AEW president Tony Khan doesn’t take shots at WWE very often. But when CM Punk decided to tag him in a post regarding WWE Backstage, the man couldn’t help himself. Punk, while promoting his first official appearance on the Fox Sports 1 show as an analyst, wrote on Monday, “It IS weird trying to catch up on 5+ years of rasslin’, I’m doing what I can. There’s bright spots, mostly women from what I can tell. There’s BAD too. I’m gonna talk about it, and no one is safe. Join us.” He then tagged Renee Young, Booker T, Paige, Vince McMahon and Khan, possibly hinting that he’ll mention AEW on the show.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Khan responded with a joke, referencing WWE’s travel issues from a few weeks back that delayed more than 100 wrestlers and production crew members from leaving Saudi Arabia for by nearly a full day.
No one is safe? Sounds like a plane full of wrestlers in Saudi Arabia!
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) November 18, 2019
Randy Orton noticed the tweet and decided to fire back with an article regarding Khan’s father, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan. Khan blasted “The Viper” in his response by mentioning how Orton had been teasing a move to AEW during his contract negotiations with WWE.
I thought you only tagged me in your posts when you were grasping for leverage. That article’s over a year old + is about baseless claims made about my dad years ago. That’s the best you can do, nothing. Meanwhile in the time since that was written, you used the N word on twitch.
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) November 19, 2019
Brandi Rhodes had the best response gif for that one.
That’s the end of the fight. TK-O. pic.twitter.com/OVInpHTful
— Brandi Rhodes (@TheBrandiRhodes) November 19, 2019
Khan was referencing a live Twitch stream Orton appeared on last month, where he was caught saying the n-word. It was the same stream where he had some surprisingly positive comments about AEW Dynamite‘s TNT premiere.
Rhodes and her husband Cody talked about Orton’s social media teases during a recent Starrcast interview.
“I encourage it honestly, because if they’re feeling any way where they’re starting to tip, people who do this they are all very talented people and they have big followings and stuff like that,” Brandi said. “Why not do something? Don’t do nothing. Do something to showcase, ‘Hey, this is how I’m feeling. There are these other options.’ I don’t mind that. Sometimes I know what they’re doing when they do that and I’ll give them that little bit back because it’s okay.”
“We’re brothers and sisters as wrestlers,” Cody said. “We really are. It doesn’t matter what roof we’re under. And the the wrestling industry is, if you compare to other entertainment of comparable influence like popular tv, where they’re paid so much and they’re unionized and they have so much to protect them and safeguards. One of the most exciting things about AEW is we’ve been able to raise the entire pay floor for the entire industry. So if Randy wants to take a dumb photo on an elevator and tag people he doesn’t even know in it and they’re dumb enough to buy it and they pay him a certain amount, good for Randy Orton.”
