Over the last month, AEW CEO Tony Khan reminisced at times of being an 8-year-old boy, seeing one of his first live wrestling shows.
The show was WCW SuperBrawl on May 19, 1991, at the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. In the main event, Ric Flair, the WCW champion, faced Tatsumi Fujinami, at the time both the IWGP and NWA champion. That led him down the rabbit hole, or in those days, to a variety of video stores, to watch all kinds of big WCW shows. It was also the key to his discovering the world of Japanese wrestling.
“I saw SuperBrawl ’91 that summer live when I was eight and loved it,” Khan said. “And then at various Central Illinois video stores, tracked down tapes and rented the Tokyo Dome show [from March 21, 1991,] which led up to it, along with a lot of other shows like Bash [at the Beach] ’89, Starrcade ’86–90 and [Halloween] Havoc ’89–90.”
