WWE President & Chief Revenue Officer Nick Khan was reportedly warned about AEW when WWE hired him.
WWE hired Khan in early August 2020 after he previously worked as the Co-Head of Television at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Khan made some headlines this past week after doing an interview with BT Sports’ Ariel Helwani, his first since signing with the company.
It was noted by Dave Meltzer on the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio that Khan was warned about what could potentially happen with AEW being competition to WWE on the same day he took the job with the company.
Meltzer noted that Khan was reportedly warned by someone in the company about how everyone would tell him that AEW as competition didn’t exist, and that if WWE didn’t make changes, then AEW would be caught up with them very soon as real competition. Khan was also reportedly told how everyone in the company will tell him none of the AEW competition stuff is true, and that AEW competing with WWE is impossible.
You may remember how WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon talked about AEW during the recent WWE Q2 earnings call, where Khan also chimed in and added some of his thoughts on WWE’s competition.
“I think the way we always look at these situations, you know, it’s sort of like a horse race where the horse has blinders on,” Khan added on the call that day. “We’re looking straight ahead at our lane and making sure that we stay in the front of the pack. At the same time, everything is our competition. Someone had a line a couple of weeks ago, that we all chuckled at and agreed with – sleep is our competition. Right?
“If it was up to us, people could be up 24 hours a day, watching content from different content providers, hopefully including ours. So, we don’t look at any organization particularly as competition, yet we see everything as competitive with what we’re trying to do, in terms of eyeballs.”
