Just because Tony Khan likes being in charge doesn’t mean that he has shut out everyone in AEW and forced everyone to live by his rules, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Khan explained that he might not be having meetings in between shows regarding the creative direction of the company, but he still listens to the ideas of backstage producers, agents, and especially the talents. With that said, the overall structure of each show is all down to him.

“They’re all good ideas in their own way. And I still like to hear ideas, but instead of doing it as I put the outline together, I would rather do it looking ahead to next week, and take some ideas as I put the next outline together. But putting the outline of the show together, I’m never going to let it be a collab… putting the outline of the show together, I have a good process for it, and I’m back to the process that I used in 2020 and 2021. I don’t want to describe ever being collaborative is a bad thing, because the whole thing that makes AEW great is collaboration. But the collaboration should probably, at its best, be between me and the wrestlers, and working to find the best path, and not having a lot of people in the middle of that.”

Khan rounded off by saying that there wrestling shows thrive on collaboration, particularly when it comes to character work, but only after the general outline of how everything will play out has been forward on to people. When it comes to the outline, Khan believes that not a lot of people are needed for that, and it’s much easier to structure a period of the AEW calendar by himself rather than having a team of people around him.

Please credit the original source when using quotes from this article, and thanks to Sports Illustrated for the transcription.