There are several AEW talent contracts that have either expired or will be coming due this year after the promotion launched in 2019. It’s been already confirmed that The Young Bucks have signed contract extensions while Cody Rhodes is working without a deal.
Top names such as Kenny Omega, “Hangman” Adam Page, and Chris Jericho would be in the same category as Matt and Nick Jackson as wrestlers who signed in 2019. There are lower-end and mid-card names that will have to see whether AEW will keep them.
With AEW continuing to bring in new names such as Keith Lee, AEW President Tony Khan knows he will have to make some tough decisions regarding who to keep and let go. He spoke about this during a recent interview with Scott Fishman of TVInsider.
“When we started a lot of people had contracts that were a couple of years long and a lot of them are coming up. I have really tried hard to be very considerate of the people on the roster, especially going through the pandemic. That encompassed a long period of time where we were still in our first year of television and going into our second.”
Khan pointed out how he kept a lot of wrestlers under contract through the COVID-19 pandemic that he wasn’t using because he wanted them to get paid during this tough time.
“Now with so many wrestlers coming in, I can’t renew all the contracts. I’ve had to make some tough choices based on ability, fan response, or both. I try to maintain the best roster I can for the company and fans.”
There are a lot of former WWE stars on the free agent market and while not all of them will be signed by AEW, some of them will, which will further impact AEW’s bottom line.
