AEW President Tony Khan has said he doesn’t understand why a wrestling promoter would rip up a script before a show, in a dig at WWE and Vince McMahon.
The WWE Chairman is known for making edits to scripts, or even tearing them up completely mere hours before his programming goes on air.
Speaking with Forbes, Khan said that while he accepts that changes need to be made on the fly, ripping up a script implies that those in charge haven’t done enough preparation.
“To be honest, when I hear about somebody going in, and they have a TV show on Monday that they rip up. My first thought is, ‘what were you doing all weekend?’ Because I work my ass off on the weekends,” he claimed. “I have to come in with a plan for Wednesday, and Friday night, I want to make sure Dynamite’s great, and Rampage.
“I don’t do everything myself, but I do make the final decision on everything. I put the format together, I put an outline of what the show is going to be for Dynamite and Rampage, and I write it by hand. I don’t understand why you’re going to come in and rip up a show that you have a pretty good idea of what it is. And you should have approved it, where Monday, we know what we’re doing.”
“When I hear about somebody going in, and they have a TV show on Monday that they rip up. My first thought is, ‘what were you doing all weekend?’”
Tony Khan
McMahon’s War on Scripts
Vince McMahon employs a large team of writers to produce WWE content each week but the Chairman is seemingly very difficult to impress.
In March 2020, McMahon tore up the script for Monday Night Raw and was reported to have “changed everything.”
That same year, it was reported that McMahon had ripped up the script for Raw an hour before the show went live.
An October 2020 script for WWE SmackDown was finished very late in the day as the company could not decide what should make it on the show.
Thanks to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.
