Tony Khan says that he “spent more than I’d planned going into this year” and cited budgetary reasons for the recent AEW & ROH releases.
Speaking at Saturday morning’s post-Supercard of Honor media scrum, Khan was asked why he had changed course and decided to release a group of performers from their contract rather than let them expire as he had in the past.
Khan cited a high production budget and an aggressive dip into the free agent market as reasons.
Khan’s response:
I think that this year I have been very active not only in the free agent market, but in the production budget. There are things tonight, like for example, on one song alone, I spent like a year’s pay for most pro wrestlers in this business.
And the budget not only with free agency, but production, is very high. And also we’re going into a contract year. And I plan to continue on being very active not only in free agency, but in the production of the show and producing great content.
Going into this year, I have to look at where we’re at. I’d really spent more than I’d planned going into this year.
So I really love our roster and where we’re at, I’m very supportive of everybody we have here and everyone who’s ever worked here.
I think I really appreciate everything they did when they were here.
And this particular group, it was not an easy set of choices to make, and in particular with this group of wrestlers we just released, I would be happy to take any of them back under the right circumstance. I have no bridge burned with any of them.
And like I said, even with The Boys, I disagree with the point on travel and that in the history of ROH and working with us that there hadn’t been a couple times where they didn’t make it and made me change stuff, but on the other hand I really like both of them.
And whether we agree or not about that point of contention, I think it’s regardless, I think they were great. They were a great part of Dalton’s act. I like both the Tates.
I like everybody we released in this last batch recently and I’m wishing nothing but the best for any of them.
He’s trying some damage control huh… it really didn’t make him sound any better to be going on about paying a lot for one song instead of honoring contracts. He comes across as bad as WWE, but he gets more benefit from the doubt from many people.
We didn’t burn any bridges my left foot… I think they left some stuff out, but the texts the former Boys put up say a lot to me and it was nothing good.
That line about paying for a song instead of contracts really burns me up for some reason.
Such a bad look. I don’t hate Tony at all, but man, he needs some serious PR help.
Yeah idk man, I’m sure he could clean up the travel stuff but The Boys don’t come off looking too great.
They basically didn’t want to drive 3 hours and didn’t stay in the travel persons ass to get it fixed. From the looks of it, they didn’t want to rent because they got in trouble in the past but the person they were texting told them to do it, and instead of making the date, they just sat on their hands.
The song comment is a wild statement but it makes sense. Assuming it was for Sting, it created some surreal moments that live on that is more valuable in the longer run than some guys who could potentially be big
He could def use a PR person though and the majority of his foot in mouth seems to be a bit of empathy gap. He’s a rich kid just discussing the realities of all of this and it’s all shit regular people are going to scoff at