Tony Khan Acknowledges That He Got Satnam Singh's AEW Debut Wrong

During an interview with Busted Open Radio, AEW President Tony Khan admitted he could have produced the debut of Satnam Singh on last week's Dynamite better.

The debut has drawn negative reactions as when the lights when out during the segment and came back on nobody knew who Singh was.

On the debut of Satnam Singh:

“I could have done it better. It’s one of those things, I wish I had done it differently because the fans are always going to be right so if the fans don’t like something…sometimes, there is something where you’re trying to get heat, so if you’re in a ‘trying to get heat,’ situation people aren’t always going to love it, but there are things about it that I probably should’ve done differently, now that I see in hindsight. To be honest, it wasn’t my idea to turn the lights out, but I am the ultimate filter and who everything goes through. I put the outline of the show together and when I came in Wednesday, I thought it was the best outline I had ever put together, one of them, at least. It was as much strong wrestling as you can fit into the program and I thought up until that point, the show was excellent. That was the one thing we went off on. People might not have liked it. Satnam is an important person for us, it was important to debut him in a meaningful way and to show that, with Jay Lethal, he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with.”

“At the same time, turning the lights off for somebody people didn’t recognize, it’s a great point. To be honest, the person who brought off turning the lights off has over 30 years of experience in pro wrestling. When they brought it up to me, I was only looking at the pros and I should have thought about the cons, because that is my job as the person who decides what goes in and who filters out these ideas. We have all these people in the room and somehow, not one person brought up the negative. When we did it, all the negatives were very obvious. I’m not going to say who it was and I don’t need to list all the credentials of all the great people around me in the production meeting, but it was a lot of veteran people. Nobody said that and when it happened, I agreed with the fans completely,” he said. “When it came up, I said, ‘that could work, it’s different.’ I was looking for how to physically get him in there for that moment and somebody, like I said, with over 30 years of experience said, ‘we could turn the lights out and do this’ and I went, ‘Okay.’ I should have seen the negatives before we did it and I really didn’t see them until it actually happened. That’s not Satnam’s fault, it’s definitely not Jay Lethal’s fault. At the same time, I’m very excited for it. It created a lot of buzz. Satnam’s debut has been the most-watched thing out of the show and it’s gotten international attention I wanted it to get, but I didn’t want it to loom over a lot of great stuff on the show either and I don’t think it has or will.”

On listening to AEW fan feedback:

“I appreciate what their feedback was and now that I’m in my third year, I would not do that again and these are things you learn.”