'I can't believe you,' Tony Khan texted Konnan after controversial AEW incident
Konnan has revealed how Tony Khan texted him saying ‘I can't believe you,’ after he had his say on a controversial AEW incident. This reportedly caused some heat at the time.
The incident he was talking about is the supposed beef between CM Punk and The Elite. Punk and The Elite were reportedly not on good terms and there were a lot of rumblings backstage about how things were getting heated. It all came to a head after All Out 2022 when Punk won the AEW World Championship.
After giving a press conference ranting about Adam Page and Colt Cabana, things went south backstage. allegedly leading to a locker room fight between himself and The Elite. Konnan too had his say about it and he got a text from Tony Khan.
He was speaking about it with Dave Meltzer on his K100 podcast when he was asked how he would have handled the situation differently from Tony Khan to which he said:
“I went into the dressing room one day because I had gone there to film something, right. I went in and I went to catering and I could not believe how many people came up to me and were dissatisfied about something or the other, which I was like, 'Well, that's normal in AAA too, right?' But I had Andrade come up to me. I had Thunder Rosa come up to me and basically Andrade wanted to beat Sammy. The other wanted to fight with Britt Baker.”
He continued further:
“Everybody knew about the acrimony between Punk and these people and I came on the podcast and I alluded to it. I didn't come straight out and say it and Tony sent me this text like, ‘I can't believe you.’ Well, then fix the problem. You know and he didn't and to tell you the truth, just quick, I would have sat them down and whoever didn't want to do business, had to get rid of them.” [2:13 - 3:03]
Jim Cornette blasted the Elite and Tony Khan for CM Punk’s locker room fight
The Elite apparently barged into CM Punk’s locker room after his press conference after All Out in 2022 and that is when things got bad.
A few months after that incident, Jim Cornette criticized The Elite for approaching Punk in the way they did and called them out for their alleged actions. Speaking on his Jim Cornette Experience podcast, he said:
"Let's wait for Tony Khan to finish his media fantasy and bring all the rest of his action figures back to the locker room. And go to Tony and say, 'What are you going to do about this?' But instead, the three main people that he's p*ssed at, two of their stooges, another couple of miscellaneous, locker room AEW personnel, and Megan [Megha], all rush in at the same time. And I would assume we're not saying, 'Excuse Phil? Could we talk for a minute?' You think they wouldn't probably sound like, 'Hey, what the f**k are you talking about back there?'"
CM Punk had a chequered time in Tony Khan’s company but was fired in 2023 before he rejoined WWE later the same year.