Tony Khan On Trimming The AEW Roster

With the AEW roster ever expanding with the announcement of every new signing and forbidden door debut, questions arise for Tony Khan.

While some of the early talent with AEW announced as having re-signed with the company such as Young Bucks, other notables like Cody Rhodes have yet to re-sign.  With no indication that Tony Khan plans to release anyone from their active contracts, there has been discussion around renewals of expiring contracts.

When asked by TVInsider about what goes into deciding whether to offer a new contract or parting ways after the contract expires, Khan said:

“When we started a lot of people had contracts that were a couple of years long and a lot of them are coming up. I have really tried hard to be very considerate of the people on the roster, especially going through the pandemic. That encompassed a long period of time where we were still in our first year of television and going into our second. I kept a lot of people under contract even though I wasn’t necessarily using them on television because I wanted them to still have paying work, which was hard to come by for wrestling during the pandemic where there weren’t any independent shows. Really only two places were running and the other place was cutting people left and right. I did want to give some job security to people. Now with so many wrestlers coming in, I can’t renew all the contracts. I’ve had to make some tough choices based on ability, fan response, or both. I try to maintain the best roster I can for the company and fans.”

Recent months have seen the addition of huge star talent from WWE to AEW including CM Punk, Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, Kyle O’Reilly, Bryan Danielson, and now Keith Lee, leaving many to wonder what will happen to the screen time for some of their independent favorites.

While AEW has already seen some talent part ways with the company, notably Big Swole, others such as Peter Avalon have announced themselves as still affiliated with the company but also open for independent bookings, suggesting that Khan’s ‘forbidden door’ style of business seems to leave the option for continuing partnership despite contract status open for talent.

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• contracts
• tony khan
• AEW
• wwe

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