Sonjay Dutt Discusses His Relationship With Tony Khan, Expanded Role In AEW

On a recent edition of The Sessions with Renee Paquette, AEW producer Sonjay Dutt discussed the AEW team, working with Tony Khan, and their similar background as children of immigrants. You can see some excerpts below:

On the main AEW production team: “I don’t think that Tony has like a ‘right-hand man.’ We’re kind of a team. Me, QT, Tony Schiavone, Pat Buck. We figured out a great way to work with each other and complement each other. Tony knows what all our strengths are so he leans on us for those things. Obviously Tony’s the man when it comes to booking the shows and having that long term vision. Altogether, we’re just a great team.”

On his experience as a producer leading to his expanded role in AEW: “A lot of people don’t realize that I came to AEW to do basically one job as a producer. In wrestling, you have a TV producer. Then when I put the headset on, I’m a wrestling producer. They said “hey, we’ve got enough wrestling producers, can you please help us backstage?” “Sonjay, you have formatted time and written television, take a look at this.” Just stuff like that. I did that at Impact, so boom I came in to help the pre-tape process and backstage elements at the show and then three-six months later I’m sitting in Tony’s office all day.”

On Tony Khan being his favourite billionaire: “I always tell people I’ve worked with a bunch of billionaires at this point. [Renee: “is he your favorite billionaire?”] Tony? One hundred percent, he’s my favorite billionaire of all time (laughs). I’ve worked with all these powerful people in wrestling, billionaires. Maybe it helps that we’re the same age, we’re six months apart. We have a similar background, his dad’s a Pakistani immigrant that came here, my parents are Indian immigrants, there’s a relation there.”

On speaking Punjabi with Shad Khan: “It’s funny, when I first met Shad, I would just speak Punjabi with him all the time. I feel like those kind of things brought us a little closer. It just blossomed. I love working with Tony, because he is just so approachable. He’s just like a cool dude.”

If you use any of the above quotations, please credit The Sessions h/t 411mania.com for the transcription