WWE President Nick Khan made an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast for an in-depth interview this week.
During the discussion, one of the lead executives behind-the-scenes in WWE spoke at length about such topics as AEW talents coming to WWE, AEW and other companies buying up talent only to bench them, some negative reaction to the Mr. McMahon documentary series on Netflix and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On how there were people close to the subject who didn’t like the Mr. McMahon docuseries on Netflix:
“Episodes one through five, it was all fine. Episode six obviously had a lot of tawdry allegations in there. The most important thing in the company was, ‘Hey, this is not for us to spike it.’ That’s not what the deal was and the deal that was struck with Netflix was prior to me joining WWE on a full-time basis. So it was sort of trying to help everyone who was watching it stay calm, and ‘we’ll get through this thing and get to the other side of it,’ which hopefully we are now. It went everywhere from ‘Hey, it was phenomenally done’ to ‘Oh my God, this thing is not true, it’s not factual.’ There were people who loved it as an objectively told profile of a person, and people who were close to the subject who didn’t like it, which I would understand, and I think you understand.”
On AEW being a competitor to WWE: “In terms of the other wrestling promotional company, they have a lot of talented wrestlers and we’re happy about that. When, contractually, they are available to talk to and have conversations with, assume a number of them will come over. Nothing but respect to the father who finances it and owns the Jaguars and all those other things.”
On how unlike others, WWE will not acquire too much talent if they can’t utilize them properly: “That’s something we won’t do. We won’t sign and bench people. We sign people who we want to use. If another entity signs and benches people now, that’s not something we would do.”
On the talk that AEW is guilty of exactly that: “That’s what I’ve been told from time to time. Not us.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
