AEW suspended Sammy Guevara and Jimmy Havoc after both men were named in the Speaking Out movement.
Guevara said during a podcast appearance in 2016 that he wanted to "fucking rape" Sasha Banks. He and Banks discussed the situation privately and publicly, with Guevara issuing multiple apologies for his comments. AEW suspended Guevara without pay and Guevara agreed to undergo extensive sensitivity training.
Havoc was accused of multiple actions including mental, verbal, and emotional abuse, rape, and assault. AEW issued a statement on Havoc that wished him well as he "receives treatment and counseling in an effort to overcome the mental health and substance abuse challenges in his life."
Speaking to the New York Post, AEW President Tony Khan addressed both suspensions.
"I suspended them both. Very different situations. I just needed to address both. We are addressing both. I think Jimmy really needed the counseling. If and when he were to wrestle again, the most important thing for himself and everybody here is that he sought treatment and counseling. When he asked for that help, we?re gonna help him," said Khan regarding Havoc.
On the subject of Guevara, Tony said, "I think the right thing to do was to suspend him. The comments he made were horrible. I can?t defend them. I can?t even comment on them because they?re unspeakably bad. He has also done a different kind of counseling and he?s in a different kind of counseling and it?s a different kind of coaching. Everybody here, male and female pretty much up and down the roster we talked to felt like Sammy had no history of this kind of behavior. Really people were shocked Sammy had said that. Certainly, it?s an old clip. I think the video was four years old. I had never seen that video and it?s something I would have addressed with him before Sammy started here. I never had an opportunity to address it because I didn?t know it existed and neither did anybody else or if they did nobody told us. For both of them, we really needed to address the situation before talking about what to do in the future afterward."
Khan finished by saying, "I didn?t want to rush into making a decision on either person, so it felt like until I had all the facts suspending was the right thing to do. Then I could make whatever the right decision is. I knew the right decision wasn?t for those guys to just come to TV and not address this stuff."
AEW has stated that they will evaluate the statuses of Guevara and Havoc following their respective completions of counseling.