Tony Khan on AEW’s Past Partnership with AAA & Feeling “Double Crossed” Over How FTR’s AAA World Tag Titles Loss Went Down and Dragon Lee’s WWE Signing Announcement

Q101 held a recent interview with AEW CEO Tony Khan. One of the topics discussed included Khan’s thoughts about Lucha Libre AAA’s current partnership with WWE and the incident that led to AEW moving on from their partnership with AAA for CMLL.

“It’s great, it’s a great thing. We started working with CMLL in 2023, and things have really, really looked up for us. I have a great, great relationship with Salvador, and frankly, that’s not unexpected to me. I’d kind of been expecting that ever since the way the Dragon Lee signing was announced on December 30th of 2022. From then on, I said, okay, then I think it’s highly likely that’s the way this thing’s going, because that was certainly a big surprise to me. It’s not like, you know, FTR were there and they saw the WWE cameras and it’s like, ‘okay, something’s up.’ I had not agreed to that, actually.”

Khan also gave his thoughts about how he felt “double crossed” over how FTR lost the AAA World Tag Team Championship and Dragon Lee’s WWE signing announcement right afterwards at AAA’s show.

“Well, we had agreed that FTR would go down and wrestle RUSH and Dralistico, and then something happened during the day where Dragon Lee was in there. I was up doing a show in Denver that day, and… I remember I was with Samoa Joe, Samoa Joe had a match that night. It was December 30th in 2022, and I talked to FTR and they said, ‘there’s some kind of strange stuff going on here.’  Then, right after Dynamite ended that match went off and they announced that Dragon Lee was signing with WWE and he still had FTR’s name on the plate. So it was really a double cross, and that would never happen now. That’s one of those things that would never happen now. Salvador and I are brothers. I have a very close relationship with him. I don’t believe he would ever betray me like that, and I would never betray him like that and if we wanted to do something on a show, we would talk to each other. We wouldn’t be making subs or change stuff out or switching allegiances mid-show.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com