Nick Khan: WWE won’t ‘sign and bench people’

WWE President Nick Khan addressed wrestling companies signing talent and then not using them during Wednesday’s edition of The Bill Simmons Podcast.

Without mentioning AEW by name, Khan acknowledged the company has a lot of talented wrestlers and added that he has “nothing but respect for the father who finances it and owns the Jaguars.”

Khan said:

“In terms of the other wrestling promotional company, they have a lot of talented wrestlers. We’re happy about that. When contractually they are available to be talked to and have conversations with, assume a number of them will come over. And nothing but respect for the father who finances it and owns the Jaguars and all those other things.”

Simmons suggested WWE shouldn’t sign too many wrestlers because it would result in some being wasted.

Khan responded:

“That’s something we won’t do. We won’t sign and bench people. We sign people who we want to use.”

He reiterated:

“If another entity signs and benches people now, that’s not something we would do.”

Earlier in the conversation, Khan discussed Cody Rhodes’ run in AEW, stating that the current WWE Champion “faded out” during his time there.

“(Rhodes) started part of another league, and then you sort of saw him fade out over there. It was something that we talked about at WWE — it was like, ‘Well, this is interesting.’ It used to be, ‘Hey, this is about the wrestlers, this is about empowering the wrestlers — Cody’s one of the co-founders.’ And then that narrative shifted. And that’s when we decided, when we knew contractually we could make the call, to make the call and say, ‘Hey, why don’t we get together and have a conversation?’ The deal was done in minutes. And boom — he returned WrestleMania 2022 at AT&T Stadium. Just three years ago. A year later, was in the main event of WrestleMania 2023 at SoFi.”

Simmons noted that Rhodes hasn’t spoken much about his AEW departure. Khan responded, “He doesn’t talk a lot of s–t in a negative way, which is something I admire about him.”

Khan also spoke about having previously been CM Punk’s agent and now working with him in WWE. The WWE president said he was not concerned about Punk’s reputation as a “locker room cancer” when the decision was made to bring him back at Survivor Series 2023.

“It was so obvious to me that he wasn’t a cancer,” Khan said of Punk. “In having been an agent, assume I have dealt with some personalities that were not the easiest from time to time. That’s part of the job. I had always found him to be a gentleman. I always found him to be honest, responsive, and I felt if he was that way outside of the company, if given an opportunity to come back to the company he would be that way and he said that he would be. And he’s been a gem to work with.”

Nick Khan’s full appearance on The Bill Simmons podcast is available below.