-- Former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon often caught a lot of flak over the years for the way he would constantly change the script for both Raw and Smackdown, sometimes several times the day of the show or while the show was airing. It seems that the same sort of issue may now be plaguing AEW with Tony Khan running the booking.
-- On the f4wonline.com message board, Wrestling Observer Live host Bryan Alvarez, who is considered to be fairly well connected to AEW, posted some shocking details about how Khan changed the script of the Double or Nothing PPV several times during the afternoon and that often wrestlers are left clueless on what they are doing on a show sometimes until an hour before the show airs. He went onto say that wrestlers are flown into for AEW shows and then not used, while others are told to stay home and then "begged" to come in at the last minute. He did preface his post by saying that the current AEW is still way better run than the 2019 version of WWE before he dove into the details.
"Tony switched the script on yesterday’s PPV multiple times during the afternoon. Most people, not just the wrestlers, have no idea what they’re doing until the day of the show, and sometimes not until an hour or so before the show. People are flown to towns and given nothing to do, others are begged the day before the show to please get to the town so they can do something last-minute. He knows what he wants to do for PPVs (although this often changes), but as far as week-to-week TV, everything is booked show-to-show.
For most people, he’s incredibly difficult to get hold of. In some ways, it legitimately is more like 2019 WWE than it is 2019 AEW, where he was much easier to get hold of, he had very complex long-term storytelling, many people had a good idea of what they were doing and where things were going, and often most of the following week’s entire Dynamite card was booked and announced before the previous week’s Dynamite had even ended (remember when Excalibur would run down two dozen matches in 30 seconds for the following week?).
It’s night and day the changes, and people who work for the company, in all roles from the wrestlers to the office, talk about it ALL THE TIME."
-- On yesterday's Wrestling Observer Live, Alvarez addressed his comment on "The Board" pointing out that he began his post by saying that AEW 2024 is a billion times better than WWE 2019 while also trying to justify the more chaotic nature of how AEW backstage is due to having to book more shows with more talent than ever before. Alvarez noted that Tony Khan is a lot more difficult to get a hold of now and wrestlers are more frustrated but doubled down on his details saying it is still quite similar to how WWE was in 2019.
