Tony Khan on Wanting to Holding AEW Shows in France & Germany in Future and AEW’s Talent Scouting & Signing Mentality

Sportico held a recent interview with AEW CEO Tony Khan. One of the topics discussed included Khan’s thoughts about what new markets he would like to bring AEW to in the future

“Well, I absolutely love doing the shows here in the USA every week, and 90% of our shows are here in America. We’re on every Wednesday on TBS and every Saturday on TNT, and all the shows livestream and we’ve got a library of them on HBO Max. So we’ve got a great collaboration with Warner Brothers Discovery here in America, which is first and foremost. That’s really the lifeblood of AEW is that TBS, TNT, HBO Max relationship. I think for us, having great shows all over the world, having a roster, like I said, there’s great talent pools in Mexico, England, Japan, great places to recruit pro wrestlers a lot of great wrestlers out of Canada. These are great markets for us, but there’s also some untapped markets, so it’s a great question that you’re asking. I think that we’ve never done a show in France. I’d love to go to Paris for AEW and all over France. I’d love to go to Germany, which has a great wrestling market. There’s a lot of great wrestling fans in Germany. I think that’d be a great place for us to have AEW at some point.”

Khan also gave his thoughts about AEW’s current talent scouting process and wanting to sign wrestlers who love pro wrestling for the company.

“Well, absolutely. I think for AEW, we’ve got the best roster of pro wrestlers in the world, and we scout all over. There are great talent pools. There’s great wrestling all over the world. Here in America, independent wrestling. You’ve got great wrestling in Japan. We’ve got a great relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling and with STARDOM, where we’re getting the best women and men out of Japan over the last few years, I really believe, and also out of Mexico, where we’ve got a great relationship with CMLL and we work together. There are a lot of wrestlers who work in both promotions, AEW and CMLL, which is the oldest wrestling promotion in the world. CMLL has been running out of Mexico for 92 years, and we’re the first promotion with AEW that they’ve ever hosted in Arena Mexico. Our most watched episode of AEW Wednesday Night Dynamite this year and in the past couple years has been this year’s AEW Grand Slam Mexico out of Arena Mexico, which was fantastic. So getting those great Lucha Libre stars out of Mexico has worked really well for us. Also out of England, the UK has got a fantastic, a really great crop of young wrestlers. Some of the top young wrestlers in the world have come out of the UK. We’ve got great stars out of Australia, and they’ve wrestled all over the world and built their reputations. We’ve got great stars that come from all over and there’s no one criteria, there’s no one set way to be a pro wrestler. They come in all different shapes and sizes and ideas and what’s great about the women and men in AEW is they love pro wrestling. If you’re in AEW it’s very likely that you’re there because you really love wrestling and you love what you do and you want to be a great wrestler and AEW is where the very best wrestle.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2