Tony Khan has seen some pleasant surprises in AEW’s first year and talked a bit more in detail about various roster moves and how they’re portrayed in the constant battle of “good versus evil.”
Khan recently spoke with the PWTorch and reflected on All Elite Wrestling‘s first year, AEW Dark’s success as a developmental program, and more. During the conversation, Khan spoke about AEW’s roster changing since its inception noting they’ve added some big names and still have plans to add some key pieces.
“For a pleasant surprise I would that that I’ve been really pleasantly surprised how many great wrestlers we’ve added since we started because we had a great group when we started, and we did a big pay-per-view right off the bat with Double or Nothing at MGM Grand. And we did great shows over that first summer when we launched Dynamite, and we launched Dynamite with a really great roster, and we’ve added so many great people in the year since—the roster’s come so far. And it was really cool when I worked on the Casino Battle Royal at All Out because looking at that Casino Battle Royal versus the one that we did fifteen months earlier and just seeing how much better, how much deeper our roster was, that was really great and we’re still adding talent. I’ve got a lot of aces up the sleeve, as I’ve said.”
Speaking about the face/heel divide, Khan agreed that while it’s still an important aspect of professional wrestling, the ability to have tweener characters was still a valuable part of the AEW brand.
“I think that babyface and heel roles are very real, I think it is still an important aspect of the wrestling business, and I think in most of the matches you can kind of get a sense of if somebody is a babyface or if somebody is a heel. But a lot of times, like I said, there may be a match where somebody’s a flex and I think having people that are flexible and can portray different character traits is really valuable.”
Related: Tony Khan Says He Has More ‘Aces Up The Sleeve’, The Power Shift Has Begun
