There has been a lot of criticism regarding topics included and not included in “This Book Is All Elite: The Inside Story of All Elite Wrestling by Keith Elliot Greenberg.”
During a recent interview with Features of Wrestling to promote the project, the author of the book spoke about Tony Khan, being nervous about including something he saw backstage involving Sting, Darby Allin and The Young Bucks because it breaks kayfabe, as well as criticism over the infamous CM Punk ‘Brawl In’ incident not being included.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On being nervous about including something he saw backstage involving Sting, Darby Allin and The Young Bucks because it breaks kayfabe: “I’ve been around the business for so many years. I wrote for WWE’s magazines, starting in 1985, for 22 years. So I follow certain protocol when I’m dealing with talent, and one of the things I’m very adamant about is if I witness something backstage or overhear something, that stays with me, I don’t repeat it. When I was interviewing Sting, I told him about a moment I’d noticed before his retirement match. I come around the corner and Sting, his family and The Young Bucks had their arms around each other before they went out and wrestled, and their heads were bowed in prayer. I said to him, of course, that’s not something I would ever put up in the book, because you guys were adversaries. You’re on opposite sides, and it obviously drives home the point that you guys are very close to one another in real life. And he said, No, actually, that’s very touching that you noticed a moment like that, because it meant so much to me. And in fact, if I was going to have a retirement match, I wanted my tag team partner to be Darby Allin, who I’ve come to regard as a family member. And I wanted my opponents to be The Young Bucks, who are versatile and ageless and innovative, and bring just things to this business that I’m in awe about. So it was very cool to be able to put something from behind the scenes in the book without violating anybody’s privacy.”
On Tony Khan: “Tony Khan is like anyone in his position. I think he’d be comfortable with me saying this, a rather centric person. You sit with him, he’s distracted. He has other things going on. And then somehow we get into a chat about the Rock and Roll Express against the Midnight Express in the Mid-Atlantic territory. Suddenly, I see Tony Khan’s eyes, and they go from looking here and looking there to being focused on me. From that point forward, he was locked in, I think we spoke for about two hours. If I wanted to keep going, I think he would have spoken to me till somebody till the cafe we were in closed for the night.”
On criticism and reaction to CM Punk ‘Brawl In’ incident not being included in the book: “Some people have brought this up. Whenever I write a book, I’m always going to be criticised, and I take that for granted. Whenever I do an interview, I’m criticised sometimes by the same exact people on Twitter. I know their handles. By this point they’ve criticised me so much, I know their names. So one of the criticisms I telegraphed in advance, and I even discussed this with AEW, was the people were going to be unhappy that I don’t talk about whatever chicanery occurred backstage that led to the departure of CM Punk. This is a tribute book. If I wrote a book about the New York Mets, which is my favorite baseball team, I even have a Mr. Met tattoo. I would talk about the two World Series runs. I would talk about their marquee players, but I wouldn’t talk about the fact that the owners at the time were supposedly investors with Bernie Madoff, this very corrupt financier who ended up, apparently, [stealing] millions of dollars from the US Holocaust Foundation, the guy was just robbing everybody. As a fan, it’s a lot of suspicion that may have compromised the team, because who knows? Was Mets money being used? They said not. But as a baseball fan, as a fan of the team, you suspect things. But if the New York Mets asked me to do a tribute book about the New York Mets, I could do a really great tribute book, and not mention Bernie Madoff. So I was asked to do a book that is a tribute to AEW during the first five years, and that doesn’t belong in a tribute book, because really, we’re just talking about one or two incidents, but there’s a lot of backstage stuff in it, and a lot of positive backstage stuff in the book. There’s a lot about how Stadium Stampede came together and how The Acclaimed got their name, and why Tony Khan wanted to put Max Caster and Anthony Bowens on the same team. Let’s go to Mariah May, who’s now in NXT, and Toni Storm, the movie that inspired Tony Khan’s mind, that story. So it’s not like it’s all surface stuff, there’s deep stuff that you wouldn’t know about, and I don’t think the book suffers at all from not mentioning an unfortunate incident backstage.”
“This Book Is All Elite: The Inside Story of All Elite Wrestling” is available now at Amazon.com.
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