10 Wrestlers Tony Khan Banned From AEW
"All Friends Wrestling" was never the reality, but some incidents were stranger than fiction...
Seems seven lifetimes ago, but remember when Sammy Guevara called Eddie Kingston a "fat piece of sh*t" in a pre-taped Rampage promo that was eventually cut from the broadcast?
News breaking days later sent shockwaves around the industry - the speech hadn't aired because 'The Mad King' had tried to batter 'The Spanish God' backstage and removing both the line and the pay-per-view match it was intended to set up seemed like the play.
It was all particularly shocking based on what had been felt about the friendly but competitive AEW dressing room at the time, but seemed broadly charming by the end of an All Out pay-per-view that featured both in pre-show spots and the top draw and Executive Vice Presidents getting into a backstage brawl. Kingston's match with Tomohiro Ishii and the Guevara mixed tag (alongside wife Tay Melo against Ortiz and Ruby Soho) before it cost them money, but ultimately not much else.
Guevara (more on him elsewhere in this list) was back on pay-per-view by Full Gear, and though Kingston remained on Zero Hour duties for one more cycle, it was at least on the other side of the ring to personal hero Jun Akiyama.
Punished but not outright booted from the dressing room altogether, they weren't quite on Tony Khan's direct hit-list after the obvious infraction. Unlike...
10. Hulk Hogan
To Tony Khan's message board poster brain being used for good back in 2020, when a needlessly bigoted and contentious tweet from Hulk Hogan's ex-wife Linda threatened to stir up yet more ugly discourse on the bird app before the AEW president got across the bullsh*t with a hard truth.
Khan had never explicitly mentioned why 'The Hulkster' wasn't welcome in All Elite Wrestling before this moment, but he truthfully never even needed to. Hogan's 2019 WWE return was handled in such a way to purposely try and swerve obvious criticism about his reintroduction following revelations about using racist language years earlier. He'd lost his Hall Of Fame spot as well as other WWE perks before the door was left ajar when Vince McMahon et al clearly believed the dust had settled.
Not so on Dynamite or Rampage, and long may that continue. Even without the ethical concerns, AEW fundamentally existed to be WWE's prominant alternative, not a place that fostered one of its biggest ever stars.