Tony Khan is hoping for an August bank holiday weekend to remember – culminating in the “most exciting” experience of his life at All Elite Wrestling’s All In show at Wembley.
Fulham’s director of football will be in the capital for their Premier League trip to Arsenal on Saturday, August 26 before spending the evening celebrating his mother’s birthday.
The next day will see professional wrestling return to Wembley Stadium for the first time in 31 years, with Khan’s own promotion – AEW – hosting a show that has already sold over 70,000 tickets without a match being announced.
“I think it’ll be a lot of emotions at once, to go to such a familiar place to me and my family where we’ve had some of our greatest memories,” Khan told the PA news agency about heading back to Wembley, where he has seen Fulham twice win the Sky Bet Championship play-off final and watched the Jacksonville Jaguars – the NFL franchise owned by his father and with whom he holds an executive position.
“If you look at my Twitter account, my header – the background – is celebrating at Wembley Stadium at the final whistle (of the play-off final).
“That was the greatest day of my life to this point, now I’m so happy that this summer I have to look forward to AEW: All In.
“It’s going to be a great weekend because August 26 is my mother’s 75th birthday – we will go up to north London for Arsenal vs Fulham on Saturday and celebrate my mother’s 75th birthday after I get done with the AEW production meeting.
“I’m sure we’ll have a lovely evening in Mayfair, hopefully celebrating a good performance at Arsenal, I hope, and then August 27 is going to be a cultural event.”
It was a bold choice to book AEW at Wembley but it has been vindicated and we haven't even announced any matches yet— Tony Khan
While professional wrestling has its share of detractors, Khan insists the sheer volume of tickets shifted for All In – with over 35,000 sold in a pre-sale event – proves it belongs on the Wembley stage.
Asked about the sales, Khan added: “Well, it definitely beat projections!
“It was absolutely the right choice for AEW to debut in the UK at Wembley Stadium and the support from the fans and ticket sales have been unbelievable – it was a bold choice to book AEW at Wembley but it has been vindicated and we haven’t even announced any matches yet.
“For me, personally, it is the most excited I’ve ever been for any event in my entire life.
“In 2018, truly one of the greatest experiences of my life was being at Wembley Stadium in the Royal Box when Fulham on our promotion to the Premier League and it feels like it was so long ago.
“Honestly, I was in the Royal Box and I had my notebook and certainly AEW was in there as something I wanted to work on.
“It’s my dream, truly my dream. One my dreams was to bring a big pay-per-view event to Wembley and I actually had written a script for one in 2006 when I was at University of Illinois and it wasn’t the first time I thought about doing wrestling at Wembley – that was over 17 years ago.
“I’ve always wanted to bring a great wrestling event to Wembley Stadium. It’s definitely been a dream of mine and I’m very optimistic that it can be AEW’s finest hour when we debut.”
