Tony Khan on Wanting to Make His Parents Proud, Says They Love AEW

– Busted Open Radio recently spoke to AEW President & Owner Tony Khan, who discussed his father Shahid Khan’s involvement in helping fund AEW and get it started. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Tony Khan on his relationship with his father funding AEW: “It’s a great relationship, he’s the best. In the end that was kind of where he left it. And it took a lot of fighting, a lot of business plans and a lot of presentations. He definitely didn’t just roll over and fund this project. I made a lot of cases, and after I saw I’d done the work that is where he left it. He still didn’t really believe it was going to work but he could see I put in the time and had a business plan, and had some ideas and made some connections. Definitely had made some progress. In the end he still didn’t really believe in it, but he did take a leap of faith and I’m so glad he did. And that was my dad. He really stole the show in that article. I thought that was really the highlight quote of the whole thing. It’s very fitting I think. I really enjoyed it.”

On wanting to make his parents proud: “I always want to make my dad proud and my parents proud. And they are. They love AEW. That makes me as proud as anything, because honestly, everybody listening to this show for the most part knows I love wrestling so much. And I’m sure so many of you have family members who have no patience for wrestling. If you’re listening to Busted Open, it probably means a lot to you. And you can’t get your family to stick around, stay in the room when you want to put wrestling on.

“One of the great things about AEW, for me, so many of my friends who never embraced wrestling have given AEW a chance and they like it. Because AEW hasn’t insulted their intelligence in some of the same ways, and they’ve found a lot of wrestlers in the company they’re compelled by. For my parents, I always joke around that they couldn’t sit through wrestling for five minutes. And now they know every little character on AEW. They know who Marko Stunt is. They wouldn’t sit through five minutes of wrestling until AEW. So I’m so proud it’s been successful and that I haven’t let them down.”