Tony Khan Says AEW Has Better Wrestlers Than WWE NXT

AEW President and CEO Tony Khan recently spoke with The Los Angeles Times to promote tonight's AEW Dynamite premiere on TNT, which will go head-to-head with WWE NXT on the USA Network.

Khan remains confident about a potential "Wednesday Night War" with WWE and said AEW is just better as far as the roster goes.

"The AEW roster has much bigger stars and better wrestlers frankly than the NXT roster," Khan said. "The AEW shows are going to be in major arenas instead of a smaller building in front of a few hundred people. But I think it's a good competition for us. It attracts more fans to the idea of the Wednesday night wars. I think the most compelling story in wrestling these days in many ways is AEW vs. WWE. Fans see the competition between wrestling companies, which is the one thing traditionally everyone has known is real.

"People can question the validity of other things, including stuff you and I know is real stuff but other people think is wrestling trickery. The one thing I think everyone knows in real life is these companies don't like each other and they want to stop each other from getting viewers and want to get the most market share they can possibly get for themselves. That realism to me was one of the driving forces of the resurgence of wrestling in the mid-90s and then led to the decline of the wrestling business after that competition ceased."

Khan also spoke about Jon Moxley joining AEW after his run with WWE as Dean Ambrose. Khan said he wasn't counting on Moxley being available.

"That was the one part I didn't account for," Khan said of Moxley. "Most of what we're doing is stuff I could have planned ahead for. But that was the one element I had no idea. People ask me is this what I envisioned and I say yeah but the big part that changed the show and took that show from an A to an A+ was Jon. We had no idea that [Jon was going to be available]. It was one of the most fortunate breaks that's ever happened to me in my life."

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