Tony Khan Discusses Keeping The Balance Between Homegrown & Established Talent In AEW

Tony Khan talks the current balance in AEW between homegrown talent and established talent.

When All Elite Wrestling was first founded in 2019, the roster was full of talent that established themselves in either a major company or on the independent scene. There was also a few names on the roster that were rather unknown, but most of those talent made their way up the ladder fairly quickly and went on to become champions in AEW.

In a new interview with Fightful’s Grapsody podcast, AEW owner Tony Khan talked about keeping the balance between homegrown talent and established talent.

“We’ve got a strong outlook. It’s great having world champions like MJF, Jamie Hayter, the Acclaimed, and Death Triangle. Great names, frankly, great homegrown names in AEW. PAC, I wouldn’t call a homegrown star, he established himself all over the world, but most of the champions in AEW, you could say that about. Samoa Joe has certainly come in. One thing we saw this year was a lot of the great homegrown stars in AEW taking on a lot of the great stars that came into AEW as free agents. Full Gear, that was one of the great themes and made it such a compelling great pay-per-view. In 2023, I think we’ll see more of that. These big names that came into AEW and big names that came in along the way. We’ll see more identities grow and the crowd is going to develop a connection with people and that’s really what gets people to the next level. We have this great set of these homegrown champions but also some big free agent stars that have come in and changed AEW for the better.”

In the past, Khan has noted that he thinks NXT’s homegrown talent would beat many AEW stars if they were to depart the company. To learn more, click here.

Elsewhere in the interview, Khan revealed that he won’t be doing a finger poke of doom spot on the upcoming January 4 episode of AEW Dynamite. Click here to see more.