Tony Khan On Gamble Hiring Jade Cargill Paying Off

Although not having much wrestling experience prior to joining AEW, Jade Cargill has proven to AEW President Tony Khan that she was worth the gamble.

During a recent appearance on the Swerve City Podcast, Tony Khan discussed the qualities he looks for when recruiting new talent. He singled out both Cargill and former NBA star Satnam Singh as being gambles due to their limited experience prior to joining the company, but that the decision to hire them has been the right one.

Well, there’s a lot of things. First of all, when you look at their body of work coming in, sometimes you get athletes, like Satnam Singh is a great example or Jade Cargill, where they didn’t have prior experience in pro wrestling, but they were great athletes, actually both of them played basketball at a high level. I thought they were worth a gamble.

Khan went on to note that this isn’t the usual process he would follow, and unlike WWE bringing talent through their Performance Center he has no interest in training talent on a daily basis before they appear in AEW.

We typically don’t take people in who don’t have a lot of prior wrestling experience. We don’t train wrestlers from scratch here. It’s a different business model. There are a lot of great people, but for us, we kind of pick our spots when it comes to that thing, because we’re not as much about centralized training all week long.

We come together like locusts in a different city every week and then we go our separate ways. I think for us, having a lot of prior wrestling experience is really important.

Jade Cargill was offered a deal by WWE after a tryout in 2019, however made the decision to join AEW rather than signing a “100 page contract”. Since then she has become the inaugural TBS Champion, defeating Ruby Soho in the final of the tournament to win the belt.

With thanks to Ringside News for the transcription.