Hebner is working as a Personal Assistant for AEW.
Earlier this year, longtime referee Earl Hebner stated that his daughter Katie is working with All Elite Wrestling. In a new interview with both Katie and Earl, she shared details about her position.
Katie and Earl were invited onto the Great North Wrestling Podcast and Katie confirmed that she’s a Personal Assistant at AEW. She talked about her journey in wrestling and how a back injury she suffered while training at The Nightmare Factory changed her plans.
She eventually gave refereeing a shot. Katie said she was not interested in that and wanted to carve her own path. She said people had been trying to get her to become a referee for years.
So, I don’t know if you’ve been following my journey much but, it’s been a crazy road so I was at The Nightmare Factory for a little bit getting trained under Q.T. Marshall and Cody Rhodes and so while I was there, I injured my back, and that put me out for a very long time. It was kind of one of those things where… Out of sight, out of mind. So, unfortunately that was the case for me. I was out for about 12-13 weeks and of course, here I am when I get injured, I’m like, ‘Okay, cool, 12-13 weeks. I’ll be right back in the ring’ and I got injured in April of 2021 and by October, I was still having issues. Even until 2022 of last year, I was still having issues so it was kind of one of those things where I wasn’t able to — my recovery time wasn’t as quick as I was hoping. It was still a lot of underlying problems that we didn’t know until I went to my orthopedic specialist so, unfortunately, wrestling was just kind of put on the backburner and we tried a different route which was refereeing, and that was kind of a thing that I played tug of war with because everyone, for years, would always be like, ‘Katie, you have the name. Just use the name. Be a referee, do this, do that, save your body’ and while I respect the referees and respect what my dad and my brother and my uncle did for the business, that’s just not what I wanted to do. To kind of answer your question, I wanted to be a wrestler, I wanted to be my own person while still carrying around the Hebner name. I didn’t want that to be the reason why I made any type of accomplishments. So, I did that for a little bit and then I just, again, wasn’t really feeling it. So I actually have a backstage job at AEW now. I am working as a P.A. right now with them. So I’m working on the production side of things, which works out fine because I love the behind the scenes stuff. Kind of playing into what I was telling you earlier where I would go backstage. I would just kind of look up at what was going on around me versus what was actually going on in the ring so, we’re trying that out for right now. We’re gonna see how that goes…
Speaking about her father, she wants to see Earl in WWE’s Hall of Fame. She told him he should be more nice to the company and mentioned that there was a time when the company contacted him for the Hall of Fame.
I think my dad’s just a very call it down the middle, down the line, just sees it for what it is. I would like to see him inducted into the Hall of Fame, WWE’s Hall of Fame. I know as much as he probably denies it and doesn’t want the spotlight and will say his little snarky comments, I know deep down in his heart, that would make him so happy and that’s why I always tell him, I’m like, ‘Dad! You gotta be nice’ because they called you for it one time and he’s not kind to them. Told them to go off and I’m like, ‘Dad, stop’ so, I think he learned his lesson. If they call you, you need to accept that with open arms but, I would love to see him in that. I just think he’s done great things for the business…
Katie refereed Ring of Honor matches for AEW. In 2019, Earl worked a select number of dates for AEW. In 2022, he appeared at IMPACT Wrestling’s Slammiversary pay-per-view to make the three count for the IMPACT Originals in their match against Honor No More.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the Great North Wrestling Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
