Tony Kahn’s been on social media openly challenging Vince McMahon and the WWE in what wasn’t supposed to be a war.
It was a long time coming as fans already saw NXT being put across from Dynamite was the start of the Wednesday Night Wars. Kahn had been careful in not saying anything directly challenging the WWE, but now he has.
With the news of WWE Smackdown moving to FS1 instead of Fox for the 10/15 airing, McMahon looks like he worked out a deal to get an extra half our added, commercial free.
Of course, there’s way more to this story than just adding time to please the fans.
I saw you’re doing a half hour head-to-head with us. I can’t wait to finally beat your main show head-to-head. It’s been a long time coming. See you next Friday for #AEWRampage on @AEWonTNT!
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) October 9, 2021
Gamesmanship at its best
While it’s easy to say the extra half hour was meant simply to augment the basement level ratings Smackdown has scored on FS1 previously by adding to their numbers, it also takes away from the first half hour of AEW Rampage and we think that’s the real reason.
McMahon has long played the victim when someone does something like this while he has no qualms to doing it first or copying it for later use, like adding 7 minutes to NXT on Wednesday to get a ratings boost.
Of course, we can’t forget the fun of a good old fashioned measuring match as the 30 minute extension caused Tony Kahn took to twitter to say, “I saw you’re doing a half hour head-to-head with us. I can’t wait to finally beat your main show head-to-head. It’s been a long time coming. See you next Friday for #AEWRampage on @AEWonTNT!”
So, the WWE then announced the 30 minute extension would be commercial free, and Kahn retaliated by adding a buy in (preshow) show for Rampage on Youtube.
The Buy In show will air starting at 9 p.m. during Smackdown with the hope AEW fans will tune into that and then watch Rampage without bothering with Smackdown.
Kahn ups the ante
In an interview with the NY Post (Special thanks to @wrestlefeed.app for the transcript), Kahn added a caveat.
“We can take the commercials out of it. If you want to take the commercials out of it, I can do that too. It doesn’t seem very civil, but I have more money than they do, so I can afford to do that longer than they can. But that’s how we make money at the end of the day, so I was surprised when they took those out.”
Kahn’s not wrong about having move money as his father, Shahid Kahn, invested $100 million to help start AEW and he has more wealth than McMahon, so it’s fair to say Tony Kahn has his father’s resources to a large extent and can be consider as one for the moment.
The real problem comes from AEW succeeding by not antagonizing the WWE and allowing McMahon to hurt himself by continuing to ignore the fans and releasing top talent and putting out horrendous storylines.
If McMahon is galvanized into tightening the ship we could see another Attitude Era and that would be great, but it also means he’ll look to end AEW so he can control the world and that won’t be so good.
Of maybe the Kahn’s buy WWE before it gets to that and McMahon is out-McMahoned?
One thing for sure if things are going to get really interesting. Time to stock up on popcorn and buckle up for the ride. How do you see this playing out?
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