Attorney Stephen P. New spoke with House of Kayfabe about the lawsuit filed by Kevin Kelly and The Tate Twins against AEW, Tony Khan and Ian Riccaboni.
“The defamation claim against Ian Riccaboni stems from Kevin Kelly enjoying the movie ‘Sound of Freedom,’ and he tweeted some about ‘Sound of Freedom,'” he said. “Kevin says that movie moved him and that he liked it, and not long after that, Riccaboni, on Discord and others, starts saying things that, ‘Well, you must be a QAnon conspiracist if you believe that kind of thing,’ and what have you. It seemed to Kevin Kelly like his relationship deteriorated with AEW after this exchange with Riccaboni. Now, we only know Kevin’s side of this right now. The reason for the discovery process is to question witnesses and to request documents and that kind of thing. That’s the only way that the truth is arrived at, is to go through the discovery process.”
New continued, “You request emails, you request texts, you request social media platform information, posting and messaging and that kind of thing, to get at whether or not someone meant to hurt someone. Was there reason, with nine members of the announce team, that Riccaboni was engaging in the Klingon method of advancement where you kill off your rivals? We don’t know the answers to any of those questions just yet. The only thing I can say is that Kelly perceived being treated differently by AEW, by HR, by the people in the home office, after this dust-up with Riccaboni, and then resulting in that first week of March, being let go by AEW, only about nine months into a three-year long contract.”
Regarding the claim against Khan, he spoke about the situation surrounding claims that The Tate Twins no-showed events.
“Tony Khan, after the Ring of Honor Supercard [of Honor], said of the Tate Twins that they were habitual no-shows, and that that was the reason why they were being let go. You could imagine, if somebody else says about the Tate Twins, ‘Oh, they’re unreliable,’ that doesn’t carry the weight that the owner of the company at a media scrum, saying, ‘These guys are habitual no-shows to our shows,’ a statement which is knowingly false. Tony Khan knew that that statement was false when he made it. He made it anyway, and the Tates have really suffered since then. So that’s why we believe that that is defamatory. Now, interestingly, AEW’s official position had changed on the Tates. ‘It was due to financial hardship. We’re laying some people off. We’re letting some people go.’ Which is it? Is it financial hardship, or was it because the Tates were habitual no-shows. Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. So if Ian Riccaboni can prove that Kevin Kelly is a QAnon nut, then that is truth as an absolute defense to that claim of defamation. If Tony Khan can prove that the Tates were habitual no-shows and that the travel issues weren’t the fault of his own people, Nashville is not Knoxville, folks. They’re two totally different cities. One’s in east Tennessee, the other’s in central Tennessee. So I think we’ll be fine on both those defamation counts.”
He also addressed Jim Ross calling the suit “frivolous.”
“I need to make a response,” he said. “JR, Jim Ross, called this lawsuit frivolous. Well, let me tell you something, boola-boola, this is not a frivolous lawsuit. You’re part of the problem. You, Jim Ross, are part of the problem because you fed the guys in WWE as Talent Relations these crap contracts for a quarter of a century. You told these guys that it was the take-it-or-leave-it deal, and that they needed to sign these crap contracts that were contracts of adhesion, that they should have never signed, or they should have lined the arbitration provisions out of. So I’m not shocked in the least that you go on Conrad Thompson’s podcast and you say that this is a frivolous lawsuit. I might lose it, by ‘bah gawd’ it’s not frivolous, I can tell you that. Tony Khan’s paid JR a lot of money to do nothing for about five years now. If I were Jim Ross and I were living at Jacksonville Beach and making a bunch of money to not do much at all, I’d probably come out and call Stephen P. New’s lawsuit also. Everybody’s got a price.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
