Last week, AEW President Tony Khan, unhappy that NXT had beaten AEW Dynamite during their Tuesday night ratings clash, went on the rampage on social media, attacking WWE across multiple posts.
His shots at Vince McMahon and the likes of John Cena and The Undertaker have resulted in even AEW talent saying someone should take Tony's phone from him, but things got even weirder when the executive revealed why he hates WWE so much.
According to him, WWE attempted to tamper with the contracts of "many AEW talent" while his mother was being treated in hospital. Now, Sean Ross Sapp has shared some details about which wrestlers the sports entertainment giant allegedly approached.
"I can tell you the two situations in which Khan took it personally, one of which was Swerve Strickland, who signed a multi-year deal on pay-per-view being contacted for the Hit Row reunion," Sapp reveals. "He, I believe, referred WWE or their talent relations person to his lawyer."
"And then there was the other instance when Tony Khan's mother was in the hospital. It became abundantly clear that WWE had contract tampered and spoke with William Regal and offered him a new role there, as he already had one prepared. So that's why he took it personally."
Without Strickland, WWE's attempted revival of Hit Row crashed and burned so it's easy enough to understand why they wanted him back. As for Regal, his return to the company ruffled a lot of feathers in AEW but said a lot about how he felt about how the company was run (why else would he be so quick to accept Triple H's offer to become Vice President of Global Talent Development?).
We're still not sure what Khan was trying to achieve with his claims of contract tampering, though it feels like he was hoping to elicit sympathy after his crass jokes and shots at WWE didn't receive the reaction he hoped. However, there's no excusing the trolls who decided to ridicule his mother's illness.
Check out the aforementioned Tweets/Xs below.