Vince Russo Has Conspiracy Theory Regarding AEW & Tony Khan

Vince Russo believes there’s more to Tony Khan’s deal with WBD than meets the eye.

Since debuting in 2019, All Elite Wrestling has seemingly had a good relationship with its broadcast partner, now known as Warner Bros Discovery following WarnerMedia’s merger with Discovery in 2022. In July, it was reported that the two sides were in talks for a potential huge money increase for AEW, and it’s expected that the promotion will find its way to WBD’s Max streaming platform sometime in 2024.

However, former WWE writer Vince Russo doesn’t think everything is on the up and up when it comes to AEW’s agreement with WBD. According to Russo, Tony Khan must be paying WBD to keep all of his content on the air without a massive ratings increase.

“Any other show in television that did not increase their ratings over four years would be gone. They would be gone. I’m gonna go back to my original theory — there’s no question in my mind that Tony Khan is paying for TV time. The dude’s a billionaire, he wants these shows on the network, he’s going to the network and saying, ‘What do you guys think you can make through advertising, etc.? Ok, no problem, I’ll double it.'”

Vince Russo Says There’s “No Way” WBD Would Keep Collision & Rampage On The Air

Continuing, Russo insisted that no network would keep shows such as Rampage and Collision on the air when they average under 500,000 viewers. He brought up the example of SmackDown moving away from FOX in 2024 as the network expected to average over 3.5 million viewers each week, something the blue brand consistently fell short of. Russo said:

“There’s no way they [WBD] are happy with the numbers AEW gets.”

h/t WrestlingInc