During his AEW Dynamite post-show scrum, Tony Khan gave an abridged version of what he said on Wade Keller’s Pro Wrestling Podcast earlier this week in regards to full-time benefits for full-time AEW employees. Khan was asked about the Jon Moxley table spot on the broadcast, which led to a discussion about insurance and how wrestlers are classified as employees of the company.
“So a lot of people in this company are insured that are wrestlers are insured. Like of the people you saw tonight a large percentage of them were insured through AEW because they work full-time for me in AEW. This is my fifth show I’ve done in 2019.
There are other people—and most people haven’t been on all five shows, there are very few people—of the people that have been on all five shows, almost all of them are full-time and have full-time benefits. Jon Moxley actually does get healthcare, but he gets it through his wife, who is a full-time employee elsewhere. Actually, Kenny [Omega] does get healthcare and he is a full-time employee as are a lot of people. Kenny is a part of my office and he works here, that’s his full-time job.
There are other people, like Britt Baker, who’s full-time job is a dentist and she’s come in and wrestled on, I want to say three of the five—no, four of the five shows now. Four times this year.”
Khan went on to say he’s attempted to create a number of positions for wrestlers in the company, whether it’s administrative or artistic, noting coaches will also get benefits as well.
Later in the scrum, Wrestlezone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard asked about the use of dark matches before and after the airing of Dynamite, and if we might see that continue in future weeks or if we can expect those matches to air in some form. Khan said he has some plans in store for that as well, noting that they have early plans to potentially air them online as another franchise under the AEW umbrella.
“I think they will be aired and I think as we go on we’ll smooth it out and we’ll develop, there will be another franchise actually I think we’ll be able to get out of the good wrestling we’re getting from these tapings. And as we kind of smooth out and build a format for it which I think we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do, those will be available and I think they will be available for free for everybody online, probably. I’m excited about it. It’s always kind of been a part of the plan and we have a big roster and I want to be able to showcase people, but there’s only so many people you can showcase in a two-hour show if you want to have good, long matches and one thing about tonight’s show I think we had a bunch of good long matches, right?”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can watch the entire post-show scrum with Khan below:
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