For fans of AEW, many feel that 2025 saw a creative course change that returned it to what made the company so popular a few years ago. The promotion’s CEO, Tony Khan, believes it was due to a huge change to the creative process that he made earlier this year.
Over the last six years, AEW has grown into the undisputed No. 2 wrestling promotion in the world. They rose to prominence by delivering a more adult-driven product similar to WWE’s Attitude Era. For the first few years, they were hitting on all cylinders creatively.
However, in 2023 and 2024, storylines for the company became less impactful, and numbers started to dip for the product. It didn’t help that at the same time their top competitor, WWE, got red hot. Yet, in 2025, they have been able to bring back some fans that tuned out, and are primed for another strong year in 2026.
Tony Khan Net Worth: $1.5 billion
AEW boss Tony Khan seems to think the reason why is streamlining the creative process down to just being him, and him alone.
“I definitely felt like I had had a good approach that I’d refined in 2020, and trying to be good, trying to listen and be collaborative,” Khan told Sports Illustrated’s The Takedown. “I think I had gotten too collaborative, and it was kind of the same mistake I made at the beginning.”
“It really helped in the end of 2024, going into 2025, I just said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna put the outline for everything together myself. I’m gonna eliminate the meetings between shows, and I will put everything together myself between shows,” he added. “‘And then I’ll come in with the outline of what I want, rather than have a lot of collaborative meetings where everybody chimes in what they think we should be doing.'”
