AEW has been on TNT with Dynamite for one year now and most of that time, they have been producing live television amid a global pandemic.
Speaking with Variety in a retrospective article celebrating their one year anniversary, AEW President and CEO, Tony Khan commented on making the decision to forge ahead and how that has changed moving forward.
“After the first two weeks of the pandemic, as our roster started to thin out, what happened was we were forced to do shows with less than 30% of our wrestling roster available to us,” says Tony Khan, AEW’s president and CEO. “And I’m actually proud of those shows as I am of anything because they kept us going.”
“I wanted to film shows to keep the storylines moving so that we could build a testing plan,” he continues. “I always believed that, as we’ve shown, a safe testing plan could be implemented. I didn’t know how long it was going to take to design and get all the tests we would need and get it all set up. But it came together in about a month.”
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So far, so good. In the article, WarnerMedia executives commended AEW for their continuation and commitment to content throughout this pandemic.
“I think where the rubber really met the road was during when COVID hit and watching Tony really pivot and grow,” says Brett Weitz, general manager of TBS, TNT, and truTV. “And he was able to keep those storylines going and put so many great things together, even through a global pandemic, and that tells you everything you need to know about the DNA of that brand and that guy as a producer.”
Next week, the show will be live with a small group of fans to celebrate Chris Jericho’s 30th year in wrestling.
