Tony Khan Addresses Recent AEW Talent Releases

Published: Mar 6, 2025 by Jamie Toolan | Last Updated: Mar 7, 2025 by Jamie Toolan

Jamie has been covering the world of wrestling for four years and currently holds the position of Assistant Editor of WrestleTalk.com. During his time working for WrestleTalk.com he has written and published over 4,000 news and feature articles covering events and happenings from WWE, AEW, TNA and a variety of international and independent wrestling promotions.
Tony Khan Addresses Recent AEW Talent Releases AEW

Tony Khan has addressed the recent AEW releases of Malakai Black, Ricky Saints (fka Ricky Starks), Miro and Rey Fenix.

On February 10 it was reported that Black, Miro and Saints had all been released by AEW, with the latter debuting on WWE NXT TV just one day later.

Rey Fenix would then join that list earlier this week, months after it had been reported that AEW had added injury time to his contract.

Following these four notable departures, Tony Khan was asked whether his philosophy has changed regarding talent releases at the AEW Revolution 2025 media call.

Khan responded:

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“I do think it’s a case-by-case basis. I think everything is a case-by-case basis, and so much of life is a case-by-case basis. Philosophically, there is a change in what I’ve been doing.

“It felt like the right thing for the company and everyone involved at this point. That’s the thinking behind that. It’s on a case-by-case basis and they are all different situations.

“In this case, they did have similar outcomes. It’s fair to ask why now and why I wouldn’t have done that before. I just decided that’s what I thought was the right thing to do at this point.”

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While Malakai Black had featured on AEW TV as recently as Full Gear in November, Miro, Saints and Rey Fenix had not been seen in quite some time prior to their releases from the company.

Saints recently made his WWE in-ring debut on the February 25 episode of NXT, with Miro, Black and Fenix all linked with moves to the company.

To find out the latest on WWE’s plans for Fenix ahead of WrestleMania 41 follow this link here.

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Transcript via Fightful

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