Tony Khan, USA Network are having the social media beef you never knew you needed

Poor Jinder Mahal got dragged into the weirdest AEW-WWE social media crossfire.

Some days are relatively quiet on the pro wrestling internet. And other days you have the owner, GM and head of creative of one company trading shots with the broadcast partner of another. Today was one of the latter.

It all started innocently enough. Raj Giri, formerly of Wrestling Inc., which he founded, posted on X (yeah, it’s silly to call it that, it’s Twitter, but hey) after the showdown between Seth Rollins and Jinder Mahal on Raw Monday night.

USA Network, which of course broadcasts Raw and has some funny social media people, responded thusly:

That could honestly have been the end of it, even though, yes, it’s a bit of a jab at Khan, who has brought up Cagematch ratings at times while defending AEW booking. He could have let it go, especially since it was in the replies of Raj Giri.

He chose not to.

You can at least feel where Khan is going here. Hook calling out world champion Samoa Joe did feel like it came out of nowhere, and some people online did complain about it, as they do. But Mahal being thrown into the mix also just kind of appeared out of thin air, plus it happened a week after Jinder was in fact hindered by The Rock. So if you’re going to question one, maybe question both.

But he did not stop there.

Now this just reads as Mahal catching strays. The man is a former world champion and has had some horrendous bad luck with injuries, so it’s unclear why he needs to be lumped into this so directly.

Should Khan be doing stuff like this? It’s his company, so he can do whatever he pleases. It certainly has people talking, as evidenced by the fact that “Tony Khan” is trending hard on X as this is being typed.

That said, there’s a genuine discussion to be had about whether the “any publicity is good publicity” school of thought applies to AEW at the current time. At the very least, if Khan and USA decide to keep going back and forth on this, it should be entertaining in its own right.

Update: A new front in this social media battle has now opened up as Khan jousts with Eric Bischoff.