Tony Khan is a man of many hats. He’s the Senior President of Football and Analytics for the Jacksonville Jaguars, the franchise his father, Shad Khan, purchased in 2011. He’s also the founder, co-owner, CEO and president of All Elite Wrestling, the Florida-based startup that’s emerged as the WWE’s most serious North American competition since WCW went kaput.
Occasionally these two intersect. When this happens, it’s glorious and stupid in all the ways professional wrestling and football are. There was the first Stadium Stampede match, which saw the Jags’ home stadium play backdrop to 100 yards of suplexes and Sammy Guevara’s death at the hands of a real life cowboy. There was the second Stadium Stampede match, which provided the only positive memory of Jacksonville’s Urban Meyer era.
And now there’s this:
Bless you @TonyKhan. pic.twitter.com/1yhY5XlU29
— TDE Wrestling (@tde_gif) April 26, 2024
“Tony Khan becomes the first ever NFL executive in a draft room,” said NFL Network’s Rich Eisen. “Shaking off the effects of a piledriver he received on national television in a wrestling ring the night before.”
That piledriver (pushes up glasses, raises finger) — actually a Meltzer Driver in which the subject is piledriven while absorbing a 450 flip off the top turnbuckle — was courtesy of fellow AEW founders and executive vice presidents the Young Bucks. They attacked Khan following a dastardly sneak attack by Jack Perry, the wrestler formerly known as Jungle Boy and real-life son of actor Luke Perry.
Yeah man, wrestling is wonderful.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING HERE?!
Watch #AEWDynamite LIVE on TBS!@boy_myth_legend | @TonyKhan | @YoungBucks | @RainmakerXOkada pic.twitter.com/Dv2BeH0jsO
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) April 25, 2024
Khan, ever adherent to the art of kayfabe — the commitment that makes grown men say “it’s real to me, dammit” — took the angle to its logical next step. He showed up in the Jags war room still selling the injury inflicted by Perry, the Bucks and new(ish) signee Kazuchika Okada. Thus, you have a very real NFL exec having a say in what could be a franchise-altering draft pick, all while nursing an entirely made up injury.
