Tony Khan believes a behind-the-scenes creative shift late last year has played a major role in AEW’s more focused storytelling throughout 2025.
Speaking with The Takedown at SI.com, the AEW President acknowledged that he became “too collaborative” with the company’s creative process in recent years, allowing too many voices to influence the overall direction and weekly outlines of the shows.
That approach changed toward the end of 2024, when Khan decided to personally handle the outlines himself in a move he compared to when he tightened creative control heading into 2020.
“Since you asked about the focus and some of the stories and putting the TV shows together, yeah, I definitely felt like I had had a good approach that I’d refined in 2020, and trying to be good, trying to listen and be collaborative,” Khan said. “I think I had gotten too collaborative, and it was kind of the same mistake I made at the beginning.”
Khan explained that the turning point came when he opted to streamline the process entirely, removing multiple meetings and consolidating creative responsibility under one vision.
“And it really helped in the end of 2024, going into 2025, I just said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna put the outline for everything together myself. I’m gonna eliminate the meetings between shows, and I will put everything together myself between shows. And then I’ll come in with the outline of what I want, rather than have a lot of collaborative meetings where everybody chimes in what they think we should be doing,’” Khan said.
While Khan was clear that collaboration remains a core part of AEW’s identity, he emphasized that too many layers can dilute focus. In his view, the strongest collaboration happens directly between him and the wrestlers.
Not through multiple intermediaries.
“I don’t want to describe ever being collaborative is a bad thing, because the whole thing that makes AEW great is collaboration,” Khan said. “But the collaboration should probably, at its best, be between me and the wrestlers, and working to find the best path, and not having a lot of people in the middle of that.”
He added that while many contributors are essential once a show’s direction is established, assembling the initial outline doesn’t require a large group.
“There are tons of contributions to a wrestling show, within a show, that can be found in terms of character work, or once the outline is passed down, implementing that outline,” Khan said. “But assembling the outline for the show, I’ve learned, doesn’t necessarily need a lot of people involved.”
Khan has repeatedly described 2025 as the best year in AEW’s history. The company is set to present Worlds End 2025 this weekend before closing out the year with the December 31 episode of AEW Dynamite.
