Tony Khan was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Son of Shahid Khan, who made his money in auto parts, Khan has many responsibilities in the front offices of Fulham FC and the Jacksonville Jaguars. His passion project, however, is All Elite Wrestling. He’s not only the money mark1 behind it and the creative force for all the main storylines, he is the most vociferous defender on Twitter, sometimes to his own detriment. Take New Year’s Eve, for example. An interview with recently released wrestler Aerial Hull, better known as Big Swole, claimed in an interview with news outlet Fightful that AEW needed to work on the company’s diversity. Her claims have been heard on social media by fans and onlookers, who have bemoaned the whiteness of the main event and the lack of depth in the women’s division. Of course, the urge to defend the company is strong both for fans and for Khan. And of course, one might not be attacked if they pointed out that some of Swole’s claims were disputable at best and/or bad faith attempts to angle a job with WWE, but none of that really diminishes the overarching good points that she made.
Khan did not react with restrained tact. In fact, he responded in the absolute worst way possible:
Let’s see… tokenizing his Black talent for points, check. Attacking her talent after having employed her for two years and using her talents to help get over the current Women’s Champion initially, check. Ending the tweet with a cheap plug for that night’s show, thus throwing the match he was trying to promote under the bus, check. As of writing this (Sunday night), he still had not deleted the tweet, even if he appears to have smoothed things over with angry Black talent in his locker room. Either way, his public relations took a hit and for absolutely no reason whatsoever. He could have, and should have, kept his mouth shut, or more accurately, his phone in his pocket.
Two days later, comedian and voice actor Ron Funches got himself in trouble on Twitter. A wrestling fan and involved party on the independent scene himself, he quote retweeted a gif of a match involving AJ Gray, a Black professional wrestler, and two blonde women in Billie Starkz and Allie Katch. The former is not yet of legal age, which is important to note because Funches’ reference was inappropriately sexual:
Instead of deleting the tweet or ignoring the blowback, Funches started picking fights with people calling him out on it, including Gray himself. Again, it was completely unnecessary. Funches is a successful standup comedian and voice actor. He gets residual checks from his work in the wildly successful Trolls franchise. He went out of pocket on Twitter, didn’t apologize, and once again took a giant public relations disaster. The guy, upon writing of this post, left a tweet up where he made an explicitly sexual reference to a girl who had not yet legally passed the threshold to give consent to receive such sexual advances.
I doubt either Khan or Funches has fumbled the bag, but the fact that they’d even risk that kind of PR disaster shows the absolute hubris involved in how they operate in public fora. If you think this kind of thing is isolated to people who have professional wrestling brain, think again. Pro wrestler brain is strong in how awfully it makes people act, but JK Rowling is about as far away from wrestling as you can get. She has made billions on writing the Harry Potter series of books and helming all the movies surrounding that franchise. If I had that kind of money and clout, I’d sit in a castle and never let anyone know what I thought about anything that wasn’t about what Hogwarts house you belonged to. Yet, she has taken up the mantel that seemingly one in every three celebrities from her native England has carried the last decade or so, the oppressive and perpetual persecution of trans people for merely existing.
Then there’s Elon Musk, whose absolute pathetic loser stink I documented here a month before this post. People say that whenever he tweets people can gain or lose millions of dollars, and given the wild fluctuations in Tesla stock that happen based on what weak gross meme shit comes out of his phone/laptop, they’re not wrong. All of the desire to have ungodly amounts of money and fame and all the same number of Twitter likes that users like @dril have organically stem from the same place: greed. Having enough money to live comfortably or fame to have people you’ve never met adore you is never enough. Everyone needs more. It makes sense for Musk to have this mental disorder infect his pea-sized brain because he’s an industrialist in the capitalist system. Capitalism is based on infinite growth in a near-universe where resources are finite. It’s unsustainable, but don’t tell the people who believe in it whole hog are too far gone.
What about Khan, Rowling, and Funches? Why do they have the greed for good press at all times no matter how smart, compassionate, or selfless their decisions are? Personally, I have no idea what the driver for that is. Maybe they got a taste once and couldn’t get enough. People in this country and in more than a few other parts of the world have replaced monarchy and other leadership figures with celebrities as objects of their undying affection. I can see the temptation in that power and having it breed more.
But at what point does the backlash start to creak through the barrier of ego? When does someone tell you that you’re wrong? Is it the fact that billionaires have yes-men that never let them hear the word “no?” Is the fact that you’ve created the single most profitable and beloved IP in the last 20 years enough to make you believe nothing you say is wrong? Do comedians really have that much stronger an obligation to the code of comedy than they do the feelings of fans they may have offended? I don’t know this answer because I’ve never been in that position.
That’s why if I ever find myself in that position, you can guarantee you won’t hear a peep from me. If I became rich beyond all imagination, I wouldn’t tell a soul. If people HAD to know, then I would delete my social media. Or I would just use that social media like Sam Neill does and post pictures of animals I was raising or to hype the fast food meal that I was endorsing. You would not catch me online blowing whatever goodwill I had by being rich and famous. Maybe that’s easy to say when there’s such a minute chance that I’ll ever hit that same vein as Khan or Rowling or even Funches. Still, there’s absolutely no debate. You cannot have it all. Either everyone loves you or you get to be rich and famous. If you try to have it both ways, you’re only going to end up having to deal with people dunking on you endlessly with quote retweets because you thought turning off replies would make people leave you alone.
“Money mark” is an industry term for a rich guy who funds a promotion. If you think it’s a derisive term, you’re probably right, although Khan is a bit savvier than some of the other people promoters have duped for their funding.