarely, couple times where people did show up, we'd send them home and quarantine them, like put them, you know, either in their car or where they weren't going to expose anybody else and tested people before they came into the production bubble where we would shoot the shows.
Guest:But then when it was time to get fans back, we were the first people to bring fans back safely because we were outdoors.
Guest:And my thought was like the drive in movie theater was back.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so I thought we could bring that to pro wrestling.
Guest:My first idea was like, should we actually do a drive in show?
Guest:But then I realized we have the outdoor amphitheater.
Guest:We could just space it out.
Guest:And then that's really what became the standard for sports was the socially distant show, the outdoor show where people do 25 percent capacity.
Guest:And basically you, your family or friends, you come and you get.
Guest:the whole section of seats is just you and there's nobody around you, behind you or in front of you.
Guest:And that became the standard.
Guest:I mean, literally, the Jaguars and the Chiefs were the only teams in the NFL that had that the first two weeks.
Guest:Our team, the Jaguars, we really took that model from AEW and both
Guest:In football with Jags and with AEW, we had zero known COVID transmissions from doing this because it was outdoors.
Guest:You were in your own bubble, effectively.
Guest:And so it really brought the energy and the fans back.
Guest:And that was also really cool.
Guest:So some of our best memories and some of our most important memories were made there.
Guest:And really, the most important show we did, there's a wrestler.
Guest:I don't know if you're familiar if you guys talked about this.
Guest:The best show we ever did, the most important show we ever did, and the hardest show we ever did was around New Year's Eve 2020.
Guest:It was December 30th, 2020, actually.
Guest:It was a tribute show to the late, great Brody Lee, who got sick very suddenly.
Guest:It was not COVID.
Guest:It was another illness, and he got sick daily.
Guest:around that time and it happened very suddenly and he passed and uh we try to honor his memory and his legacy to this day and that's why brendan you'd say it's wednesday you know what that means and we did a tribute show to him and like i said it was the hardest show we've ever done but it was also the best and most important show we've ever done because we got to show the world really i think everybody who had a tribute message about him that day saw
Guest:that there's two things everybody said about John, Brody Lee, his real name's John, and his family, John Huber, and his wife Amanda and his sons, Brody and Nolan, are still a part of the show.
Guest:The two things everybody would say about Brody are, this guy loved his family, and he loved wrestling.
Guest:And I like, you know, but like really, like if you knew him, that's so true.
Guest:There's nobody, you know, he really loved his family so much.
Guest:He loved wrestling.
Guest:He was such a great guy.
Guest:And I feel like we really did a great job presenting that in about as good of a way as you could, but still in the context of a wrestling show with wrestling matches and good and bad.
Guest:And it had a story and a flow.
Guest:And then we showed a tribute at the end of the show.
Guest:and i had tried to get the right his friends called him big rig and brody and i had asked tom waits for the if we could get the rights to old 55 for a reasonable sum and he agreed for a reasonable sum very quickly and that became uh the song that's associated with him and we put a tribute video together set to old 55 by tom waits and that's how we ended the show with his family and showed them and
Guest:Everybody a tribute with a lot of photos of him and memories and people, not just people in AEW, people in WWE are all over wrestling, retired wrestlers.
Guest:And so that's probably the best show we did.
Guest:And I think in the pandemic, that's also the most important and the hardest show.
Guest:Well, it's something I was talking to Mark about throughout us watching it.
Guest:You know, he'd bring something up and I'd say, well, you have to understand, you know, the background of wrestling is like fairly disreputable.
Guest:There's like it comes from a carny tradition and there's a lot of hucksterism that has gone on through, you know.
Guest:And stuff Mark understands as a touring comedian and person in clubs and, you know, you deal with lousy promoters and this and that.
Guest:But people thought very highly of that show as a kind of turning point for wrestling, dealing with the performers as people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that, you know, you're going to have someone that is part of your family as a as a company and.
Guest:and they die in tragic circumstances.
Guest:This is a standard of how to present that.
Guest:And I do think that that's not important just for a wrestling company.
Guest:That's important for a company.
Guest:You work somewhere, that's what you want.
Guest:You want to know you're valued in that way.
Guest:And fans who watch it can read that and can receive that.
Guest:I think if you're talking about it from your own personal perspective, it's important.
Guest:But I think it was important for fans watching to see
Guest:I can get behind this company.
Guest:I feel okay about this company because they handled it this way.
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:Well, I appreciate you saying that, man.
Guest:It was a great show, but never wanted to have to do it.
Guest:But I'm glad that we did the best thing we could to pay tribute to a great guy.
Guest:Well, I have a couple nerdy questions for you.
Guest:And Mark, you can follow along here, but I know you're not going to know exactly what I'm talking about.
Guest:But but what I have noticed is in recent, I would say maybe the last several months, I'm a fan of the show all the time.
Guest:I never watch it and go, I don't want to watch the show.
Guest:I don't like the show, whatever.
Guest:I always like the show.
Guest:But what I have noticed lately is some real focus and cohesion of.
Guest:The kind of top line stories and they really kind of seem elegantly laid out.
Guest:And I wonder what you would attribute that to for yourself.
Guest:If you agree or disagree.
Guest:I agree.
Guest:If you agree, then do you feel that since you're the guy at the helm of most of this, is there something that you like?
Guest:I just feel like it's a creative question.
Guest:How do you feel?
Guest:Find your juices so that all of a sudden these things are popping as stories and feeling really coherent and focused.
Guest:Well, I have an answer, and sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
Guest:There's no cameras in here, right?
Guest:No.
Guest:There's no cameras.
Guest:What I'd like to show you, I'll cover it up so you don't see anything for the future, but I'll show you what I've been doing since Full Gear a little differently.
Guest:Because I think we were on a really strong run going into full gear.
Guest:So I started doing something a little differently going in and coming out of full gear.
Guest:And it's the same thing I was doing, but it's maybe a little more cohesive on a macro level.
Guest:And so I can show you actually, because it's what I was doing before.
Guest:But I've never put it all in one place.
Guest:You know, the biggest thing, before I go and pull out some of my notes to show you, would be that we haven't had this stable of a roster.
Guest:We were dealing with, like, a major injury or crisis every other week through the summer.
Guest:And there was a period, the last time I was here for the LA Forum, in that week, the attrition of that week.
Guest:Talk about unbelievable.
Guest:I mean, in the span of a week, we had Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, and CM Punk all injured and...
Guest:MJF walked out of the show.
Guest:All of these major incidents.
Guest:And then through the summer, I was really proud of what we were able to do week to week with some uncertainty.
Guest:And then Adam Cole came back but was injured again.
Guest:CM Punk ended up coming back but was injured again.
Guest:Bryan Danielson came back but has been a fixture in the show.
Guest:And that's been huge.
Guest:To helping us build that consistency, having Bryan Danielson there week to week, MJF coming back, obviously that's hugely important.
Guest:But Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, and so many people up and down the roster helped us keep that kind of consistency where we still did great numbers and were very competitive through the summer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now we've had really a stable roster for the last several months.
Guest:And I think that's really helped us from Grand Slam coming out of All Out.
Guest:We had a great Grand Slam and had a lot of great shows since then.
Guest:And then Full Gear was one of our best pay-per-views.
Guest:I think every Full Gear, it's four for four.
Guest:They've all been great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then since Full Gear, it's probably been the most stable run of TV and maybe the best run of TV since the original revolution that I was talking about at the start of 2020.
Guest:That was probably the last time where I strapped down and said, like, I need to get organized and made a major change as big as the one I'll show you.
Guest:So I don't and if you the stuff you read, I would appreciate it.
Guest:I'm going to cover the future.
Guest:But if you see just a bit of what's on here.
Guest:So I had a process.
Guest:I already had kind of a schedule of what I had planned week to week in different stories, different wrestlers, different matches or segments.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And at some point, like, I just kind of inverted it.
Guest:I realized, like, I should tip this over.
Guest:And instead of looking at the dates and building it out, I kind of flipped what the columns were and what the rows were and put the columns where the rows were.
Guest:And now I organize everything like this since full gear.
Guest:And I feel like I'm more organized, even though it's all the same information.
Guest:It's just looking at it differently.
Guest:And it really helps me.
Guest:So without giving anything away, and it doesn't seem like you are here, but just to kind of explain this, it looks like you're basically, the focus on this top column are your stars.
Guest:And the stories.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so you're able to, it's not just you're plugging in, here's what we're going to do, this date, this date, this date.
Guest:You're able to see the progression of the story on the chart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's like a mini storyboard.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:And and I already was doing that and we already had that.
Guest:But I kind of had it the other way.
Guest:And like where it was looking at the shows and I had where the columns were now here were the different wrestlers and different stories.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But for some reason, I don't know why it shouldn't make that big of a difference flipping it like flow.
Guest:It's the flow working down the page like this.
Guest:It looks a lot better.
Guest:It works a lot better.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's basically the same thing I was doing, but it just kind of, uh, like I said, flip the page around and it's helped me be even more organized.
Guest:I think with our shows, cause we had a great year of shows, but really, like you said, I think the last few months it's been better than ever.
Guest:So I attribute that to the great performance of the wrestlers mostly and the fans and the great fans coming to the shows.
Guest:But also I think, uh,
Guest:A lot of it in part has been we've been able to help the flow of the show in recent months by having a stable roster of wrestlers.
Guest:And that's probably most of all.
Guest:But then some small part I would attribute to being a little differently organized and having a different look at how to flow the show.
Guest:It's very funny, though, for anybody who's listening to this, that it is really just a piece of paper.
Guest:It's basically how you would do it if you were a kid running a wrestling league with your friends.
Guest:You would write it down, and it still makes sense.
Guest:The other thing is I would wonder too, obviously, it's a collaborative business and you are the person at the helm of it right now, but you're working with talent who all have their own ideas, but you also work with, I don't know what you guys call them within your company, whether they're agents or producers, but I would think that usually the role of a producer or agent is an ex-wrestler, an experienced veteran wrestler who can help with match layout and
Guest:right and and work with the talent that way yeah i wonder if that is helping them as well that they know week to week you know of having a more focused and like you're saying with the talent healthy and the same guys being able to perform week in week out it kind of it's like all things flow downstream and you're able to have a more cohesive product in the end because everybody winds up getting on that same focused page
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:We have a great group of producers and coaches and it's only gotten stronger.
Guest:We've had really most of them have been with us.
Guest:Most of the people we started with are still with us and we've added a lot of great coaches along the way, especially since we added another TV show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we beefed up the team and yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Having them and their experience, you know, mostly being former wrestlers and having that experience, they can help the other wrestlers put together a great match and figure out where to put the
Guest:put the moves and put the story to help it all flow, knowing where we need to get to get to the big match, to get to the next step.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, Mark, this is going to be his first live event tomorrow.
Guest:Are you a personality on the air?
Guest:Not very rarely.
Guest:And when I am, I'm more of a device.
Guest:Because I am the president and the CEO.
Guest:You're more that you're acknowledged by the talent and by the announcers.
Guest:They'll say, this match was made by Tony Khan.
Guest:But, you know, it's not Vince McMahon who was a character on the show.
Guest:None of that.
Guest:We've done like 170 episodes of Dynamite and about 75 episodes of Rampage.
Guest:And so across about 245 TV shows, I think I've shown up five times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And every time it was like to make a major announcement.
Guest:So when I do show up, it's usually a big thing.
Guest:And so I try to keep it brief and not be out there talking all day.
Guest:And also it sets a good example because I'm also the timekeeper backstage.
Guest:And I hold people accountable to time as you are very familiar in the world of comedy.
Guest:And people have to hit their times for the show to flow and everyone to – and really it's –
Guest:To some extent, it's not only about respecting the company that's putting the show on and the producers.
Guest:It's about the fans and them getting to see all the matches they want to see and also for your fellow performers, your fellow comedians.
Guest:Everyone's got to hit their times.
Guest:And for wrestling, everyone's got to hit their times, what they get.
Guest:And so I think it's important.
Guest:But as the timekeeper, if I go out there and give myself a time, I usually try to keep it light to set a good example.
Guest:Like, hey, I'm going to get in, get out.
Guest:And so you can go out and focus on the wrestling.
Guest:People don't want to see me out here all day.
Guest:I'm going to make the announcement and go.
Guest:Well, you know, I have a theory.
Guest:I wonder if you agree that I think it would be very hard for you to be a character week in, week out, unless you completely changed the nature of the company.
Guest:Because AEW is a babyface company.
Guest:I don't know if you think of it that way, but I do as a fan where you're watching, you feel like the company is on your side trying to present you the best matches and here's a good show.
Guest:And so the company is a baby face and that's why you have people chanting AEW, AEW in the crowd.
Guest:It's just like ECW is a baby face promotion.
Guest:But WWE or specifically WWF, when Vince became a character, the whole idea was the promotion was the heel.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Steve Austin, who was the most popular character, was the antihero.
Guest:And he was fighting his boss on television every week.
Guest:And so you needed that character and you need that character to be a heel.
Guest:And so if you came out every week, I think you would have to fundamentally change what the promotion was, which I don't think you want to.
Guest:I completely agree with that, and I think that's true, and that's another reason why I don't want to be out there, and I'd rather keep the focus on the wrestling matches and the wrestlers.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:So what were you going to say about me tomorrow?
Guest:Oh, well, I was going to say this is Mark's first event, and I guess, you know, my feeling is I just kind of want him to, like—
Guest:take it all in.
Guest:But I'm just interested for you as a guy who runs the company, who writes the show, is going to present this tomorrow at the LA Forum.
Guest:For someone like Mark that it's his first time, what do you want him to take away from this?
Guest:Oh, I think you're going to have a great time.
Guest:This is an awesome show to have you be your first show.
Guest:And I think that's, you know, you're going to see some great matches.
Guest:The engagement with the fans, I think you'll, you know, for somebody who professionally engages with live fans on a weekly basis like yourself and has been doing it for decades.
Guest:And I've been watching you do it for decades.
Guest:I know that you'll have a great appreciation.
Guest:for the connection that the wrestlers have with this audience.
Guest:And when you see at the forum how many fans turn up and also all the specific things they know, like the specific callbacks and moments, it's amazing the recollection and the recall.
Guest:And it's kind of, to some extent, working in English football, when people go for the first time, they don't necessarily understand it and they don't necessarily...
Guest:even know the chants the fans are doing or the connection the fans in England have with the football matches.
Guest:But you can say, wow, these people are so into it and connect with it.
Guest:And then it makes you want to learn and become a part of it.
Guest:And I do think that's what we have with our audience.
Guest:When we're watching it on TV, both of us, we start laughing anytime there's something that's deliberately done to pop the crowd or get a big reaction.
Guest:And then there's just reaction shots of fans.
Guest:And I'm a wrestling fan for 35 years.
Guest:And I'm like, I still love that.
Guest:I still love when you see somebody just react genuinely to it.
Guest:And on a macro level, when you see the whole place come unglued for a moment, I mean, there's nothing better.
Marc:All right, great.
Marc:Well, I'm looking forward to it.
Marc:It's good talking to you, man.
Marc:You too.
Marc:Thanks for having me in your home.
Marc:You bet.
Marc:Thanks for coming.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:I can't wait to see you tomorrow.
Marc:That was informative and exciting.
Marc:I got pretty excited.
Marc:So this is what happened the day before we went to the AEW Dynamite show.
Marc:Like the next day, we were at the Forum, and that's me at a wrestling event for the first time.
Marc:We'll play that next week, and that features talks with wrestlers MJF, Eddie Kingston, and Colt Cabana, plus referee Bryce Remsburg.
Marc:Everyone was hanging out.
Marc:Everyone was hanging out.
Marc:It was real show business.