by There’s a particular kind of magic that happens when someone who built their dream from scratch sits down and tells you exactly where it started. Not the business plan, not the TV deal, not the press conference. The actual beginning.
Tony Khan sat down with Branson Quirke and Roger Corral on TMZ’s Inside the Ring ahead of AEW Revolution this Sunday, and what came out of that conversation was one of the most revealing, personal interviews Tony Khan has given in a while. Forget the corporate talking points for a minute. This one had heart.
The Show That Started on AOL
Here’s the thing that stopped me in my tracks.
Tony Khan has been writing a show called Dynamite since he was 12 years old.
Not since AEW launched in 2019. Since 1995. On AOL.
“I started doing Dynamite on AOL when I was 12 years old,” Khan told TMZ. He and his friends would draft wrestlers, build promotions, and run shows through AOL chat rooms. His online character? Tony Flair. His email address? [email protected].
And it gets better. Those AOL chat room matches were determined by dice rolls — you’d both type in a move, someone would type //roll, and the dice would decide. “It’s like Dungeons and Dragons for wrestlers,” host Roger Corral said, and honestly that’s perfect.
But the real jaw-dropper is this: the name AEW Rampage? It came from a text-based wrestling simulator Khan used as a kid. A program where you’d input a wrestler’s size, skill, agility, power, and a mysterious stat simply called “the Rampage rating.” Khan laughed about it — “I never figured out what the Rampage is. It was just the je ne sais quoi.”
The kid who couldn’t even buy all the pay-per-views — he’d listen to the scrambled audio on cable, catching maybe a quarter to half of them depending on the year — grew up to run the longest-running primetime pro wrestling show in the history of TNT and TBS. Over 330 episodes of Wednesday Night Dynamite. The show he named when he was twelve.
That’s not a corporate origin story. That’s a wrestling fan’s dream made real.
The Turnbuckle Pad
When asked about his most prized wrestling memorabilia, Khan didn’t mention a championship belt or a signed poster. He talked about a turnbuckle pad.
From Sting’s final match — the retirement match at AEW Revolution in Greensboro where Sting and Darby Allin faced the Young Bucks. The match that set every business record for the event. Sting went undefeated in his entire AEW run, became World Tag Team Champion with Darby, and retired as a legend should.
After that match, Sting gave Tony Khan one of the turnbuckle pads. Signed it. Wrote him a personal note.
“That’s probably the most important one,” Khan said quietly.
There are only twelve turnbuckle pads in any given ring. Four corners, three pads each. Of everything Tony Khan could have kept from nearly seven years of AEW shows, that’s the one that matters most to him. The fact that it came from Revolution makes this Sunday feel that much more significant.
Sting’s Son Is Coming
Speaking of the Stinger — Khan revealed that he first encountered Steven Borden not as a wrestler but as a football player. “I first saw him as a football player, working at the Jaguars. As a tight end, coming out of Kentucky.”
Steven has been wrestling in dark matches, building his skills away from the cameras, and Khan is clearly excited about his potential. “He’s becoming a fantastic wrestler,” Khan said. “We’re also not throwing him into the fire.” The crowds already love him. The entrance music is already great. The anticipation is building.
The Revolution Card
Khan ran through the Revolution card with genuine excitement, but a few moments stood out.
On the Texas Death Match between MJF and Hangman Page, Khan framed it as something seven years in the making. Both were standing there at Double or Nothing 2019 when Bret Hart unveiled the AEW World Championship belt. Both were earmarked from the very beginning as future champions. “Over the last seven years, they built this fantastic rivalry, and it’s going to culminate in the most violent and brutal match in AEW.”
And then this line about Hangman: “The man he’s stepping into the ring with is not looking to wrestle. Hangman Page is looking to fight.”
On tag team wrestling, Khan was definitive about his three greatest modern era tag teams: the Young Bucks, FTR, and the Briscoes. He called the current FTR-Young Bucks rivalry deeply personal, especially after FTR attacked the Young Bucks’ family and what Tommaso Ciampa and FTR did to Mark Briscoe — a moment Khan called “dark” given Jay Briscoe’s passing.
He was also genuinely passionate about the Continental Classic, calling it “one of my real highlights working in wrestling.” Jon Moxley versus Konosuke Takeshita for the Continental Championship — no outside interference, no time limit — has him fired up.
On Swerve Strickland versus Brody King, Kris Statlander challenging Thekla in two out of three falls, Andrade El Idolo versus Bandido — every match got genuine enthusiasm. This isn’t a man going through promotional motions. This is a fan talking about matches he can’t wait to watch.
MJF Goes Hollywood
Khan confirmed that MJF “did a fantastic job in Happy Gilmore 2” and has a big role coming in Violent Night 2, with more projects in the pipeline. “He’s starting to get a lot of attention here in Hollywood,” Khan said, noting the AEW World Champion is wrestling at an incredibly high level while simultaneously breaking into film.
The Streaming Stat Nobody Saw Coming
Here’s a number that deserves its own section.
Tony Khan revealed that during AEW’s TV renewal negotiations, he learned something that even surprised him: of all the sports leagues in the world — NFL, MLB, NBA, UFC, PGA, WWE, WTA — the one whose fans spend the most on streaming video per month is AEW.
Not the NFL. Not the NBA. AEW.
That’s not just a business metric. That’s a measure of how invested this community is. The WrestleJoy Year End Awards voters already know this feeling — the dedication of this fanbase isn’t just loud, it’s measurable.
The Shaq Mystery Lives On
Five years later, nobody knows what happened when they opened that ambulance at Revolution 2021 and Shaq was gone. Khan was asked point blank and gave the most Tony Khan answer possible: “Stay tuned. One of these days it’s gonna happen. I promise.”
People ask him about it every day, apparently. Every single day.
A Kid From AOL
The interview closed with Khan talking about how his family never watched wrestling with him growing up. His parents wouldn’t take him to shows more than once every few years. Nobody in the family had the patience or taste for it.
Now it’s the family business. His parents watch every week. They know all the stars. They follow the rivalries.
“It’s so satisfying for me with AEW to be able to see my parents know the AEW stars, and they watch the show every week.”
There’s something beautiful about that. The kid who wrote Dynamite in AOL chat rooms, who listened to scrambled pay-per-view audio because he couldn’t buy them all, who drafted fake wrestlers with his friends and assigned them Rampage ratings he didn’t fully understand — that kid is running the show now. And his mom and dad are finally watching.
AEW Revolution airs this Sunday from the sold-out Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The Zero Hour starts at 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern (free on all platforms), with the pay-per-view beginning at 5 PM Pacific / 8 PM Eastern on Max and all traditional pay-per-view providers.
