Tony Khan Discusses Talent Meeting, Hints At WWE Contract Tampering
Tony Khan has commented on AEW’s pre-Dynamite talent meeting, all but confirming reports of WWE tampering with contracts when they contacted AEW talent!
News of a mandatory talent meeting for All Elite Wrestling broke prior to the 24 August broadcast of Dynamite, with the likes of Tony Khan, Kenny Omega, and The Young Bucks all speaking up to ease any backstage tension. Many on the roster were said to have been in a better mood following this.
Tony Khan spoke of the meeting during a pre-All Out media call, noting how they were a regular occurrence during AEW’s time at Daily’s Place throughout the pandemic:
“There was a meeting. We went over a lot of different things. There were dozens of points that came up, I think it was just a lot of housekeeping, honestly, and we hadn’t sat down together. We used to do this on a pretty regular basis at Daily’s Place and it’s not something we had done in a while. A variety of things came up and it’s stuff that would be good to stay behind closed doors. Some of it did stay behind closed doors, amazingly, but a lot of it came out.
Some of the things I saw reported in the meeting were pretty accurate, some of the things were wildly inaccurate. It definitely, across the spectrum of reports, I saw some stuff that I was like, ‘Wow, that’s like being a fly on the wall’ and other stuff where it was, ‘Okay, that never happened.’ That’s pretty much a day in wrestling journalism. I thought it was good for us all to get together and talk about a number of things.”
Tony Khan confirmed, hinting at reports of WWE tampering with contracts without getting into the allegations too much:
“There was one issue, that had come up, that people have seen stuff written about and I don’t really want to get into it, but if someone asked me, I guess I would get into it a little more, but there were issues the talent had come to us about and said, ‘I think you should probably know about.’
Based on the talent coming to us and telling us that and giving us their feedback and telling us stuff that happened with them, to them, both in the company and things happening outside the company, from other companies even, based on what the talent was saying to us, we thought it was good to have a meeting with everybody.
I thought the meeting went really well, certainly this week was really a positive week of television and good energy going into the pay-per-view.”
It was reported that Megha Parekh, AEW’s Chief Legal Officer, had sent a letter to WWE higher-ups, warning them not to interfere with contracted AEW roster members. WWE had supposedly been in contact with at least one unnamed AEW star.
Though many within AEW are seemingly now at ease with any issues, some aren’t quite so content. Wrestling Inc.’s Raj Giri indicated that Malakai Black had requested his release from the company, while the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez confirmed Bobby Fish’s departure, shortly after he made sny comments regarding CM Punk.