"Tony Khan has done more to harm wrestling than Vince Russo has ever done," says former WWE star (Exclusive)

AEW President Tony Khan has had a polarizing effect on wrestlers and wrestling fans. Some of his decisions have created controversy, including a recent one where he booked Sting to win his last match, retain the AEW World Tag Team Championship, and then vacate it.

Several wrestling icons have been negative in regard to Khan, and one former WWE star has gone ahead and compared him to another controversial figure in wrestling: Vince Russo.

During a conversation - on an episode of Sportskeeda Wrestling's The Wrestling Outlaws - that veered from Darby Allin's dangerous spot at AEW Revolution to the booking decisions by Vince Russo, EC3 had an interesting take.

While Jim Cornette has publicly lashed out about the safety aspects of the matches, Vince Russo has asked for booking rights to AEW, and Eric Bischoff has also spoken about the quality of the matches. And now, whether in jest or not, EC3 has spoken about Russo's contribution to the industry:

"Tony Khan has done more to harm wrestling than Vince Russo has ever done," he said. [12:28 - 12:38]

Further in the conversation, EC3 also gave some advice to Darby Allin.

"Darby obviously had a real passion: climb Mount Everest, right? That's something he really wanted to do, something he's been talking about for a while. These guys can understand and learn that you're already over. So these people aren't cheering you dying, they are cheering what you've done, who you are, and what you mean to them. So, don't be afraid to scale back a little bit. Don't be afraid if it's not a huge, big match, and just do the best of and make them happy, because they are not going to think you did bad, they're not gonna think it's a bad match," he revealed. [5:17 - 6:17]

The conversation then changed to whether Darby Allin would be missed by audiences if he were to take a break, and Russo had his take as well. He said that the audience wouldn't care and would miss him for a week at the most before forgetting all about him later.

Tony Khan has earned the ire of fans several times for his booking

Tony Khan is the President and head booker for AEW, and his creative decisions have been quite different from what wrestling fans are accustomed to.

One of the biggest shock bookings was at AEW Revolution 2024, where the legendary Sting retained his now-vacated Tag Team Championship with Darby Allin. This was a rare occurrence, as wrestlers going away or retiring normally pass the mantle to the younger generation.

Many fans believe that Tony Khan takes on too much of the responsibility for booking All Elite Wrestling's programming. Whether the 41-year-old eases up and delegates more of the process to his creative team remains to be seen.

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Vince Russo thinks Tony Khan does not care about AEW ratings. Find out why in the video below.