Multiple Members Of AEW Roster Depart The Company
The new year will mean a fresh start for at least three people who were under AEW contract.
AEW is not known for releasing a lot of talent. What they usually tend to do is let a contract expire, and then that person can move on, but there have been some exceptions where Tony Khan has chosen to let people leave early.
Fightful Select reports that Matt Taven, Mercedes Martinez, and Alex Abrahantes are no longer with AEW. They don’t appear on the company’s roster page.
According to the report, the company chose to let their contracts expire.
On New Year’s Day, former WWE superstar and AEW/ROH wrestler Mercedes Martinez announced that 2026 would be her last year as a pro wrestler after spending more than 25 years in the business. Martinez said she would have no contracts and she would focus on giving back to the business she loved. Martinez signed with AEW in 2021, but was not used for a long time.
Matt Taven signed with AEW in late 2022 after working for ROH for several years. He appeared mostly on the ROH brand after AEW acquired it. Taven held many titles in his ROH career, including the ROH World Title.
As for Alex Abrahantes, he served as a Spanish-language announcer for AEW and also appeared as a manager/ally to wrestlers like The Lucha Bros (Penta & Rey Fenix) and Komander.
Former AEW and ROH World Champion Chris Jericho remains on the company’s roster page even though it has been widely speculated that he is headed to WWE in early 2026.
Tony Khan Plans AEW Storylines Well In Advance
The AEW Owner, President, GM & Head of Creative is Tony Khan, who recently spoke about the company’s creative process.
Since you asked about the focus and some of the stories and putting the TV shows together, yeah, I definitely felt like I had had a good approach that I’d refined in 2020, and trying to be good, trying to listen and be collaborative. I think I had gotten too collaborative, and it was kind of the same mistake I made at the beginning.
It really helped in the end of 2024, going into 2025, I just said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna put the outline for everything together myself. I’m gonna eliminate the meetings between shows, and I will put everything together myself between shows. Then, I’ll come in with the outline of what I want, rather than have a lot of collaborative meetings where everybody chimes in what they think we should be doing.’”
Khan added:
I thought that helped us at the beginning, and I think it probably helped us this year, having that focus where I’m focused and not having four or five, six, seven, 10 people in a meeting contributing great ideas. They’re all good ideas in their own way. I still like to hear ideas, but instead of doing it as I put the outline together, I would rather do it looking ahead to next week, and take some ideas as I put the next outline together. But putting the outline of the show together, I’m never going to let it be a collab… putting the outline of the show together, I have a good process for it, and I’m back to the process that I used in 2020 and 2021.
I don’t want to describe ever being collaborative is a bad thing, because the whole thing that makes AEW great is collaboration. But the collaboration should probably, at its best, be between me and the wrestlers, and working to find the best path, and not having a lot of people in the middle of that.
It’s not yet known if other AEW wrestlers will be departing the company like Taven, Martinez, and Abrahantes.