The Elite will stay with AEW after signing new multi-year contracts, retaining their EVP roles.
Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated first reported the news earlier on Wednesday.
AEW’s CEO Tony Khan told the publication:
The Elite have been so important to the launch of AEW, with the Young Bucks going all in when I first approached them in 2018 about my dream to create an international pro wrestling promotion. Shortly after that, their partners and closest friends Kenny Omega and ‘Hangman’ Adam Page joined us to formally launch All Elite Wrestling. All four of them have been instrumental to AEW’s success from the very first episode of Dynamite in 2019 through the present day.
Our original goal was to create a wrestling alternative and give a platform to talented people that we’d all felt deserved a spotlight. I feel like we did our best in that time, and hopefully some people you’d never heard of pre-AEW are folks you enjoy watching today. Or if you knew them from their previous work elsewhere, have maybe found a new appreciation for them. That feeling, combined with the feeling of knowing they can provide for themselves and their family doing what they love, was always the biggest reward of being an EVP/founder.
We’re literally the ‘E’ in AEW. The Elite are the main characters of this company. No matter how different AEW is now from its original inception, we are the DNA. And if you lose the foundation of your home, it eventually collapses. It’d be a lie if I said that didn’t weigh on us, when making the decision.
If we’re going to be honest the schedule was a huge part of it. I have a wife and three young children and seeing them as much as possible was a big factor. I’m not going to lie, the money was a huge factor, too.
I think it’s very meaningful that, as a day one guy, I stay with AEW. It’s likely that I will one day finish my career here. Hopefully that can help the future generations see that there can be more than one path to success.
At this stage of my life the selling point was the schedule. AEW’s schedule allows me to be home with my family for the majority of the week and will ideally help my body hold up better in the long run. And the pay is good.
