Tony Khan Says WWE Superstars Don’t Sign Real Contracts

WWE has been ruthless as far as releasing their talents is concerned. The company has been releasing talents and members of staff since April of last year and they show no signs of stopping anytime soon. It seems Tony Khan doesn’t believe WWE Superstars sign real contracts.

Back in June, WWE held yet another round of cuts from the company and it included several big names. Among them include the likes of Aleister Black and Buddy Murphy. Unfortunately, WWE released several Superstars again a couple of weeks ago. This included the likes of Nia Jax, Karrion Kross, Keith Lee, Mia Yim and more.

That was not all as WWE has released even more talents this week. This included the likes of John Morrison, Drake Maverick, Tegan Nox. The constant releases have disturbed fans and pro wrestlers alike.

While speaking on Busted Open Radio, AEW President Tony Khan talked about WWE continuously releasing their talents. Khan stated that anyone who signs a contract with WWE does not sign real contracts – they merely sign temporary arrangements.

“Anyone who signs a contract (in WWE) these days, is not signing a real contract. It’s a temporary arrangement. People who come wrestle with me, a lot of these people are frankly lifers and they know that. There are some people who are here, who work really hard and there are some people who come in and work more than really hard and I feel like is their actual life and will be with me for the rest of my life. I don’t know if everybody who works for my competition can say that. I think there are people who work there and they aren’t sure they will be there next week.

There is a lot more security with a contract here. I can’t say I’m going to extend every contract or bring every person back, but I also haven’t been doing mass layoffs. I’m not the most profitable company of all time, I don’t brag about being the most profitable company of all time. I do brag about bringing in a lot of revenue for a start up and being a real success story. What I will brag about is we haven’t been doing mass layoffs and we haven’t fired 15 people last week or 18 people the week before that. It’s not something to be proud of when a company lets all those people go and you’re putting press releases out like that frequently, I don’t think it’s a good thing.

I don’t want to make light of that kind of thing ever. When you talk about a bidding war, each person is their own individual case and there may be multiple people coming for his services, but we’ve seen most of the talent going in one direction and, I think that’s for a variety of reasons, but I’ve been very selective in the people I’ve signed and every time there has been a mass layoff on the other side it’s terrible and I can’t say I would be able to take on every one of these people.”

Tony Khan also recently stated that there are a couple of WWE releases that he wants to snatch up for AEW. On top of that, there are also a lot of plans for long-term storylines in AEW. We will have to wait and see which former WWE Superstar AEW will sign next.

h/t to Fightful for the quotes.

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