WWE released a whole bunch of wrestlers shortly after WrestleMania 42, and many of their 90 day non compete clauses have recently ended. The current free agent list includes stars like Aleister Black, Santos Escobar, Motor City Machine Guns, Kairi Sane, Wyatt Sicks, and Zelina Vega, with the New Day also escaping from the WWE circus any day now.
A lot of wrestling fans, myself included, have been anticipating that some of these stars will soon sign with AEW. For example, I thought Motor City Machine
Guns would appear on Dynamite in Detroit last night, but it didn’t happen. I haven’t learned my lesson, so I still think there’s a decent chance that Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley will instead show up on tonight’s (July 30) special live Thursday episode of Collision, which is also in Detroit.
But what if the AEW roster is too loaded with talent to sign these ex-WWE stars? In an interview with ROAR Around The Ring, President Tony Khan was asked about his thought process on bringing in some of these free agents to AEW. Khan said he has to be “very considerate” on decisions like that, because it’s quite tricky to find enough TV time for all the big stars who are already on the AEW roster.
“If you look at how many great wrestlers there are in AEW…every week different wrestlers wind up fighting for top spots, so there’s a lot of competition in AEW right now. So we have to be very considerate about who we sign, and about who comes in to compete, because right now there’s already so many great wrestlers competing for these spots on TV and on pay-per-views.”
Reading between the lines, that sounds like a wrestling executive who isn’t interested in splurging on the current crop of free agents. Is it possible that he just signs the New Day and nobody else? Yeah, maybe that’s exactly what he will do.
Does Tony Khan’s answer change your prediction on which current free agents will sign with AEW? Let me know in the comments below, Cagesiders.
