Report: Tony Khan’s Twitter Activity Seen As ‘Declaration Of War’ By WWE

AEW/WWE

Tony Khan has had a few days of vehement posting on Twitter prompted by the AEW Dynamite and WWE NXT head-to-head on Tuesday.

As previously reported, he’s taken potshots at Triple H and Shawn Michaels, been disgruntled at the suggestion he wouldn’t be “booker of the year”, been annoyed at an AI image, and focused his attention on Vince McMahon.

It didn’t stop there for the AEW CEO, however, with John Cena and The Undertaker also finding themselves in his firing line.

After the Tuesday night ratings were made public, he would take a less aggressive approach on social media, thanking AEW wrestlers and staff.

Following all this, there has been a report that Khan’s actions are seen as “petulant” by some backstage in WWE, with it also being noted by ‘a source in CM Punk’s camp’ that ‘this is the kind of stuff that makes him happy to be away from the company’.

Dave Meltzer has now provided further insight into Khan’s posts in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, writing:

Khan, the day before, did a tweet with a photo with the wording “bald assholes,” which was taken to mean either Paul Levesque or Shawn Michaels, or both, who were putting together the opposition show.

Afterwards, he wrote, “This week, 2 active decades-long ratings streaks from 2 great legends were ended. With all due respect, until this week’s head-to-head AEW on TBS vs. WWE on USA, neither John Cena nor Undertaker had even been on a WWE show with under one million total viewers and under 400,000 in the demo.”

That’s likely accurate given I can’t come up with an example that contradicts it, but I don’t know what him pointing this out this week accomplishes.

There was also a post where in response to someone saying to him that Vince McMahon has earned the right to give cheap shots but he hasn’t, he wrote, “Yes. Vince has allegedly used his power and influence to shoot a lot of shots,” which can be taken in many different ways.

I wouldn’t recommend any of these things but they are also very mild compared to things McMahon, Dusty Rhodes, Bill Watts, Eric Bischoff, Dana White and virtually everyone in a promotional war since the beginning of time has done.

Khan noted that the “no million” tweet was a response to the endless people who tweet at him every Thursday after the show does usually the top one or two numbers of the previous night, but that’s considered bad because they don’t hit one million viewers.

There was also a strategic message in posting in the sense the one million post came at the same time he released the Jay White vs. Penta match for next week, with the idea that the post would lead to more engagement for the announcement of that match.

Those in WWE did contact us very quickly after that post with the idea that it was like they saw it as a declaration of war by still discussing the subject. Of course that declaration really dates back to January 2019.

January 2019, would be when AEW really kicked into gear, with Cody Rhodes, The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega signing as wrestlers and EVPs.

Booker T has recently spoken about Tony Khan’s tweeting comparing his “fixation” with WWE to how things were in WCW.

After this report came out, Tony Khan tweeted about alleged contract tampering from WWE while his mother was in hospital, and that being the reason things became “personal” for him – click here to read more.

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• tony khan
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