Brody King and MJF appeared on last night's AEW Dynamite in a video segment where they hyped up their upcoming AEW World Title match at AEW Grand Slam Australia this Saturday. This raised eyebrows as the previous week the two were involved in a match that saw the audience erupt into anti-ICE chants that got a lot of mainstream attention.
On last night's Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer suggested that the reason AEW kept King off live TV was due to the fear of another anti-ICE chanting breaking out and that the direction came from Warner Bros. Discovery and not Tony Khan.
"This is again not a Tony call. This is from above. You know what it is. Nobody wants to get on Trump’s bad side. If it wasn’t for that, nobody would care. It’s just a chant but unfortunately, they (WBD) have got a company they are trying to sell and get regulatory approval from a guy who is going to take that stuff personal. That’s just how it is."
WBD took note of Meltzer's speculation and issued a complete denial:
"Warner Bros. Discovery did not have any involvement in Brody King’s upcoming AEW schedule. Any speculation to the contrary is categorically false. Brody is scheduled to appear during the next AEW event, which will air this Saturday on TNT and HBO Max."
Meltzer then essentially posted a retraction on social media, saying that after talking to his AEW sources, they informed him that nobody in WBD told them to keep King off the show.
"Those at AEW have said nobody from WBD asked them not to use Brody King on last night's show and this was just how it was booked to only use him in a video package. We had heard over the weekend that there were concerns about how much pub the situation had gotten from the WBD side, but those at AEW said that they were not told not to put him on the show."
"So this corrects the report from last night. It had been a topic of discussion over the weekend."
