WWE President Nick Khan has been widely blamed for the recent releases in WWE and what looks to be a series of cost-cutting measures that usually happen before a company is sold. While it's hard to imagine Vince McMahon handing WWE over to someone else, he is in his 70s now, and it wouldn't be that surprising, especially after the WWE Network was offloaded to Peacock, for example.
During a recent interview, Khan was asked about a possible sale and his comments that WWE is "open for business," and the executive was quick to clarify what it was he meant by that.
"When I say we’re open for business, that means if someone credible calls on anything, NFT, trading cards, international rights; we take the call. We’re inherently salespeople. We’re an entrepreneurial company that Vince and others built over the last 35 years or so and we always want to stay fresh and entrepreneurial in our minds. When I say ‘open for business,’ if someone calls and are credible and asking, ‘Are you guys for sale?’ What is your offer? What are you thinking? We’re not trying to sell it."
"That’s not our intent. There are no internal meetings about selling this company," Khan continued. "The internal meeting is about growing it and the ability that we think we collectively have to tremendously grow what the value of the company is now. People call all the time about all different things, but we’re not in any active conversations about any of that."
In the same interview, the WWE President also opened up on those recent talent releases. Saying that Bruce Prichard, Kevin Dunn, Stephanie McMahon, and Paul Levesque are all part of that decision-making process, he added that it's ultimately a Vince McMahon call who stays and who goes.
"I don’t know if there’s one explanation for it," Khan said of the releases. "I think ultimately what’s looked at, is this person for us going to move the needle now or in the imminent future. For us, it’s what works for us and our product at that time and again, what’s going to work down the road and largely in part the existing roster is based on that."
He certainly has a pretty blunt attitude about the whole situation, and it's interesting that while he confirmed WWE isn't in any active discussions about a sale, Khan certainly didn't outright state it wouldn't happen. As for the releases, it's clear WWE doesn't value the wrestlers they've said goodbye to, a surprise when we're talking about the likes of Braun Strowman and Bray Wyatt!
Check out the full interview below: