Tony Khan recently spoke with Josh Martinez of Z100 for an in-depth interview covering all things All Elite Wrestling.
During the discussion, the AEW President spoke about Mercedes Mone’s outside bookings, how he thought AEW WrestleDream was one of the best shows since the pandemic, especially due to multiple top stars not being available to work the show, his mindset while booking AEW WrestleDream and how they “tried a lot of things” during the show.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts. Also embedded below is a complete video archive of the discussion.
On how he feels Mercedes Mone’s bookings outside of AEW show her love for wrestling: “With all the commitments Mercedes has taken on, I think it’s really impressive. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that shows it’s not about pure greed and money for Mercedes because a lot of these places she’s wrestling, Winnipeg, Canada, Denmark, they’re not the highest paying places. She’s not really making money from these. She loves wrestling. She loves building up companies, she loves meeting new young stars and she really cares about the craft and the sport of wrestling.”
On how he thought AEW WrestleDream was one of the best shows since the pandemic, especially due to multiple top stars not being available to work the show: “I absolutely loved the WrestleDream show, start to finish. And I thought we had such a great night and put so much great action in the show. And I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about WrestleDream. It’s one of my favorite AEW events ever, pound-for-pound, especially with some injuries and some top stars away. I thought this was the absolute best show we were capable of putting on. So I’m more proud of what we did at WrestleDream — probably at least since the pandemic of any show we’ve done.”
On his mindset booking AEW WrestleDream and how they “tried a lot of things” during the show: “Like I said, some of the top wrestling stars were away and I said, ‘I’m going to make this the best possible show and everyone’s going to say WrestleDream was the greatest event AEW could put on. And it’s going to be about the people who are here, and they’re going to love this event.’ And that’s how I felt at times in the lockdown, in the pandemic. If anybody wasn’t available, we would be creative, we would come up with the very best shows we could possibly put on in a unique environment. And that’s how I felt about WrestleDream. So we tried a lot of things at WrestleDream, and I really felt like it was very successful. I don’t think anybody had — to the best of my recollection, to the best of my knowledge — had ever had an event carry over [from pre-show into the PPV].”
For those who missed it, you can check out our complete AEW WrestleDream 2025 Results here at WrestlingHeadlines.com.
