AEW CEO Tony Khan’s biggest flaw is giving WWE an unfair advantage and fans don’t realise it.

At no point in history has there been a a battle for pro wrestling supremacy with such little margin for error. Even during the WCW vs WWE days, things were’s quite like this. For weeks, Vince McMahon was the underdog, fighting a losing battle against Eric Bischoff and Turner Media, only to turn things around later and stay on top for the foreseeable future. However, things have changed now.

With social media keeping fans on tenterhooks at all points and any scope for error being severely diminished, both Tony Khan and Triple H are always under scrutiny for the decisions they make. Both sets of fans keep jostling about which style of booking is better and how the styles are better for pro wrestling in general.

But there’s one flaw that gives WWE the advantage and Tony Khan needs to rectify this ASAP.

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One of the major criticisms against Tony Khan and AEW, and rightfully so, is the fact that their matches are never announced, and the segments just randomly pop up out of nowhere without much build. One good example of this on the latest edition of AEW Dynamite was Jon Moxley vs AR Fox.

AR Fox hasn’t been relevant on AEW programming in ages and nobody really remembers or cares about him. To the casual fan, he’s as good as a nobody, and even the most hardcore AEW fan would have to agree that he was last relevant in…well…never. To have in a random Continental Title qualifier match against one of the top stars in Jon Moxley is a waste of both Moxley’s time and the fans’.

Then there comes the other part, Tony Khan arbitrarily announced the Will Ospreay vs Jon Moxley World Title match at All Out later this month. The match is great, it was bound to happen, and it’s probably the right move, but the announcement makes no sense.

Jon Moxley and Will Ospreay had the perfect tease, the perfect setup for a future match and that bout could have been the second biggest Ospreay feud after Omega, but that was abruptly announced at the end of Dynamite, to the shock of many, even both the stars involved who couldn’t believe what they were saying.

A WWE main event of any sorts gets dragged out for weeks, gets a proper build, promo segments, and often a phase where the match is left unofficially official. But that’s never the case with AEW. This week’s show could have easily ended with just the tease. It would played perfectly into the teases from earlier where Ricochet and Gabe Kidd both wanted a shot at Will Ospreay (Ricochet mainly, Gabe Kidd just wanted to destroy him). With both Jon Moxley and Ricochet in the hunt and Andrade having the Casino Gauntlet contract, this could have played perfectly into a guessing game and a fighting game about who would win and would actually challenge for title.

There are still four weeks remaining for All Out, and two of them could have been easily spent doing that, while the third and fourth could have set up the match. Instead it has now been left in the open with fans having been given no reason to tune in next week.

This is a dangerous strategy where you are urging fans to tune in anyway, instead of stroking their curiosity to check out what happens next week. Cliffhangers are not just fun, they are important in wrestling, they are essential tools to force viewers to tune in and consume the product.

WWE has done it for ages, limousines blowing up, Ambulances overturning, or alliances breaking up without any proper resolution or hint. You are forced to come back next week to find out where that story goes.

This is one of Tony Khan’s major drawbacks. Out of an exceptional PPV, fans have no reason to tune in next week, no reason to have a lingering curiosity that eats away at them for six more days before they can find a resolution, and no reason to be invested in the show.

At its heart wrestling is showbiz, it’s how you engage the fans and draw new ones that determines the success or failures of your promotion.

This is not to claim WWE is perfect, it has some pretty bad booking and some unnecessarily drawn out feuds too. But if there’s one that Triple H and his colleagues at Stamford understand, it’s the showbiz. They know that at the end of the day, the ultimate aim is to bring a first-time watches back for a second time, or a 99th time viewer back for a 100th time.

That being said, even WWE have made some awful mistakes lately. They revealed Big Cass’ arrival before fans could even enjoy the surprise and are doing the same for Lola Vice’s main roster call up. But announcing a main event four weeks before a PPV with no build just randomly as a graphic at the end of a weekly show is something Triple H would probably refrain from doing.