Tony Khan addresses the elephant in the room of a possible working relationship between AEW and WWE.
The wrestling landscape changed when Vince McMahon announced his retirement on July 22nd. The company is now in the hands of Stephanie McMahon and Nick Khan, with Triple H taking over creative responsibilities.
With McMahon gone from the company, there has been some discussion on whether WWE will now be willing to work with other promotions. Triple H has shown during his run as head of NXT that he doesn’t mind working with talent from elsewhere. AEW has opened the forbidden door, so perhaps WWE is more inclined now to be a visitor.
During an interview with NBC Sports Boston’s Steve Fall, AEW President Tony Khan addressed whether a potential working relationship with WWE is in the cards now that McMahon has departed. Although there are different people in charge, Khan isn’t sure if that changes anything in terms of them working with other promotions as AEW has done.
“I’m not sure if that’s the case, but I would certainly be open to talk with pretty much any wrestling promotion in the world about how to work together if the circumstances are right. We’ve worked with, I would say, in terms of securing footage or providing talent with probably a dozen companies around the world, including Ring of Honor before I was the owner, when they were owned by Sinclair. I’d like to think that was positively received by them and we did things to help them out when they were in tough times and I think that goodwill helped us in the sale process.”
Khan also spoke about McMahon’s retirement specifically. While his focus obviously appears to be on ensuring his promotion succeeds, he is interested in seeing how things work out in WWE.
“I believe there are a lot of great wrestling fans all over the world who follow pro wrestling closely and there have been shake-ups. I’ve definitely followed that promotion since I was a small kid and it will be interesting to see how things turn out in the world of pro wrestling. I’m a big fan of pro wrestling all over the place, not just AEW and not just Ring of Honor. We work with New Japan Pro Wrestling and a lot of other great companies all over the world. We’ll see what’s to be held for the future of the pro wrestling business, but I’m glad AEW and Ring of Honor are a huge part of it.”
After McMahon’s shocking announcement Friday, Khan tweeted that he’s now the longest-tenured CEO in wrestling. The AEW President clarified that he was just making a factual statement. Meanwhile, the WWE is set to have its first significant event without McMahon with SummerSlam this weekend.
H/t – Fightful