Booker T Says Tony Khan Has Taken A Huge Gamble With New Signings

Booker T has had his say on AEW’s latest big-money signings.

In recent weeks Will Ospreay, Kazuchika Okada, and Mercedes Mone have all made their full AEW debuts. While Ospreay and Okada had appeared on AEW television previously, Mone was introduced to a monster reaction from the Boston crowd at Big Business.

The trio all signed with AEW despite interest from WWE, and it’s been reported that one of the tipping points was AEW offering each star more money than the competition.

Mercedes Mone is reportedly the highest-paid woman in the wrestling world, and even some within WWE felt Triple H’s offer to Will Ospreay was “way too low.”

Speaking on his Hall of Fame podcast, Booker T said Tony Khan has taken a “gamble” by giving the three stars such large contracts.

“It’s definitely a gamble with Tony Khan,” Booker said. “He’s spending a lot of money and he’s really trying to make that thing work. It is a gamble whether it’s going to pay off or not, but the thing is I think Tony Khan has enough money in his treasure chest to play this thing out as long as he wants it to play out.”

Booker went on to add that he doesn’t feel the signings of Okada or Ospreay will “move the needle” ratings-wise.

“He’s catering to an AEW audience,” Booker continued. “He’s catering to that [700,000] to a million fans that they have right now. He’s not catering to anything outside of that box. Bringing Will Ospreay in, bringing Okada in to wrestle, when you could bring anybody in to wrestle, is not going to move the needle as far as fans go.”

Booker T Sparks Controversy Within WWE

Booker T is reportedly the cause of much frustration within WWE after claiming he almost had a backstage altercation with CM Punk.

Despite the claims from the NXT announcer, no one was aware of an incident until Booker made the comments on his podcast.

Contrary to Booker T’s claims the report from Fightful noted that they’ve been told CM Punk has been very helpful backstage and open to lending to lending a hand since he returned to the company.

H/t to Wrestling Inc