Veteran Claims Tony Khan Is Overpaying AEW Stars

Tony Khan has come in for criticism from a former WCW star.

It was recently announced that Swerve Strickland had signed a new deal with AEW. His previous contract had plenty of time to run, but negotiations were moved up after an impressive run with the World Championship.

Interestingly, WWE was said to have made attempts to re-sign Strickland, but they came to nothing.

This was followed by a report that suggested people within WWE believe AEW is overpaying Strickland and went as far as saying the deal is “bad for the sport.” The former World Champion is one of the top-paid stars in AEW but remains some way behind the likes of Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes.

Konnan Unimpressed By Tony Khan

During a recent episode of Keepin It 100, Konnan discussed AEW’s strategy when it comes to keeping hold of its biggest stars. The veteran suggested WWE is more than happy to sit back and use homegrown talent from NXT, letting AEW overpay to keep hold of its top stars.

“I think what WWE did was when AEW started, they started overpaying people to stay. I think they figured out, we don’t gotta be paying these people all this money when we got NXT and we can get wrestlers from there and groom them, so they started to let them go. Tony literally gets mad when certain wrestlers leave, so what they’re doing now is they’re making him overpay all these wrestlers so he can keep them.

What has Swerve really done to garner any extra attention or draw any extra fans, but if he wants to keep them because from what I understand, they talked to Swerve and they talked to Daniel Garcia and that was enough for him to go, ‘hey, these are my guys. I’m going to overpay them.’

Why would Swerve stay there unless he’s thinking, ‘let me get paid for the next five years and be a very rich man and in five years, if they don’t bury me, which they probably won’t, I’ll still be viable and I can go over there.’

I would have gone there right now because they probably would have made him a big star. They wanted to take Prince Nana with him which, not hating, I’m just stating, I don’t know what the f**k he adds to Swerve except he’s like Flava Flav. I guess nobody else could do that except Prince Nana.

He thought of going, ‘Who’s house?’ Wow, that’s gotta be one of the greatest ideas I’ve ever heard in wrestling history. Why don’t you make him the booker?”

It’s been reported that Swerve Strickland could miss WrestleDream as he continues his hiatus.

H/t to WrestlingNews.Co