AEW President Tony Khan recently appeared on Busted Open Radio to discuss a wide range of topics, most notably his thoughts on the latest round of WWE cuts. Khan states that he believes a WWE contract to be more of a temporary arrangement rather than a concrete agreement, then opens up about how AEW has not done massive layoffs even through the worst parts of the COVID pandemic. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
How WWE contracts are not real contracts:
“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.”
How AEW offers more job security, and while he won’t extend everyone’s stay he also won’t be doing massive layoffs:
“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.”
Says he takes a lot of pride in AEW’s roster:
“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. I take a lot of pride in all the people that work here and I know that not everyone is going to work here forever, but if somebody is not going to work here, please know that I’m going to feel really bad about it. That’s one of the reasons why we haven’t let a lot of people go yet and I’ve eaten some of those costs, especially through the pandemic when there was really no where else to get work in wrestling.”
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)