Posted in: AEW, Sports, TV | Tagged: aew, tony khan, wrestling

Opinion: Could Tony Khan Just, Like, Not?

The Chadster has long railed against the bullying of AEW owner Tony Khan, who has a personal vendetta against The Chadster and has persecuted The Chadster by producing AEW Dynamite and Rampage, driving The Chadster's beloved WWE NXT off of Wednesday Nights, and threatening WWE's wrestling ratings dominance. The result of all this: The Chadster has been sexually impotent since 2019. And Tony Khan will not let up. In collusion with Bleeding Cool TV Editor Ray Flook, Tony Khan has forced The Chadster to watch and write about AEW Dynamite and AEW Rampage week after week, ensuring that The Chadster's wife, Keighleyanne, will never get to experience the physical expression of The Chadster's love again. So it's no surprise, at least to The Chadster or his faithful readers, that Tony Khan has now decided to turn his wrath on his own former employees, as Khan kicked off the final wrestling scandal of 2021 when he lashed out at Big Swole for saying AEW has diversity issues.

On her podcast, Swole World, Big Swole explained that she thought AEW was hiring too many wrestlers without enough to do for everyone, resulting in people getting short and meaningless matches on AEW Dark and never progressing in the company. The Chadster totally agrees with this, and Tony Khan should fire wrestlers like CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Malakai Black, Adam Cole, and other traitors who stabbed Vince McMahon in the back to join the competition, disrespecting everything WWE has done for the wrestling business. Swole also said that AEW has a lack of diversity, and noted that her daughter criticized AEW and started watching WWE because of the pushes of wrestlers like Bianca Belair and Big E, who, yes, both swiftly lost their championships in embarrassing defeats, but at least they had them in the first place. The Chadster would just like to say: thank you, Big Swole's daughter, for being a true wrestling fan like The Chadster. Besides that, Swole was largely complimentary of AEW and Tony Khan, and of course The Chadster disagrees with all the positive things she said.

From Fightful, which transcribed Swole's comments:

Outside of [lack of structure] their BIGGEST issue, which is diversity. I do not beat around the bush when it comes to diversity and my people. There is no representation, truly, and when there is, it does not come across in the black community as genuine. At all. I don't know why everybody is so afraid to accept it or say it, but it's not a good look. What happens is, you have this wonderful company that treats people like family, but there is nobody that looks like me that is represented at the top and in the room with them. They are not helping to necessarily influence decisions, but to explain why certain slang and certain word shouldn't be said. There is no one else who can explain our culture and experience except for us.

That's when Tony Khan took to Twitter and said:

Let's get this out of the way right now: if Vince McMahon said that one of his former wrestlers "wasn't good enough" to cut it in WWE, he would be crucified by the internet wrestling community. Auughh man! So unfair! That's why Vince hasn't said one word about the dozens of wrestlers he's fired during the coronavirus pandemic, even when they disrespectfully signed with AEW and trashed WWE on television. It would simply be too cruel, and Vince knows better than that. But Tony Khan can't seem to help himself from replying to any criticism of AEW on social media, and this isn't the first time it's caused backlash for him. Many people criticize AEW fans for being unable to take criticism, but it is an attitude that comes from the top down.

Setting aside issues of diversity — Swole has a point in her criticism, while Khan also has a point that AEW does have diversity in its leadership and on-screen roles, and these two things are not mutually exclusive — Khan's tweet would be out of line no matter what because of the power imbalance inherent in a billionaire boss publicly trashing a former employee for mild criticism mixed in with overall praise. It's punching down. Furthermore, it's stupid. There isn't really anything for Khan to gain from making that comment. For one thing, he brought far more attention to Swole's complaints than there would have been if he had simply ignored it. For another, he put all of his wrestlers, and particularly wrestlers of color, in an uncomfortable position of feeling the need to address Khan's comments publicly in some way, which is incredibly unfair to all of them and shows how Khan's actions have repercussions not only for him, but for everyone who works for his company. For all the stories about AEW being a great place to work where wrestlers feel respected, this is a very public example of that not being the case, at least for some. On the bright side, it may cause some WWE wrestlers to think twice before jumping ship to the competition, which would at least be a silver lining for The Chadster.

Before The Chadster became the internet's most unbiased wrestling journalist, The Chadster managed a branch of Auntie Anne's pretzels at the mall. There, The Chadster had frequent disagreements with his employees over the proper application of pretzel dust, but The Chadster never dared tweet about it. That's not behavior befitting a member of the prestigious Auntie Anne's management team, is what The Chadster's pretzel mentors would have told him. If Tony Khan can't even meet the standards of the Auntie Anne's management team, how can he meet the standards of being the head honcho of a major wrestling organization?

Tony Khan, sometimes people will say things that you don't like. Just because they said it doesn't mean you have to respond. Regardless of the issues that led up to the dispute, Tony Khan owes Big Swole a public apology. And that's the bottom line 'cause Chad said so.

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