Meet All Elite Wrestling’s Tony Khan, The Next Lord Of The Ring

With his arms crossed against a black Jacksonville Jaguars polo shirt and his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, Tony Khan wore a mischievous but hardly intimidating grin in a recent promo video for his All Elite Wrestling. Khan was responding to reports that World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), his nascent company’s chief competitor, is in talks to partner with New Japan Pro Wrestling, a move that would muscle in on AEW’s relationship with the smaller promotion. It provided a convenient excuse for Khan to launch an attack on WWE’s new president and chief revenue officer, Nick Khan (no relation), and grab attention in the leadup to AEW’s weekly Dynamite on TNT and its May 30 Double or Nothing pay-per-view event.

“There’s only room for one Khan in the wrestling business,” AEW’s 38-year-old founder and CEO sneered in the clip. “It’s me, Tony Khan, not some con man from Connecticut.”

The pro wrestling business, of course, was built on such mock machismo, but Khan has shied away from actively trash talking the competition since launching AEW in 2019. Perhaps because of his babyface personality, his tone in the video came across as more tongue in cheek than piledriver. And Khan would be wise not to gloat too early. After two years of modest growth, AEW is still experiencing early growing pains while trying to avoid the grim fate of everyone else who has dared to challenge Vince McMahon’s WWE over the past four decades—but he has already made a big impact on professional wrestling.

Khan started AEW with a major investment from his father, billionaire Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, that was reported to be up to $100 million. Its first three months on TNT were successful enough to secure a four-year, $175 million deal with WarnerMedia to air Wednesday night Dynamite, a title he picked a quarter-century ago when he sketched out episodes in his junior high notebook. The two-hour program has shaken pro wrestling’s power structure by going head-to-head with—and beating—McMahon’s WWE, and AEW will be launching a new weekly show on Fridays in August.

“I don’t want to be the next ‘blank’ wrestling company of the past—fill in the blank,” Khan says of erstwhile promotions McMahon has vanquished over the years. “We love wrestling of the past, wrestling of the present and wrestling of the future… That’s what gives us a great chance to retain and gain audience share.”

A skinny stats geek who operates more with a smile than a scowl, Khan has shown little intention of crushing McMahon with a metaphorical steel chair, but his passion for wrestling runs deep. As a teen, growing up in Champaign, Illinois, he moderated internet wrestling message boards and was known to wear “Macho Man” Randy Savage costumes for Halloween—well into adulthood. All the while, he was waiting for the chance to reimagine the Spandex-addicted entertainment he loved.

Perhaps fatefully, Khan was born in 1982, the same year McMahon bought out his father’s stake in what was then called the World Wrestling Federation. Pro wrestling was essentially a regional business back then, and promotions largely respected each other’s boundaries.