Tony Khan On His Meeting With Shane McMahon: I Don’t Think He Was Interested In Being A Character On A Wrestling Show

On July 31, 2024 Fightful Select and WrestleTalk reported that Tony Khan met with Shane McMahon over “possibilities moving forward.” A photo of the two in a meeting was posted online.

Nothing further materialized from the meeting, though Fightful Select reported that Shane wanted to “run things” but didn’t have the product knowledge or familiarity with AEW or their business model.

Appearing on the Coach & Bro Show with Jonathan Coachman & Vince Russo, Khan was asked about the meeting.

“I had one really pleasant conversation with Shane. Shane reached out to me and said, ‘I’d love to get together. Where are you going to be?’ I was going to be in Dallas. ‘I can meet you here.’ We had a nice conversation. We talked for a few hours in the airport. I thought it was really strange that a photo came out from it. I thought it was pretty unusual. It could just be somebody who worked at the airport, but I know I had nothing to do with it. It’s very unusual. I talk to people all the time from all different media places. Shane is a very recognizable face in sports and the world of wrestling. That could be what it is. Somebody recognized we were in a room and wanted to take a photo. I’m in a lot of rooms with a lot of people and I’ve only had that happen to me one time. I thought that was pretty unusual. You can see in the photo, I’m very surprised. I noticed he wasn’t as surprised in the photo.

“I’ve only had the one really nice talk with him. I also thought it was quite impressive that in one conversation, it somehow got out that I talked to him. It was a pleasant chat and he seemed like a really interesting guy. I don’t think the role of being an on-screen person in a wrestling show seemed like the thing he was particularly interested in, but he had a lot of interesting things and experiences that are totally different than mine. I don’t think he went into it thinking, ‘I want to be a character on this guy’s show.'”

Shane recently attended John Cena’s last match in December.

Elsewhere during the interview, Khan commented on his decision to make a bid for WWE in 2023. You can find his full comments here.

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