Tony Khan Reveals Why He Allowed AEW Stars to Make Cameos for WWE RAW

AEW President Tony Khan recently spoke with the Battleground podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.

During the discussion, Khan revealed more information on the process of some of his AEW stars sending in tribute videos for John Cena’s 20th anniversary on WWE RAW:

“I think when people ask for a reasonable favor, I’m a good Samaritan. There’s no reason why you can’t help people out. In this case, that’s just trying to be a good Samaritan and do the right thing to help out if you think it’s a good cause.

In this case, John Cena’s 20th anniversary show, I think that’s great. Sounded like a classy show. WWE reached out to me personally and asked me if we would send in videos from some of the top stars. They asked me for videos from Chris Jericho, Paul Wight, Bryan Danielson, and Mark Henry. Mark Henry’s didn’t make the air, but I’m sure they had a lot of great videos, and I understood why they’d want him. He’s a great start, but they did show Paul Wight, Bryan Danielson, and Chris Jericho.

I thought those were great wrestlers to ask for and I had no problem with it. I also left it up to those wrestlers if they wanted to do it. I sent them to our head of HR. She told him that they’d asked about this, and if they wanted to do the videos, it was fine with us, but it’s up to them. They sent them in and that’s how it happened. Based on what it was, John Cena’s 20th anniversary, even though WWE and AEW are competitive, it’s a good time to be in the wrestling business and be one of these two big national television companies.”

You can listen to the podcast below:


(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)