The wrestling landscape has certainly changed ever since All Elite Wrestling was first announced. For a while AEW Dynamite and NXT were going head to head on Wednesday nights, but NXT has since moved to Tuesday nights.
Over the last few years people in wrestling have downplayed the idea of a war between the companies, but when WWE brought Becky Lynch and Brock Lesnar back shortly after CM Punk joined AEW there was a lot of talk about whether or not it was a reactionary move.
AEW President Tony Khan spoke about Becky Lynch and Brock Lesnar returning during an interview with DAZN, and he noted that AEW officials are focused on their own product.
“I can’t say for sure what’s on their minds. Summerslam is a big deal for those guys over there so maybe they had it long in their plans that it would be the place that Brock and Becky returned. We’ve got to keep doing what we’ve been doing so far and that’s trying to give people, our fans, the best possible wrestling product we can. That’s what drives us. We can’t base our product on what WWE are doing. How can that ever work?”
There have been rumors that AEW programming is on monitors backstage during WWE TV tapings, and a video of a WWE producer watching AEW during a NXT taping even surfaced online a few months ago. Tony Khan reacted to the rumors by saying he admires WWE for watching another show while running their own.
“Do they see us as rivals or competition? They say we’re not, but I’ve heard that AEW shows are on monitors in the Gorilla position over there, so I take that as a compliment if they’re watching us whilst trying to run their own show. I also admire them for that because trying to run a show whilst watching another show is something else. I put everything into producing our shows so there’s no way I’d be watching something else whilst trying to get on with things.”
