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Dave Meltzer Questions Common Tony Khan Criticism

By Lyle Kilbane • Published 10th July 2023
Tony Khan AEW

Tony Khan has bullishly led AEW since founding the company in 2019 but in some quarters he can’t quite shake the criticism that he’s just playing with his father’s fortune.

WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff has previously called AEW a “well-funded hobby” for Tony Khan, saying that Khan is not accountable because he’s using his father Shahid Khan’s fortune to finance the wrestling promotion.

Criticism like that has come since AEW was announced and has continued by those who seem to dislike Khan or AEW for whatever reason, but now Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer has pointed out what could be seen as a double standard.

[sided-debate-embed debate-id=”27954″]

Taking to social media Meltzer questioned a common criticism leveled at Tony Khan which suggests his father has funded AEW and suggested that Vince McMahon and Jim Crockett had similar financial bases from which to build their own respective companies:

“How long could Vince McMahon or Jim Crockett have survived with Daddy building the base of the franchise for them? If you think either could have started out cold and made it, you don’t know anything about how wrestling worked in those days.”

Vince McMahon bought the Capitol Wrestling Corporation which ran what is now known as WWE from his father Vincent J. McMahon in 1982. McMahon Sr. had run the company since its formation and founded the WWWF in 1963, leading the company during the days of Bruno Sammartino and Superstar Billy Graham.

Although many wrestling fans associate Jim Crockett Jr. with the eighties heyday of Jim Crockett Promotions it was actually Jim Crockett Sr. who formed JCP with the promotion pre-dating the National Wrestling Alliance which came into being in 1948. Jim Crockett Jr. took over the running of the company following his father’s death in 1973.