WWE Lite
By Scott Keith on 27 September 2024
I think over the last year or two you could point to many examples of AEW starting to look like WWE lite. But I think news of TK adding almost a year of injury time on Fenix's contract might be the biggest example yet. AEW was supposed to be the anti establishment promotion, where wrestlers wouldn't be held against their will. Even WWE has stopped tacking on injury time, as evidence of Bobby and Becky's contract, expiring. I didn't agree with it when WWE did it, and I don't agree with AEW now doing it.
Nobody wins having unhappy people in your organization. And why pay someone to sit at home. Tony seems to be cracking under the pressure, and this is gonna just make things worse. Is Tony right to do this legally, sure he is. Does Fenix deserve it for openly talking with wwe while under contract, probably he does. But if AEW is going to operate the same way as WWE, that's just less incentive for people to leave WWE to go there. Cause if both companies do business the same, why wouldn't you stay with the promotion who is red hot and by far the bigger company.
What is funny though is all the same people who attacked WWE online when Ricochet and Ali wanted to leave, are now the ones defending Tony's right to extend contracts and using the logic of they signed the contract they should honor it. Also blaming WWE for tampering, but AEW is just as guilty of that. FTR and Miro got out of their contracts and were
almost instantly in AEW, so was Andrade. And you don't think Jeff Hardy knew he could sign with AEW when he walked out of WWE? Everyone tampers, that's just how the world works. This was a chance for Tony to show who he was, and I am happy to be proven right that at the end of the day AEW isn't any different than WWE, besides one's business doing record profits and the other nosediving.
Penta’s contract doesn’t even expire for another month or two though. They probably shouldn’t have run their mouths via Konnan until they were actually free and clear. I still don’t get why Tony would hold them for longer when the roster is already bloated and there’s nothing left to do with them but that’s a different argument entirely.