Shane McMahon Showed Interest In “Running AEW” (WWE/AEW News)

Fresh details have emerged on meetings between AEW boss Tony Khan and Shane McMahon last summer.

Ex-WWE man Jonathan Coachman claimed via his 'Coach & Bro Show' that McMahon asked Khan for equity in All Elite Wrestling. According to Coach, Shane also fancied running things behind the scenes and becoming a crucial part of AEW's management structure. That meeting took place in July 2024, and Coachman says Tony "ghosted" McMahon after it.

Fightful Select have come through with their own knowledge of the situation. The website couldn't confirm that McMahon requested equity in the company, but they did speak with a source "close to" Shane, and that person had some interesting things to say about everything.

It seems McMahon did see himself as an important cog in the machine after all. He pointed to his experience as valuable, and the source claims this came up "after witnessing years of fans and people in the industry wanting anyone but Vince [McMahon] in that role".

The source also said that Shane did seem keen to "run things" behind the curtain for AEW. However, they brought up his lack of familiarity with the broader All Elite product as a potential stumbling block. It's a very different place to the WWE landscape McMahon had been used to, basically.

Khan Might've Thought Shane Was Joking About Running AEW

Fightful's source also suggested that there's a chance Tony thought Shane was only joking when he brought up the possibility of calling the shots in AEW. It's understood that McMahon didn't take it personally when Khan failed to follow up on their meeting with another either. Shane-O reportedly took that in his stride.

So, where do things stand in February 2025? The source refused to rule out "a cameo appearance" here or there, but it appears thoughts of Shane working for AEW "extensively" have died out. Meanwhile, Tony isn't really entertaining lengthy conversations about the topic behind the curtain - when asked, Khan will only say that he did meet with McMahon and had a few chats about wrestling.

This is all very, very interesting. To editorialise away from Fightful's report, it sounds like Tony was interested in doing some serious business with Shane before chatter about McMahon getting heavily involved in the inner workings of promotional business came up. After that, there's a possibility he shied away from going further and returned to business as usual in AEW.

It's also fun that the unnamed source "close to" Shane refused to completely rule out thoughts of McMahon doing something with All Elite on TV or pay-per-view in the future.