A new report from Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp has created some chatter online around the photo that surfaced several months ago of AEW boss, Tony Khan meeting with Shane McMahon. At the time, it sparked speculation that perhaps the second generation McMahon, who was dismissed from the family organization on a few occasions before his return against The Miz at Wrestlemania was cut short when he tore his quad just minutes into the match, might consider a jump to All Elite Wrestling.
Since this photo coincided with the start of the Jon Moxley faction and his promos that implied something major that would affect the promotion in the future, some were guessing that Shane would be revealed as the force behind the stable, creating the possibility of a McMahon working for Tony Khan.
As I wrote at the time, as much as Shane might want a better conclusion to his wrestling career than tearing his quad against The Miz, I just didn’t think that he would ever work anywhere in professional wrestling outside of the WWE, especially because by nature, it would be seen as a step down. This would be underscored when you take into account the current standing of All Elite, as its ratings and ticket sales have declined over the past two and a half years.
All things considered, it’s doubtful Shane would settle for a secondary group, while his sister and brother-in-law run the sports entertainment portion of the TKO merger that brought the WWE together with the UFC. Since the merger, the $5 billion Netflix deal was announced and the company continues to generate record-setting revenue.
However, according to Fightful Select, Shane actually considered working with the Khan-owned organization, looking to run the company in some aspect. There were some rumors that Shane wanted some level of ownership in the company, but that couldn’t be confirmed, and I really doubt that McMahon would make such a request during an initial meeting.
Jonathan Coachman claimed on his podcast that Tony stopped any communication with Shane after the meeting as a way to dismiss the offer. I take anything that Coachman says about more or less anything with less than a grain of salt, especially in this case since it’s doubtful that the secondary interviewer that hasn’t actually worked in the sports entertainment industry in years would have any idea what Tony Khan or Shane McMahon are doing about anything, let alone the details of a potential business deal that would effect the direction of All Elite Wrestling.
According to Sapp, Tony passed on Shane’s offer to run any portion of the promotion, which isn’t surprising at all, given that the entire point behind the launch of All Elite Wrestling was to allow him to relive his E-fed booking on the internet from his youth in real life. We’ve seen several examples that money is no object to Tony so revenue and profit aren’t goals for him. The bottom line is, Tony isn’t going to allow anyone else to play in his sandbox.
That being said, what if Shane McMahon was brought into run All Elite Wrestling?
As much as the reasoning behind Tony’s decision to decline the possible offer would be self-serving, that doesn’t mean that even if he looked at the situation objectively that he should’ve handed the reigns over to the second generation McMahon. Make no mistake about it, Shane more than earned his stripes in his younger days as a performer on the roster. He wasn’t as graceful as Rickey Steamboat, but he took many risks to prove that he was willing to sacrifice for the business and wasn’t just there because of his last name. At the same time, does any of that qualify him to be a booker or run the company in any other fashion? As we know, Shane originally left WWE in 2009 when it became clear that he wasn’t the next McMahon in line to run the company. If he would’ve done a better job than his sister and his brother-in-law is irrelevant because it would be a total hypothetical.
The harsh reality is, Shane was around the business for years and assisted in different aspects of the business side, but he has zero experience as a booker of a national wrestling company. While All Elite Wrestling certainly needs someone besides Tony Khan to script the shows, what exactly does Shane bring to the table from an administrative stand point besides his last name? Sure, Shane worked in the offices of the corporate structure of WWE, but that’s obviously very different from the structure or lack thereof within AEW.
This isn’t necessarily meant as a knock on Shane, but he doesn’t have the qualifications or the track record to be the answer for All Elite. To be fair, with the multi-layered problems that the promotion has, it remains to be seen if anyone would have the answer to recapture the momentum that the project had after it originally launched. At 55, he has very little, if anything to offer from an in-ring perspective. Furthermore, and this might be one of the points that would be overlooked on the surface because of the initial shock value a McMahon appearence on Dynamite would generate, Shane often overstayed his welcome so to speak with much of his latter tenure in WWE.
Anyone remember the “best in the world” stint in 2019 when Shane got more TV time on Smackdown than most of the roster? How about when AJ Styles was used as an opponent for Shane just to try to ensure that McMahon had a decent match at Wrestlemania? Along with that, there was the infamous Royal Rumble appearence in 2022, where it was reported that Shane wanted the match to be built around him, and the incident received such criticism that he was actually dismissed from the company a few days after the event.
Are the fans really clamoring for another Shane McMahon run on television, even if it was on AEW programming?
Of course, given the fact that Shane never surfaced on Dynamite lends some level of credibility to the story that negotiates fizzled before they ever got started. While I think Tony would undoubtedly want to hire Shane just so that he could say that he had a McMahon working for him, the biggest takeaway from this story is the hypothetical decline of the offer.
There’s no doubt that Tony Khan would pay Shane McMahon millions of dollars to sign an All Elite Wrestling contract, and at least initially, the shock value would get the fans to tune into Dynamite. The problem from there, is two-fold in terms of why the deal wouldn’t be finalized, and if it did, the impact would be minimal. It’s not unrealistic to think that Shane might want to run a portion of the company because as mentioned, his in-ring days are probably over, or at least they should be, and money isn’t a motivation for him since he’s more than financially secure. Sure, Shane would want to get paid to work for All Elite Wrestling, but the goal would be accomplishment, not cash. It’s at least possible that maybe he wanted to accomplish something within professional wrestling on his own, and if he boosted the profile of All Elite Wrestling, it would definitely prove that he should’ve received more consideration for the next in line to run WWE many years ago.
The bottom line is, Tony Khan isn’t going to allow anyone else to run the promotion because that would defeat the purpose of the project, to allow him to be a pro wrestling promoter. No, Shane McMahon wouldn’t be the answer because even the shock value that would get fans to tune in would only be temporary, and as mentioned, Shane doesn’t have the track record as a booker to truly turn the company around so the overall impact would eventually be minimal. Assuming that even a portion of the story is true, it underscores that Tony won’t relinquish any power within All Elite Wrestling and that will ultimately continue the trend of a slapstick product that has seen a 40% decline in viewership in the past two and a half years.
What do you think? Share your thoughts, opinions, feedback, and anything else that was raised on Twitter @PWMania and Facebook.com/PWMania.
Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
E mail [email protected] | You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, & Threads @jimlamotta89
