Tony Khan Comments On WWE Mass Releases

AEW President Tony Khan has commented on the recent WWE mass releases, stating that the company cannot keep every wrestler under its thumb.

In the last year, WWE has released a large number of onscreen stars from WWE and NXT. Speaking on the Le Batard & Friends – South Beach Sessions podcast, Tony Khan recalled WWE signing a lot of independent stars several years ago.

Believing these releases were somewhat inevitable with WWE’s business model, Khan said:

“Well, they had a really big roster and they’ve chosen to try to maximize their profit margins by letting talent go to reduce the amount of cost they have due to talent. So they had a lot of really good people and they’re making choices about why people have value to them.

“So I can’t say what number they’re trying to hit, but they’re definitely trying to hit a number there. So I think it’s about profitability, and they’re making choices I’m sure they don’t necessarily want to make, but they’ve let good people go in the process, absolutely.

“I think I can actually put them over and give them some credit here because they can’t keep every wrestler under their thumb, they just couldn’t do it. They tried to sign so many people and had cast such a wide net for so long, that inevitably, somebody with money and connections was going to be able to come in and start a wrestling business.

“The disconnect (for any other potential start-up), would be they were probably going to have to pass it off to somebody else to run the business. One of the real things I had going when we launched this company was all the institutional knowledge I’d built up over the years. You know, Dynamite is a show I’ve been writing on paper for over 25 years for 26 years, and Rampage, its sister show, is a show I conceived over 10 years ago.

“So I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life and I really just needed somebody to believe in me, which was TNT/WarnerMedia. I don’t think it was really possible to stop me in this case, because, you know, I would have found a media partner, I would have found wrestlers who wanted to work with me, and I would have been able to launch a show.”

AEW has notably signed a number of former WWE talents this year, including Malakai Black and 2point0. After over 7 years away from a wrestling ring, CM Punk officially announced that he was #AllElite on last week’s episode of Rampage.

On the August 25 episode of Dynamite, CM Punk teased the AEW arrival of Daniel Bryan.

Transcription via Fightful. 

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• Releases
• tony khan
• AEW
• wwe

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