EXCLUSIVE: Don Callis says he learned to manage his faction by watching Tony Khan run his professional sports franchises, details on how his faction operates as a unit off camera

Don Callis, the leader of The Don Callis Family in AEW has worked nearly everywhere in his career with stints in WWE, ECW, NJPW, TNA in a variety of roles as a wrestler, manager, wrestler, and as an executive behind the scenes. Callis is currently having the best run of his career in AEW that started with him managing Kenny Omega before transitioning to presently having his own stable of big name wrestlers including Andrade El Idolo, Kyle Fletcher, Kazuchika Okada, and Konosuke Takeshita.

Callis said the one thing he learned from his previous stops is that he is no longer hiding how smart he is. “Well, I think for the first part of my career, I tried to hide how much smarter I was than the people that were involved in this business and because I thought it would get me heat, which it did,” said Callis during an interview on Radican Worldwide now available for PWTorch VIP members. “But now I’ve embraced it and I look at it, it’s like I’m just as God made me. I’m very gifted intellectually. I’m very gifted physically. I have the biological organ age of a 28-year-old. That was recently proven through the data.”

Callis believes that he also learned an important lesson from Tony Khan about how to operate as a manager by watching how Khan runs Fulham, his soccer club, and how he runs the Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL. “So, I’m someone who has learned to embrace my greatness and that’s why I’m on the best run of my career with Tony Khan in AEW right now,” said Callis. “And I also learned something from Tony Khan, which is I always operated any guys I managed as a typical wrestling faction, as a manager, as a, you know, you look at the Bobby Heenan’s of the world or whoever, the J.J. Dillons. Pick your guy.

“But I watched Tony Khan. I watched how he runs his soccer club, Fulham. I watched how he runs the Jacksonville Jaguars and I said, ‘This is far more advanced that pro wrestling.’ So, now I keep the money on the field with my players, my members, and I run the Don Callis Family like a true sports franchise. People say, ‘When is it gonna be enough? Why do you need so much top talent?’ And I say, ‘What sports franchise would say, ‘Yeah, I’ve already got Connor McDavid. Don’t give me Nathan MacKinnon as well. I don’t need him.’

“You always want more. I always say The Don Callis Family takes everything that can be taken and then we take a little more. So, I’ve learned to embrace that about myself and the results are very clear. The Don Callis Family is the most powerful faction in pro wrestling, not in terms of only what we do in the ring, but if I decided to have a work stoppage, we walk off the job. Tony Khan’s gonna have a hard time putting on a television show.”

Callis said one of the reasons he’s been able to work well with Tony Khan behind the scenes to build The Don Callis Family into such a powerful force is his track record of success. “Well, part of it is the track record,” said Callis. “I’m often compared to basketball luminaries like Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, Bobby Knight in the sense that those guys all had great ability to get guys with very different personalities on the same page. Those guys all were able to be a magnet for talent.

“My track record compared to everyone else in the business who does what I do is unmatched. I mean, everything I touch turns to gold and people know that. And the guys in my group don’t just get main event placement, they don’t just get my lobby Tony Khan on the golf course for better matches for them, they also get the benefit.

“They get a PhD level course on how to handle their business, how to handle crowds, how to handle match preparation, how to handle next generation training. I spent last year $350,000 plus on my own personal physical and mental rejuvenation strategies. And some guys would look at that and go, ‘Geez, that’s an awful lot of money.’ But we wanna be doing this in the Don Callis Family for 25 years.”

Callis said one thing that keeps his faction strong is staying connected after the show ends. “Our family, our faction if you wanna call it that, does not disperse at the end of the show,” said Callis. “We’re in constant communication. I have two Don Callis Family compounds. One in Los Angeles and one in Miami, and I have a third that I’m building in the state of Sinaloa in Mexico. We all get together. When you see us, you see us together. It’s not a work. It’s not for fun. It’s a real family.”

NOTE: Sign up here and GO VIP to listen to Don Callis’s exclusive interview on Radican Worldwide talking about all aspects of his career ahead of the AEW Dynasty PPV on April 12. Dynasty will be available on most PPV providers, HBO Max, and PPV.com.