WWE President Nick Khan appeared on the Bill Simmons podcast this morning and spoke on a variety of topics. One of the interesting subjects that was brought up was about wrestlers leaving and coming back to WWE. In terms of Cody Rhodes, Khan had this to say:
"For Cody, he leaves. He doesn't like the Stardust thing. He thinks he can do much more than that. He leaves, he hits the indie circuit. So whatever he was making at WWE at the time, he left that guaranteed money to go on a night-by-night basis. He took a full bet on himself. He went and 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. And a year later was in the main event of WrestleMania 2023 at SoFi."
Khan was then asked about talent signing with WWE whether from AEW or elsewhere and Khan indicated that they don't want to sign someone and not use them.
"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."
"That’s something we won’t do. We won’t sign and bench people. We sign people who we want to use. If another entity signs and benches people now, that’s not something we would do."
