Tony Khan asked if he’s worried about talents requesting their releases and for his thoughts on Vince McMahon.
Coming out of Ring of Honor’s Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view, it was first reported by Fightful Select that Jonathan Gresham requested his release from AEW/ROH. The report notes that his request was made prior to the pay-per-view event. There was a lack of communication between both sides leading up to the event which Gresham felt disrespected by among other things.
Fightful noted that when Gresham met with Tony Khan before Death Before Dishonor, he relayed his frustrations and that conversation resulted in him ‘cussing out’ Khan.
This situation was brought up during Khan’s appearance on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. It was mentioned that Khan had a “heated discussion with a former ROH Champion”. The follow up to that was with Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque coming into power at WWE, is Khan concerned about his talents wanting their releases and now looking at WWE as a possible landing spot. Here’s how Khan responded:
It depends on who it is and it depends on who the person is if I would grant them their release or not. But, I don’t think those two situations [reported situation with Jonathan Gresham and Triple H coming into power] had anything to do with each other. Keep an eye on it. I don’t think that’s gonna be dots that will connect, and I definitely think that it’s probably gonna be a change in the management philosophy I would totally think. That being said, I’m not sure it’s gonna be a bad thing for AEW, but I do think it’ll be a good thing for the wrestling fans because the competition is gonna change and probably in a way that will be good for the fans.
Khan was later asked for his thoughts about former WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon’s legacy in pro wrestling. He described McMahon as one of the most influential figures in American entertainment.
Grew the wrestling business on television more than anybody else ever has and the growth that he [Vince McMahon] helped launch in this business as a television industry is probably more than everybody else in the history of the wrestling business combined and I don’t think I’d be understating it to say that he was one of — has been one of the most influential figures in American entertainment and whether you consider wrestling a sport or not, I think in the world of sports, he’s also been one of the most influential people. Ask any athlete on the planet and they all are very familiar with his product.
Elsewhere during the conversation, Khan spoke about his working relationship with ROH, IWGP and AAA World Tag Team Champions FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler).
He said they’ve been more happy working together than ever and the only time he can recall their being a rough patch between them was in 2021 and says part of that had to do with Harwood not being in a good mental space, which Khan emphasized is something Harwood has touched on publicly.
I think the three of us [Khan & FTR] are happier working together than we ever have been and probably the only time it was ever really a rough patch I really thought was a year ago and that was probably a mix of I think Dax [Harwood] needed to get himself better, feeling better. I don’t wanna put words in his mouth because he’s said all this even just Saturday night [at Death Before Dishonor] that, you know, he wasn’t feeling well and talked about getting on medication and seeing a doctor and then when he really got himself right, you know, I’ve been more focused on them than I have been and I think the last year, they’ve been doing better than ever.
Last week’s episode of Dynamite was the Fight For The Fallen edition of the program which featured the in-ring return of Bryan Danielson along with Jungle Boy addressing Christian Cage.
To hear POST Wrestling’s recap of the show, head over to the Rewind-A-Dynamite folder here on the site.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit ‘The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
