During a recent edition of the Keepin’ it 100 podcast, Konnan was asked about the “creative hierarchy” in AEW among President Tony Khan, Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes, and the Young Bucks. Here was Konnan’s response:
“This is what I could tell. Chris, definitely, what are you going to tell Chris Jericho right? Chris, you can tell he was writing his own sh*t and he was also producing his own sh*t because he was there giving orders. He knows what to do. That’s a smart move. Let Chris do what he wants. I’m sure he still has to tell them, ‘Hey, I want to do this’, and Tony has to say, ‘Yes.’
Then I noticed that all the EVPs kind of had the same latitude that Jericho had. Not as much, but kind of had the same latitude. He (Jericho) deserved to (have more latitude). He had been in WWE for how many years? None of those guys were. He’s got the experience they don’t. I think that this is what I feel, because I remember one time I was talking to Tony, and he was telling me, and he wasn’t trying to pass the heat, but you can tell that he was generally mad, and I understood him, he was like, ‘F*ck man. Remember that exploding barb wire match?’ He’s a fanboy. He loves this sh*t. He wanted to see it. He knew the fans wanted to see it. He knew it was something different. It hadn’t been seen, and he told me, ‘I took care of everything I needed to take care of. The one thing I handed off to somebody else was the finish, and the finish was f*cked up.’
You can tell he was mad that he wasn’t more hands on with the finish. That’s happened to me too. I hate when I do something in AAA, I tell somebody to do something and they don’t do it right, and now everything turns out bad because he didn’t do it right, but you can’t shift the heat to him. You can’t go publicly and say, ‘Hey, I told this guy to do this’, because everybody is going to go, ‘What? You can’t take it now b*tch.’ So you have to stand tall. I’m thinking that everybody kind of abused their power sneaking in their friends, sneaking in their own little agendas, and maybe he got tired of it and said, ‘F*ck this bullsh*t. I’m taking over.’
The other day, and I can’t get into what storyline it is yet because it’s about to happen. The very first time Tony ever talked about our show, he actually was kind of mad because we were burying his booking. He said something like, ‘Konnan can thank me for sending him, for giving him The Young Bucks storyline for AAA.’ I was thinking to myself, ‘Bro, you didn’t write that. I wrote it.’ But, I’m not going to get into a back and forth with you. Maybe you thought you did. Now, he sent me a storyline that was very well done. He said, ‘What do you think about this?’ I said, ‘I like it.’ He said, ‘All right. We’ll do it together.’ I think he feels more comfortable being hands on because I think he knows he’s going to do what’s best for business, where everybody else is hooking up their friends or doing what they want. That’s what I’m thinking.”
