In a revealing interview on Sportskeeda Wrestlebinge, former AEW star Jake Hager claimed that company president Tony Khan began to neglect the promotion after Cody Rhodes departed in 2022. Hager stated that the creative process fundamentally changed, leaving a void where no one could effectively challenge Khan’s ideas.
“There are yes-men that help him write his storylines, but there’s no one there who can actually tell him no,” Hager said. “I think everything changed after Cody left, because he was involved with creative, and after that, it became a free-for-all.”
The internal disorganization reportedly extended to basic show operations. According to Hager, production meetings were completely halted, leaving the roster without crucial information until just hours before going live.
“They stopped doing production meetings,” Hager explained. “We’d be sitting around until 5 PM just to find out what we were doing that day. What live television show runs like that? Only one with a lot of money behind it.”
Hager also revealed that even top-tier talent like Chris Jericho struggled to maintain communication with Khan, alleging that Jericho’s messages would go unanswered for weeks at a time. This created a sense that the promotion was no longer a top priority for its owner. “It got to a point where either AEW was important or it wasn’t—and it just seemed like it wasn’t to him anymore,” he added.
This account of internal chaos post-2022 echoes sentiments expressed by Cody Rhodes himself last month. In a late July interview on The Bill Simmons Podcast, Rhodes confirmed he left AEW partly due to feeling disrespected in a company he was instrumental in founding, a feeling he said he “wouldn’t stand for.”
While Hager described a creative free-for-all, Rhodes spoke of creative frustration, feeling he was “sitting on something magic” with his “American Nightmare” character that wasn’t being realized. He implied that if he couldn’t explore that direction “in the house that I literally, with Matt, Nick, and Kenny built, then buddy, I’m going elsewhere.”
Rhodes also hinted his issues were primarily with Khan, agreeing with a comparison to the power struggle between Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and coach Jimmy Johnson. Hager’s claims now suggest that with Rhodes gone, the creative balance of power shifted entirely to Khan.
The difficulty in collaborating on creative ideas became a significant issue, according to Hager. He described wrestlers waiting until one or two in the morning after shows just for a brief moment with Khan, who often seemed distracted. When a response was given, it was frequently dismissive.
“If you did get his attention, he’d hit you with some vague, half-hearted response like, ‘Oh, I see you in a tag team with Sammy Guevara. I don’t really see you doing that.’ That was it. That’s all you’d get.”