During a recent AEW media call to promote All Out, Tony Khan stated that while wrestlers in his company have creative input, not one person on the roster has creative control. This includes the newly signed CM Punk.
“Not one person, including Mr. Punk and everyone on the roster, has creative control. It’s not like WCW and that is one of the issues with WCW. When you have a person who has creative control in their contract, it can hold up the show. I don’t know how you get through TV doing that,” Khan said.
Khan continued to say, however, that he encourages wrestlers to come and talk to him if something they are being asked to do doesn’t make sense.
“I’ve told (Punk) if I ever ask you to do something that doesn’t make sense, it’s not coming from a malicious place, if something doesn’t make sense, tell me and we’ll talk about it. That’s generally how I am with everyone,” he continued.
“Just because nobody has a contractual right to tell me ‘you can’t make me do that, you can’t put me in that match,’ doesn’t mean I want to put people in bad situations or do things that don’t make sense to them or for their career or for the fans,” Khan further explained.
Wrestlers Speak On AEW’s Creative Freedom
While creative control isn’t something anyone in AEW has in their contract, many on the roster have spoken about the creative freedom they do enjoy.
“It feels really good that I’m in a place now where my creative mind can be utilized versus stopped, and controlled, and being presented in things that I know are not gonna work,” said Malakai Black on Twitch earlier this summer.
Ethan Page also spoke about the creative freedom in AEW during an interview with Chris Van Vliet.
“It’s amazing, now being in AEW, the creative freedom and I guess trust that they give their talent to kind of let them do what they want,” he said.
Ring announcer Justin Roberts also commented on the creative freedom he’s given in AEW.
“If there’s a scale of creative freedom, and there’s a one and a 10, I guess I’m at 100, since day one, it’s just one of those things where I’ve never been handed a script, or I’ve never been told what to say on anything starting from the first show when,” he said on the AEW Unrestricted podcast.