Booker T – “I Don’t Know What Tony Khan’s Fixation Is On WWE”
Booker T wonders why Tony Khan is so fixated on WWE when it comes to the recent head-to-head competition between NXT and AEW Dynamite.
As the color commentator on the WWE NXT brand over the last year, two-time WWE Hall of Famer Booker T was at ringside during the October 10th NXT broadcast that went up against AEW Dynamite, which switched nights due to the MLB Playoffs.
In the much-discussed ratings battle between the two shows, NXT won the night with an impressive total viewership number of 921,000 viewers along with a 0.3 rating in the 18-49 year old demographic.
AEW Dynamite drew a total average viewership of 609,000 viewers and a 0.26 rating in the key demographic. That meant that NXT was clearly the winner of the Tuesday night ratings battle.
After the ratings came out, AEW’s CEO & GM Tony Khan made some bizarre comments on X/Twitter taking shots at WWE Hall of Famers Triple H & Shawn Michaels (the man who runs NXT), which got a lot of people talking in both companies about Khan’s strange behavior.
On his Hall of Fame radio show, Booker T spoke about the ratings of the two shows as well as Khan’s comments.
“NXT versus AEW, and I must say, NXT went out there and did the damn thing, man. They went out there and did the damn thing. 921K views and AEW did 609K. That’s a vast difference, man. That’s a huge difference, 300,00 people. People can say what they want to say.”
“You know, the one person I’ve always tried to stay off of, you know, I try not to dig at Tony Khan or anything like that, just because he’s got to try to run a business, but at the same time, I got to take a dig at this last comment that he made about the NXT rating. He said that it was the first time that John Cena and The Undertaker appeared in front of less than a million people for WWE, and the thing is, he’s got Edge. He’s got Christian over there.”
“He’s got all those guys and they’ve never performed in front of 600,000. So it’s like, when you say stuff like that, you might want to think about it before you say stuff like that, you know, because Edge was in the main event. Edge was in the main event of that show, and they drew 609K.”
Booker T feels like Tony Khan would have been gloating if Dynamite beat NXT
As he continued, Booker T says Tony Khan would have been bragging if AEW won while also wondering why Tony is so obsessed with WWE.
“The thing is, I’m sure Tony Khan thought that there was going to be a bigger number. I can’t be positive on this, but I would imagine that Tony could would have imagined that AEW Dynamite probably would have got a bigger number, and the thing is, I’m sure Tony Khan would have been gloating, basking in it as far as, you know, if the numbers would have been flipped, just say for instance.”
“I’m sure Tony Khan would have been, It would have been a party. It would have been a celebration if they would have actually won.”
“So it’s just like, I don’t know what Tony Khan’s modus operandi is. I don’t know what his fixation is on WWE.”
This past week, Tony Khan tweeted about how when his mother was sick a year ago, he claimed WWE tried to get AEW talents to get out of their contracts. According to Tony, that’s when this became personal to him.