Tony Khan Reveals AEW’s Origin Story Started With A Cocktail Party Pitch To TNT Boss

Tony Khan just gave the most detailed account yet of how All Elite Wrestling went from an idea in his head to one of the biggest wrestling promotions in the world—and it all started with a bold pitch at a cocktail party.

In an interview on Going Ringside, Khan was asked how AEW truly came to life beyond the typical “cliff notes” people have heard. That’s when the AEW President peeled back the curtain on the real origin story.

“Well, I didn’t know those wrestlers and I didn’t have that kind of connection to start this. When I launched it, I was in LA. I was at a cocktail party and I saw the president at the time of TBS and TNT and I knew it and I went up to him and said, ‘With the way wrestling TV rights are going, I think it would make a lot of sense for us to start a wrestling league.’”

At the time, there was no pro wrestling on Turner networks, even though WCW had once thrived on them. That gap in programming gave Khan an opening.

“At the time, there was no wrestling on TBS or TNT, but there had been for many years. There’s a great history of wrestling from about 1971 to 2001 on TBS and from the mid-90s—about 1995 to 2001—on TNT. But neither network had hosted any wrestling for almost 20 years when we started.”

The conversation didn’t spark immediate action, but it kicked off a long journey of boardroom meetings and behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

“It was 2018 when I went to the president of TBS and TNT and said, ‘Let’s look at this.’ And he took it seriously. We had a lot of meetings. It was over a year before anything really happened, but it was a lot of meetings.”

Then came the gamble that would define AEW’s future—Khan started signing talent before any TV deal was finalized.

“I started to realize there’s definitely a market for this. I began signing up the wrestlers. It was a major commitment and it actually was a bit of a gamble because I started signing the wrestlers before I had the TV deal, because I could feel the TV deal was coming and that there was a market for what AEW was going to do.”

Everything officially launched on January 8, 2019, with AEW’s first press conference held outside Khan’s Jacksonville office.

“So in January of 2019, we announced the launch of AEW. We announced that we had signed a bunch of star wrestlers. It was January 8th, like literally meters—like feet away from where I am right now in Jacksonville—right outside of my office, where it was actually the first-ever AEW press conference. We announced the launch of the promotion. We had a party with the fans and we had a great celebration. We set off pyro in the parking lot and we launched AEW and put eyes of the wrestling world here in Jacksonville.”

The rest is history. AEW debuted Double or Nothing that May, followed by the first episode of Dynamite in October 2019—and now they’re approaching six years on the air.

“And then we went and took our opportunity and we did the very first AEW event, Double or Nothing in 2019. We set up with our very first episode of Wednesday Night Dynamite in October. Like I said, the six-year anniversary of the first Dynamite is actually this week, this Wednesday on TBS at 8:00.”

Khan’s full-circle moment wasn’t just about a network pitch—it was about betting big on a vision and making AEW a real alternative in the wrestling world.

Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.