Tony Khan credits the COVID lockdown era for helping AEW as it tried in its second year to compete with WWE. 2020 and early 2021 saw both AEW and WWE continuing to run shows, with WWE running at the PC and in the ThunderDome while AEW held their shows at Daily’s Place. Khan spoke on Brian Sozzi on Power Players about how he began with AEW’s creative and during that portion of the conversation, he said that the era put AEW and WWE on a “level playing field.” And I think people backstage saw that I had a mind for it and had good ideas. We were putting on wrestling shows [that] people all over the world still talk about, during the pandemic with AEW.”