AEW President Tony Khan took to Twitter tonight to lash out at journalist Ariel Helwani.
Tonight’s Elimination Chamber go-home edition of WWE SmackDown on FOX featured two crowd segments where Helwani stood with the hometown crowd to hype up the show-closing appearance by another Montrealer – Sami Zayn. Michael Cole introduced Helwani as a “combat sports journalist.”
Khan apparently did not approve of Helwani’s appearance on WWE TV.
“You’re a fraud @arielhelwani. You’re as legitimate of a reporter as @tonyschiavone24. #AEWRampage,” Khan wrote, plugging AEW Rampage, which had already went off the air at that point due to the early start time this week.
Helwani also narrated a WWE Elimination Chamber video package for Zayn vs. Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns this week.
You may remember how Helwani interviewed Khan on The MMA Hour last year. After the interview, Helwani commented on why the interview was “one of the most frustrating, and to a degree, not-so-fun interviews of his career.”
“He didn’t want to answer anything,” Helwani said on October 22 as detailed here. “You’re going to come on and promote X, Y, and Z, great. And I’ll play that dance with you. I did, at the beginning. But you got to give us something, to not even tell me how you were feeling. I’m not asking for specifics, alright fine I am, but is Punk going to wrestle for you, is he coming back, you don’t want to get into it, fine. But tell me how you were feeling. Give me something.”
Helwani also covers WWE for BT Sport. He is a longtime pro wrestling fan, and is friends with WWE CEO Nick Khan.
Helwani has not responded to Khan as of this writing, but you can see his tweets related to SmackDown below. He compared to Zayn’s reaction to the one UFC Hall of Famer Georges St-Pierre received at UFC 83 in April 2008, which was also held at the Bell Centre in Montreal.
“Fn hell that was perfect. This place is deafening. GSP at UFC 83-esque,” Helwani wrote.
You can see Khan’s full tweet below, along with the aforementioned tweets:
You're a fraud @arielhelwani. You're as legitimate of a reporter as @tonyschiavone24. #AEWRampage
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) February 18, 2023
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) February 18, 2023
https://twitter.com/arielhelwani/status/1626772364548505606
Fn hell that was perfect. This place is deafening. GSP at UFC 83-esque.
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) February 18, 2023
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