Tony Khan allegedly refused to pay former WWE star "enough of his money"
A former WWE Superstar has cited not getting enough money from Tony Khan as the reason behind his AEW departure.
In September 2022, it was announced that Bobby Fish would leave All Elite Wrestling after spending a year with the company. AEW didn't release him. Instead, he simply let his contract expire and chose not to sign a new deal.
Besides beginning his professional boxing career, Fish has since gone on to wrestle for IMPACT Wrestling and NJPW. During his conversation with Bryan Asbury on the Developmentally Speaking podcast, the former WWE star had a lot of good things to say about his brief time in AEW.
“I enjoyed a lot — I brought up the match with [Bryan] Danielson earlier, a lot of those things I love. So yeah, I’ve lived a charmed life, man. I’m grateful that Tony Khan — how can we have such first-world problems? We’re like, ‘Oh well, this guy wanted to give me some of his money but not enough of it,’ you know? So I’m just grateful for the time I had there, I think we did leave some money on the table from some tag team wrestling that we could have done and some really cool stuff."
Fish also discussed working with his former Undisputed Era stablemates.
"I think fans have always kind of clamored a little bit to see if the four of us or three of us or some combination of us, and I think that’s another fortunate thing that we have with our careers is that any mention of us doing something collectively, it seems to get a positive reaction.” [34:07 - 35:12]
Fish added that he decided to sign a short-term deal with AEW because he felt he should have received more money. The veteran further mentioned that he knew his worth as a performer and couldn't reach an agreement with Tony Khan.
“I’m grateful to the fans for that, and we’ll see. My time there was brief, I would only agree to a year contract because, to be honest, he wasn’t giving me enough of his money. But listen, you’ve got to know your worth, that’s what it came down to for us: nothing more, nothing less. I had put a higher price tag on my value than they were, and we tried to see if there was someplace to meet in the middle, and there just wasn’t.” [35:13 - 35:51]
A WWE Hall of Famer recently praised Tony Khan for his actions
Tony Khan has had a busy few weeks as AEW President, with All In breaking records in the United Kingdom, All Out being held a week later, and the company returning to Arthur Ashe Stadium in just a few weeks.
Despite the company's recent success, the news on everyone's lips is CM Punk getting fired from AEW. Tony Khan addressed the issue in front of a hostile Chicago crowd before the September 2 edition of Collision. WWE Hall of Famer Booker T praised Khan for his actions
Booker stated on his Hall of Fame podcast that Khan should be praised for going out in front of the Chicago crowd and facing the heat so that the rest of the roster didn't have to. He added that the AEW President didn't have to do what he did, which should also be respected.
Do you think Tony Khan did the right thing? Let us know in the comments section below.
Please credit "Developmentally Speaking" and give a H/T to Sportskeeda Wrestling when using quotes from this article.