First of all, apologies on no new content really for the past few weeks. The Montreal Canadiens are in the playoffs and that has my entire attention. Not really locked in on anything else. Funny enough when All Elite Wrestling first started in 2019 I was very low on my hockey team and hockey in general. I used to cover hockey just as much as pro wrestling. Then my team sucked, I hated the GM, and the game was all about deflecting shots so I lost interest while pro wrestling was getting hot.

Now seven years later pro wrestling is still exciting but because hockey is now better than it has been in 30 years and my team is good? It’s hard to properly divide my attention on my fandoms. Anyway.

Paradigm Distraction

Over the weekend the pro wrestling world was talking about how over in World Wrestling Entertainment they allowed Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods to walk due to them rejecting a contract cut. Everyone was excited on the idea of them coming to All Elite Wrestling.

Suddenly, an actual Hollywood agent who has a terrible grudge against AEW and represents multiple pro wrestling clients in WWE (including former AEW Real World Champion CM Punk) who has been on a tear on his Twitter profile ever since he “mutually agreed” to leave his talent agency has made claims that AEW was told they were not getting extended on their TV contract by Warner Bros Discovery.

This led to an article by a friend of his who always writes articles for him on Twitter, and speculation on the future of AEW’s TV contracts.

For those who don’t understand why there would be any questions on the future of AEW on Warner Bros Discovery, the company recently agreed to be bought out by Paramount Skydance, which the deal is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter of 2026. Paramount Skydance last year purchased the rights to UFC’s U.S. broadcasting as their first major move post-Skydance merger, and it’s believed that the owner David Ellison wants to essentially become the home of all things TKO Group. TKO Group is the company that currently owns UFC and WWE.

While WWE is currently not on any Paramount Skydance programming as they agreed to deals with Netflix for Raw, USA Network (Comcast Versant) for Smackdown, and CW (Nexstar with partial ownership from Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery) for NXT in the recent years, it is believed once those deals are coming up that TKO Group will want to move all WWE programming also to Paramount Skydance no different to UFC.

Should this come to happen there wouldn’t be a home anymore for AEW on WBD programming since WWE would not be sharing with them. It wouldn’t make any sense to share either. AEW would be having to find a new home.

Where the article goes off the rails is the suggestion that AEW rushed their MyAEW service as an answer to this. It wasn’t. MyAEW was an answer to Triller likely going belly up soon. AEW has now left Triller. The article tried to say this was a “guise” but it wasn’t. It was pretty obviously the reason.

It was also suggested that AEW would be prepared to move their TV to YouTube should they lose out on their WBD deals and that Tony Khan had told people this. According to Dave Meltzer, people in both WBD and AEW are upset about this saying it wasn’t true.

Speculations and Hunches

So why am I giving any light to this? This really isn’t a story until it is a story. AEW’s TV deals are not yet up. Their deal with WBD was extended October 2, 2024 and started in 2025. The deal was reported to be a three year guaranteed with a fourth year option. That means 2025 to 2027 is guaranteed with 2028 as an option.

WWE’s Raw on Netflix deal was a 10 year deal with an option to escape it in the fifth year. That would mean should Netflix and/or WWE agree to leaving the deal early, the earliest Raw could be on Paramount Skydance programming is 2030. The same goes for Smackdown on USA Network. NXT on CW Network was a five year deal starting in 2024 so they would be finished October of 2029.

My essential belief in this story is that the folks who started it are banking on David Ellison, who they know is loyal to the Donald Trump/Dana White camp, is going to want all of TKO programming on Paramount Skydance, so if the sale of WBD is completed that means AEW will no longer be on TV. It’s a good bet to make. Would Paramount really want the show where when Brody King comes out the crowd chants, “FUCK ICE” all throughout his matches? With all of the ways they’ve worked to ruin CBS News? Highly unlikely.

So while a lot of it is likely speculation or rumour I do think they are banking on the inevitable outcome of AEW no longer being on WBD programming and the uncertainty that would lead to.

I don’t think they are wrong, though I think it’s something AEW and Tony Khan have been preparing for. Publicly they’ve talked positively about the sale of WBD to Paramount Skydance, which of course you should. But I think they have certainly considered an outcome where they have to find a new network. Whether that’s at the end of 2027 as the claims suggest, or after their fourth year option is picked up is something we won’t know until it happens.

Should this WBD/Paramount Skydance deal go through AEW may have to find new TV. It will be a bit of a struggle should the timing mean WWE is still locked to Netflix, USA Network, and CW while they have to find something in between. This is where the YouTube claim comes in. It’s a reasonable assumption that if AEW was waiting for a deal to free up they would have to go somewhere in the meantime.

The problem with the agent and his friend writing the story for him is that both are coming from an agenda. They’ve likely heard things because they were snooping for it and got the dirt they knew they could formulate into a hit piece. Most of this stuff is a logical through line of what everyone who understands TV business would be thinking anyway.

Should Paramount Skydance want WWE programming then AEW wouldn’t be staying. Whether WBD told them they were not picking up on the fourth year remains to be seen. Whether or not AEW has no other options we won’t know until they are in a negotiation period, which they are currently not in. Should they have a period where they do not have a network to be on but are negotiating or waiting for a deal to open up later, it would make sense to make a deal with Google/YouTube to keep AEW in some way with an AEW channel that people pay for, possibly on the YouTube TV service.

All of this stuff I would have considered to be a possibility before it was presented in this way. Should AEW lose their primary network source it would mean they would have to find a new one, and options are limited until WWE finds their new deals. Should it not work out this way (let’s say Paramount Skydance only wants the new Smackdown deal while WWE stays on Netflix and CW) that would lead to even less options for AEW for their TV programming.

The Big Scary Future

It’s a lot of things you could be scared of if you’re an AEW viewer or fan, but it’s also not really something in your control. Should AEW have to change networks that’s what will happen. Some may suggest the fact Paramount Skydance would be inheriting the small amount of AEW ownership that WBD has would cause issues with that, but not really. It’s more likely they just sell it back to AEW in the event of departing from their programming. You don’t need someone suffering from AI psychosis to explain that to you.

So to summarize all of the bluster over the weekend? I think it was absolutely done as a distraction due to all of the negative WWE talk over the weekend. They needed some sort of bombshell to get people to not be spending so much time on long time wrestlers leaving and WWE asking wrestlers to take major paycuts at a time when the company is claiming massive profits. I’m not convinced WWE sent them to do it but as someone with a vested interest in their WWE affiliated clients I think they knew it was important to do.

But I also think everything laid out isn’t farfetched. Once you remove their assumptions of worst case scenarios you have a possible scenario of AEW being homeless until they can secure a new home and using YouTube as a gap until they get there. I don’t believe MyAEW has anything to do with this as its mostly for international markets.

It’s also mid 2026 and AEW has another year and a half on their current deals while Paramount Skydance merger still needs to be completed and approved. Everything is still very much in the future. We don’t know how things will shake out. We don’t know who will be looking for programming in the future and how much money they will be willing to spend. But to assume that automatically means the worst case scenario is silly for a company that continues to exceed expectations since day one.

Nobody in pro wrestling was supposed to be able to get a TV deal like AEW did in 2019. Nobody in pro wrestling was supposed to be able to get PPV buys after the $9.99 per month days. You can keep doubting AEW’s actual numbers or AEW’s reputation but you can’t deny they keep surviving when people continue to try to predict their death.

Lastly, a word of advice to anyone desperate for wrestling news. Maybe take a look at the sources and ensure the person you’re getting information from isn’t someone arguing in the early morning with someone named Otis P. Stinktrigger claiming they are a paid attacker of Tony Khan when getting your scoops. Integrity in sources is still important, even when the guy used to represent Henry Golding.

Back to actual AEW articles about actual AEW programming going on right now soon. Once I can not be distracted about the NHL playoffs.