History has its eyes on WWE. Following Vince McMahon’s return to the WWE Board of Directors and Stephanie McMahon’s resignation as WWE Chairwoman and co-CEO, reports have emerged that WWE is looking to sell to a parent company. Among potential suitors are Comcast, Amazon, Endeavor, Disney, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Chatter about the latter has led to significant unrest within the professional wrestling landscape, as many have questioned the morality of WWE selling itself to a country that bars stars like Sami Zayn and MVP from performing within its borders.
In the midst of all this uncertainty, things have been business as usual for All Elite Wrestling. Tony Khan’s young wrestling promotion kicked off the new year with a fresh look for AEW Dynamite and drew a $700,000 gate at this week’s show in Los Angeles.
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Even though the Jacksonville-based company operates as its own entity, AEW star Matt Hardy believes that WWE’s behind-the-scenes chaos will only benefit his current employer.
“There’s a lot of sales, rumors, and innuendo going around. If you ask me, more than anything, who benefits from all this? I would say AEW,” Hardy said on his podcastย (h/t Fightful). “I’m very happy to be at AEW currently right now. AEW has been producing great content, I think, and one thing I love about it, at WWE, they’re posting games with thrones. It’s like in and out, who can retain the power, and who can backstab, or who can get someone else out, or how can I get back in, whatever it may be. Here, fortunately, it is just TK [Tony Khan] sitting in the iron throne.”
Hardy qualified his statement by noting that “there is opportunity” during tumultuous times.
“WWE, for many, many years, has been the leader in pro wrestling and sports entertainment. But I mean now, it’s really in a chaotic state,” Hardy continued. “It’s just gonna be really interesting to see where WWE lies in six months from now. I just think all this chaos going on is going to be beneficial to Tony Khan and AEW more than anybody. I think AEW has bought and earned a lot of goodwill with wrestling, and I think now with this WWE stuff going on, AEW benefits from that because they’re like, ‘Well, I know we have AEW, and they’re very good to us.’ They’re good to their fans, and they seek to be run by a good human being. I will emphasize that Tony Khan is an amazing and phenomenal human being.”
AEW returns to television tonight with AEW Rampage, airing at 10 PM ET on TNT.
