Posted in: AEW, Opinion, Sports, TV, TV, WWE | Tagged: aew, tony khan, Vince McMahon, wwe

Why Tony Khan Just Can't Stop Losing, Even When He Should Win

Tony Khan tweeted a legitimate complaint about media bias. So why is it that he's the one whose reputation was damaged by the exchange?

AEW owner Tony Khan took another self-inflicted wound last night when he reacted to journalist Ariel Helwani's involvement in the promotion of WWE's Elimination Chamber Premium Live Event, but the most incredible thing about it is that Khan is 100% correct, and it doesn't matter in the slightest. If you're wondering what we're talking about, let's let the folks involved do the talking… er, tweeting.

Khan is referring to Helwani's involvement in the promotion of the Sami Zayn vs. Roman Reigns match for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at Elimination Chamber tonight, first, by writing and narrating a video package celebrating the wrestling history of Helwani's hometown of Montreal (as demonstrated by WWE-owned footage) and promoting its hometown hero, Zayn, whose match with Reigns tonight is the culmination of what many wrestling agree is the greatest story told by WWE in decades…

…and later by appearing on WWE Smackdown, and then reacting to his own appearances on social media by "marking out."

Eagerly taking part in the promotion of the WWE product, fawning over the company on social media, and then describing it as the fulfillment of a childhood dream are not the actions of a person who can ever be viewed as an unbiased source of wrestling journalism. Working for the company you're reporting on is a classic conflict of interest. It's impossible to deny this. It doesn't even matter whether or not Helwani allows his love for WWE or his involvement with this storyline to influence his future reporting on WWE or its competition. Even the most objective, factual reporting by Helwani in the future has to be considered in the context that Helwani is a mark for WWE and has a business relationship with the company.

So why is it that Tony Khan, in the perception of the internet wrestling community judging by social media reactions and comment section replies to this latest drama, is the one who comes out of the exchange looking like the fool? Why are more fans laughing at Helwani's "snowman" retort — an unsubstantiated reference to alleged cocaine use — than considering whether or not what Khan said was actually accurate? It's because wrestling fans, just like wrestling journalists, are marks. They have been trained for decades, in many cases their entire lives, to believe in WWE's manipulated sense of reality. That is, after all, the essence of pro wrestling: fans setting aside what they know to be the truth — that wrestlers are paid performers working together to present the illusion of animosity and athletic competition — and instead engaging with the fantasy. And since the 1980s, WWE has been virtually synonymous with pro wrestling. Even most of the fans who prefer AEW grew up watching WWE.

The childhood nostalgia at play here is a powerful force, and its accompanied by WWE's mastery of manipulation of the media. Vince McMahon has been manipulating the media to support his narrative, with or without their compliance, since the 80s. It's how he's escaped dozens, if not hundreds, of scandals. People are less capable than they'll admit from separating Vince McMahon, the real person who has made deals with the oppressive regime of Saudi Arabia, who was forced to retire from his own company under sexual misconduct allegations only to decide a year later that he was simply going to will himself back into power, from the on-screen heel he portrayed for years. When McMahon's scandals were weeks away from forcing him temporarily out of the company last year, McMahon appeared before live crowds on television, and they cheered him. Some even literally bowed down to him.

Tony Khan, on the other hand, is not great at manipulating the media. Tony Khan survived a ratings war with WWE and came out on top, lured Bryan Danielson to AEW and CM Punk back to wrestling, and gave fans the true alternative to WWE they'd been craving for years. But the perception of Khan is often of a geek using his daddy's money to live out his own childhood fantasy of being Vince McMahon. When Khan revealed that he commissioned a study to prove that negative social media reaction against AEW is the result of trolls and bots, even though this is true — 90% of all negative interaction on social media about any topic is driven by trolls and bots — he came off not as exposing a conspiracy, but as a thin-skinned egomaniac who can't handle criticism. When Khan sat quietly next to CM Punk at last year's All Out media scrum and nodded along while Punk eviscerated the company of several of its top stars, it made Khan look weak and helpless. In many ways, the company has yet to recover from the blow Punk dealt it that night.

WWE's stranglehold on the consciousness of wrestling fans and of the media (who, in many cases, are also wrestling fans) will always give it an advantage over AEW with both the public and the media. But in the kayfabe world of pro wrestling, babyfaces overcome advantages and adversity to triumph. Heels complain that the deck is stacked against them. Babyfaces prove it with their actions, not their words. Until Tony Khan learns that lesson, no matter how right he is and no matter what he accomplishes, he'll continue to "take the L" online with a wrestling fandom that is and always will be made up of marks. The solution: get off Twitter and put someone in charge of interacting with the media and being the face of the company who's good at it, and, most importantly, better at working the marks than being one.

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