5 Things Vince McMahon can teach Tony Khan

Tony Khan has been a wrestling promoter for close to three years now and is now considered Vince McMahon's biggest rival. AEW's broadcast deal for Dynamite helped them become a more established company, eventually becoming the second-biggest wrestling promotion in the world in a short time.

It will be interesting to see the long-term future of All Elite Wrestling under Tony Khan's leadership. There's no doubt that he and his incredible crew have done a great job in making the best possible alternative to Vince McMahon's WWE. However, the CEO and President of AEW needs another four decades of experience before he can catch up to the biggest man in the industry. Here are a few things he can learn from McMahon:

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#5. Tony Khan should take Vince McMahon's approach on a "character-centric" product and not a "wrestling-centric" product

This one might have people arguing for both sides, but it's understandable. If you were to ask Vince McMahon, he wouldn't tell you he ran a wrestling promotion. He will tell you it's an entertainment company.

The entire concept of "Sports Entertainment," while initially used to get around various government regulations, has come to define WWE. For decades now, Vince McMahon's product has been more focused on entertainment than wrestling.

Sure, the wrestling is a by-product of what we see, but there's a reason why McMahon has opted to push superstars who are good on the mic and have a good character over the average independent star with fantastic in-ring ability.

With Tony Khan, the approach is a bit different. While AEW understandably prides itself as a professional wrestling company, the key to making bigger stars lies in strong character work, not in-ring ability.

The main event talent of AEW is now arguably as stacked as WWE's, and there's no shortage of great in-ring talent. But when looking at superstars who are better at character work, MJF is one of the few names that stick out.

Admittedly, a lot of the main event talent such as Kenny Omega, Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole and CM Punk are great all-rounders, but a more entertainment-centric product might help AEW expand greatly.

#4. Tony Khan should learn how to cater to a large, globalized audience from Vince McMahon

Admittedly, this is a process that is going to take Tony Khan some time, and he won't be able to implement Vince McMahon's methods immediately. Not just this, but he may not want to follow McMahon's methods.

It's clear that the future of wrestling (or any sports/entertainment brand for that matter) is in globalization. That's why when looking at a sport like football/soccer, all top clubs are scrambling to secure the big international markets.

In this regard, McMahon has a massive advantage. He began the work on globalizing the WWE product only in recent years, but the WWE brand name is big enough to have broadcasting rights in 180 countries, with 28 different languages and a reach of up to 900 million people.

Globalization is the future, and it's an approach that AEW has begun. On August 2021, Sportskeeda Wrestling confirmed that AEW inked a big broadcast deal with Euro Sport for broadcasting rights in India.

This is a good start, and AEW is going to have to wisely and not aggressively push to get broadcasting rights in various countries in order to be head-to-head with Vince McMahon's WWE.

However, this will also mean making several adjustments to the TV product to be able to cater to various audiences across the globe.

#3. Tony Khan shouldn't expand like Vince McMahon unless absolutely necessary

It took a pandemic, but for a while, it seemed as though Vince McMahon was interested in complete industry domination worldwide. By the mid-2000s, NXT was emerging as one of the hottest wrestling brands, moving out of the shell of being a developmental brand (which it once again conveniently is), and WWE's global dominance seemed inevitable.

By 2016 and 2017, there was talk of NXT having its own version in Japan, South America, and potentially even India. There was also talk of WWE Performance Centers around the globe.

This remains one part of the list which is more of a negative on McMahon's side that Khan can learn from. WWE's aggressive intent to expand globally ultimately fell through because of the pandemic, but it may not have been good for the industry in the long run.

If anything, Tony Khan can look at Vince McMahon and WWE's approach and realize that while global expansion is absolutely necessary, it shouldn't be done in an aggressive and dominant manner to simply shut off other competition.

#2. Tony Khan should learn better booking of top women's matches from Vince McMahon

As of this writing, the idea of Vince McMahon's booking of women's matches is going to be a double-edged sword. The entire quarter-finals of the Queen's Crown Tournament comprised of four matches that lasted a total of eight minutes -- averaging two minutes per match.

Meanwhile, there's also the current overbooking of the four top women of WWE - Bianca Belair, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks. In all honesty, Vince McMahon's proper booking of the women of WWE only truly began five years ago when there emerged a demand and need to handle the women better.

Five years later, we've already had two WrestleMania main events and a women's equivalent of virtually every stipulation match that was once exclusive to men. When it comes to the booking of top-tier women in WWE, there's no doubt that McMahon does it better than Khan.

AEW's women's division has been criticized for a while, but over the last two years, the roster has gradually been expanding. Ruby Soho represents the most exciting new addition to the division, but the overall handling of top women's matches needs to be better.

Tony Khan and AEW haven't been able to give the top women's matches the same importance that Vince McMahon and WWE have. It's something that he can learn from to better the women's division as it keeps expanding.

#1. Tony Khan needs to look forward more and take fewer shots at Vince McMahon and WWE

One of the big criticisms that AEW and Tony Khan have gotten in the last couple of years is due to their occasional need to take shots at Vince McMahon and WWE. Nick Khan, the WWE President, addressed AEW in an interview with BT Sport's Ariel Helwani and said that it's like putting blinders on a horse. Essentially, it means looking forwards and not sideways:

"You've got to look at these things like a horse in a race. They put blinders on the horse. Why do they do that? So you're not looking back to see what the other horse is doing. If a horse does that, they'll trip and break their leg. I believe that in my career, I've always operated that way, and WWE has always operated that way - we look ahead. So our decisions are based on what's best for us," said Khan.

This means that AEW should exist without needing to acknowledge or take shots at WWE. When Khan recently took a shot at McMahon saying that he couldn't wait for Rampage to go head-to-head with SmackDown, it was a bad look because Rampage drew in only 500,000 viewers (approximately) the previous week, while SmackDown had quadrupled that.

It makes Khan's purpose seem more like he wants to take McMahon down, rather than create an alternative product that exists side-by-side. Ultimately, all the decisions that he makes for AEW need to be what's best for them, and not what's worst for Vince McMahon and WWE.

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