Yeah.

And listen, Bruce has had one of the most unique careers in wrestling history from being a performer to ending up in the position that he ended up with Vince to coming back and then staying past Vince, which I think when Vince left, I don't think a ton of people expected Bruce to stay and he did.

And here he is in this position.

You know, you could say what you want about Bruce, but The Something to Wrestle podcast is legitimately one of the most significant things that has happened in wrestling in the last decade, decade and a half.

It was this...

It created this audience that I think a lot of people didn't even know existed.

And it served something that maybe was being underserved.

BL has us wrapped up and says, John, how'd you get into wrestling media?

Thank you, Emily.

How are you, Tony?

Hopefully you're doing well also.

i am appreciate the time as always uh business question for you regarding wembley uh you guys probably gonna do around 45 50k or so uh strong outing for all in london this year what do you Considering when you're booking these big stadium shows from a business perspective, you've run Wembley three times now.

What do you factor in in determining whether you can go out there and run Wembley again? Or where else would you be looking for in terms of booking big shows like that?

Same.

I feel like we would've seen her at this point if that was gonna be the case.

But things can change.

They do change in wrestling.

You never truly know.

The, the truth is, though, if you did bring her back even for a one-off, the downside of that if you're Tony Khan and you don't plan on using her, is that once you use her, people are gonna be like, "Well, why aren't you using her again? Why was it just a one-off?" Like, you're bringing her back into the conversation.

So if the plan is not to use her long term, then I can see the conundrum of, well- Maybe this is not something we wanna do, for whatever the reason is.

Yeah, same.

Dude, that to me is the biggest whiff of this deadline without question.

Yeah, there's no way that any of us saw the Yankees walking out of this deadline without some degree of catching help.

And that's exactly what's going to happen.

And I just think that that is a severely, severely under-addressed element of their lineup based on how they platoon, whether it's Austin Wells, Sanchez, Escar, whoever it is, it's a weak spot in the lineup.

And when you are handicapping yourself night in and night out with such a big hole, and then you add in the fact that you've got some combination of Anthony Volpe and Jose Caballero and Ryan McMahon hitting around that, it's a black hole in your lineup, J.J., And you can also talk about how they probably needed to replenish the bullpen a little bit.

They needed a hard-throwing reliever.

They did trade some bullpen pieces, so they didn't get any of that refurbishment back in any form.

What is the most fascinating thing? I get what

Yeah, absolutely not

...

but, but it's clear that there's some major seismic action going on within the infrastructure of the company, and what that direction forward is going to be is not quite clear.

And it's amazing because turn the clocks back six months, seven months, you have people saying, uh, in both good faith and bad, that, "Oh, TNA is gonna be the number two promotion by the end of this year." And clearly TNA has a lot of work to do, uh, to just figure out what that path forward is, and not that there won't be a path forward.

There is a path forward, but what exactly it looks like, who's the one paving it, and how are you constantly refreshing the roster in a way that people are gonna continue to buy in? Because Joel, you know this as well as anyone as someone who covers this product weekly, it's very hard to buy into storytelling when talent is there and then they're not there or a story starts and it doesn't finish.

It's really hard as a fan to bite your teeth into that.

There

... to think about it that way, but in this fever dream of a moment, he very well may be.

Yes.

Like, WrestleMania I, I'd say that it has less to do with AEW and more so how WWE is changing WrestleMania where WrestleMania has become a two-night thing.

More and more people are on the show.

It, it doesn't quite feel as exclusive as it used to, I think, y- when it was a one-night three-hour show that everything culminated at as a result of that.

Not to say that WrestleMania isn't still a huge deal, it certainly is, but I think on that hand it's certainly changed and then if you add into the equation that there are more options.

There...

Uh, this, Sean, this is gonna be something that it's gonna take an entire generation really for us to see but as you're saying, there will be an entire group of wrestling fans, maybe not the majority, but there will be a group of wrestling fans who are kids right now who grow up on wanting to be an AEW star.

Whew.

There was, uh, it was over 20,000 I think for that one.

So this is the stadium next door to that, but it, it should still be pretty packed, so, um, yeah.

I mean, I, I anticipate it's gonna be a, a pretty good show, and I think the AEW World Title picture is gonna be pretty complex this year, so how, how-

Yeah.

'Cause I think a lot of people were very confused about Darby winning, and I, I, I mean, I think it's one of those things where you just, you kinda let your work speak for itself, and I th- I think he has.

Um, I, I haven't heard too many old men yelling at the cloud about him, so that's, that's-

Uh-

Your, your whole thing about, like, where should AEW run, that would be unique, it got a lot of traction, and I, it even got picked up by, like, X's AI stuff where they, you know, aggregate it all.

But, um, I, I tell you, man, being in this market, if they were somehow able to run Madison Square Garden, they would pack it out.

They would pack it out without a question.

Yeah

... they're, they would be totally fine.

I, I'll tell you though, I thought, and I think we may have even talked about this at the time, Sean, I was really surprised that AEW didn't go for it all when they brought Punk in in '21 and tried to do something at Wrigley.

I was kinda surprised that they didn't, because I feel like they might have had the momentum to do it at the time.

John.

Hey guys, really appreciate the time as always.

Tony, AEW Revolution, you guys have made very clear that pay-per-view revenue has been a big part of your model over the past six plus years here with AEW.

With the announcement of MyAEW and the international expansion there, is there any possibility that the platform could become a domestic distributor for pay-per-view, especially as some of the uncertainty with the status of the Paramount merger with Warner Brothers Discovery looms in the future?

So tell us a little bit how this all came together and why this is such a unique partnership for both of them.

This has been a long time coming for TNA in particular, for those who may not know what TNA Wrestling is.

WWE is kind of the flagship promotion in pro wrestling.

Then there's All Elite Wrestling, which is owned by Tony Khan, Shad Khan, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, their parent company there.

And then TNA Wrestling, which has been around for about 23 years or so.

At one point, it was the number two promotion ever.

in all the world.

Why is that?