AEW President, CEO, General Manager & Head Of Creative Tony Khan appeared on “My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox” this week and discussed WWE vs. AEW programming.
As noted, Friday’s live Supersized SmackDown on FS1 at 8pm ET will run for 2 hours and 30 minutes, with the final 30 minutes running commercial-free, head-to-head with the beginning of AEW Rampage on TNT. SmackDown will feature Brock Lesnar, SmackDown Women’s Champion Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks in a non-title match, Carmella vs. Zelina Vega in a Queen’s Crown semi-finals match, Finn Balor vs. Sami Zayn in a King of the Ring semi-finals match, plus the final blue brand build for Crown Jewel. The live Rampage will have a one-hour “The Buy In” pre-show lead-in at 9pm ET on the AEW YouTube channel, featuring Bobby Fish vs. Lee Moriarty plus Minoru Suzuki vs. Bryan Danielson. The Rampage broadcast at 10pm will then have CM Punk vs. Matt Sydal, The Bunny vs. Ruby Soho, plus Chris Jericho, TNT Champion Sammy Guevara and Jake Hager vs. Scorpio Sky, Ethan Page, and former UFC Heavyweight Champion Junior Dos Santos.
Khan spoke with Fox this week and pointed to the last time the two companies went up against each other.
“It’s the second time they’ve chosen to put their wrestling head-to-head with mine. The last time they did it, it didn’t happen overnight, but really from the start AEW consistently did better numbers than NXT, and we won that war. AEW is now the Wednesday night show,” he said.
While the SmackDown extension is for one week only, Khan is competing with the blue brand to be the top wrestling show on cable this Friday as far as he’s concerned.
“I want Rampage to be just as big as Dynamite in time. Dynamite has consistently been number one,” Khan said. “My goal is for this show to be the top cable show. If they’re going to do a show on cable, that’s great. We’re competing for that.”
Khan continued and reiterated that he is confident in AEW putting on the better pro wrestling show. He commented on how this week’s RAW, which was not a go-home show for any major WWE dual-brand event, and said it sucked.
“We’ll see what happens. I’m not saying for sure we’ll win, and maybe the odds are against us in some ways,” Khan said. “But we’re going to give a better show. I know. If you don’t believe me, watch the go-home show they did last night, because it sucked.”
Fox then jokingly encouraged Khan to “talk his shit” and Khan double down on what he thought about this week’s RAW.
“Am I? Did you watch it?” Khan responded.
Stay tuned for more on this week’s SmackDown and Rampage shows.
(H/T to WrestlingInc for the quotes)
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