WWE recently made another round of cuts to its roster, which brings up the total number of 2021 releases to around 80. Every round of cuts brings more discussion about WWE contracts and also adds more and more wrestlers to the free-agent pool who will be looking for jobs. Many times AEW comes up in those possible landing spots, and in a new interview with Busted Open Radio, AEW President Tony Khan addressed all of the cuts WWE has been making, the possibility of AEW signing those talents that were released, and what a WWE contract really is, calling them “temporary arrangements” Here’s what he said.
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“Anyone who signs a contract (in WWE) these days, is not signing a real contract. It’s a temporary arrangement,” Khan said. “People who come wrestle with me, a lot of these people are frankly lifers and they know that. There are some people who are here, who work really hard and there are some people who come in and work more than really hard and I feel like is their actual life and will be with me for the rest of my life. I don’t know if everybody who works for my competition can say that. I think there are people who work there and they aren’t sure they will be there next week. There is a lot more security with a contract here.”
“I can’t say I’m going to extend every contract or bring every person back, but I also haven’t been doing mass layoffs. I’m not the most profitable company of all time, I don’t brag about being the most profitable company of all time. I do brag about bringing in a lot of revenue for a start up and being a real success story. What I will brag about is we haven’t been doing mass layoffs and we haven’t fired 15 people last week or 18 people the week before that. It’s not something to be proud of when a company lets all those people go and you’re putting press releases out like that frequently, I don’t think it’s a good thing. I don’t want to make light of that kind of thing ever,” Khan said.
“When you talk about a bidding war, each person is their own individual case and there may be multiple people coming for his services, but we’ve seen most of the talent going in one direction and, I think that’s for a variety of reasons, but I’ve been very selective in the people I’ve signed and every time there has been a mass layoff on the other side it’s terrible and I can’t say I would be able to take on every one of these people,” Khan said.
“I take a lot of pride in all the people that work here and I know that not everyone is going to work here forever, but if somebody is not going to work here, please know that I’m going to feel really bad about it,” Khan said. “That’s one of the reasons why we haven’t let a lot of people go yet and I’ve eaten some of those costs, especially through the pandemic when there was really no where else to get work in wrestling.”
What do you think of Khan’s comments? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
H/T Fightful
