Tony Khan Criticizes WWE Contracts, Says WWE Wrestlers Are Only Signing a ‘Temporary Agreement’

– During a recent interview on Busted Open Radio, AEW President Tony Khan addressed this week’s latest round of WWE releases, and he claimed that any wrestlers who signs a contract with WWE “is not signing a real contract.” Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

Tony Khan on MJF commenting on his 2024 contract status on Dynamite: “Yes, I knew he was going to say that, he’s been saying it for a long time. I have no problem with it. I signed him to a five year contract two years ago, he has three years left. I’m totally fine (with his comments). There may be a bidding war in 2024, I’m fine with that.”

Khan on WWE talent contracts and releases: “Anyone who signs a contract (in WWE) these days, is not signing a real contract. It’s a temporary arrangement. 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. 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.”

Tony Khan on the talents who work in AEW: “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. 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.”