Tony Khan’s AEW and WBD Renewal Deal Faces Backlash From Veteran Ahead of Forbidden Door

Tony Khan’s promotion has faced significant challenges with ratings, viewership, and venue attendance at shows. Despite these hardships, AEW has secured an extension deal with WBD to stay on their channels. Reportedly, the numbers offered to Tony Khan by the media company are more than 50% higher than his current deal.

Now that the deal is seemingly coming to a close, with no reports of its failure, the AEW president’s biggest online rival has lashed out, claiming that this deal does not make a significant difference for the promotion.

Tony Khan gets lashed at despite big deal

Although the businessman has faced endless online backlash for his decisions and whenever AEW fails to achieve significant market success, one consistent critic has been Eric Bischoff. Their rivalry dates back to when the AEW president was starting his wrestling company. Recently, he discussed the AEW-WBD deal on his podcast 83 Weeks. “It’s not like if they get a renewal, all of a sudden the show is going to get good. It’s not like if they get a renewal, ratings are going to go up.” Bischoff continued, “It’s not like they’re going to get a renewal, [and] they’re automatically going to wake up one morning and go, f**k, now I know how to tell a story. Now I know how to actually be a booker or how to create whatever the f*ck Tony calls himself.”

This callout is especially alarming now that there have been reports that AEW ratings were at an all-time low on June 19th. The wrestling promotion can still recover from the damage, but depending on the WBD’s deal clause, this may prove to be harmful to Tony Khan. It would be a lot of bad news because AEW Forbidden Door is merely hours away.

If you are not well-versed with the deal that is being discussed here, then make sure to keep reading.

What deal did Tony Khan close with?

WBD was rumored to be losing rights to the NBA as their contract approached its end. This would have meant they needed a mainstream sport on their channels to continue generating revenue. Given AEW’s struggles in the market compared to WWE, there was skepticism about the negotiations. Contrary to this belief, a deal was reportedly made where AEW was offered $110 Million a year, or nearly doubling what AEW had previously been getting.

However, it is not official whether this was confirmed as the final deal. This is because there were more reports about how Tony was disappointed with what WBD offered during their negotiations. The exact details of the closing deal have not been officially disclosed to the public yet. However, the new contract may serve as motivation for the AEW team to surpass their previous achievements.

Do you think Bischoff is right about the deal not changing anything about how AEW will operate in the future? Comment your thoughts below.