MJF believes TKO is behind negative rumors about AEW’s TV future
MJF believes TKO is behind online rumors meant to hurt the perception of AEW.
During a recent interview with CBS Sports’ SHAK Wrestling, MJF addressed rumors regarding the future of AEW programming and how a potential Paramount/Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery could impact AEW.
MJF said he believes those stories are being intentionally leaked by someone at TKO in an effort to make AEW look bad.
MJF said:
“TKO, WWE, what have you, their job is to make themselves look great and to make us look bad. So there’s a leak. Oh, ‘AEW is struggling to get a TV deal.’ That’s f—ing news to me, bro. Like that’s news to me. That’s news to everybody on the roster. It’s damn sure news to Tony Khan because last time I checked, they’re f—ing over the moon with us right now.”
“You know, we do better numbers than f—ing almost everything that’s going on on a weekly basis on cable because right now, as I was saying, the things that draw on cable are news and live sport.”
MJF then illustrated his point by comparing the WWE and AEW dynamic to Coke and Pepsi.
“I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million times, Shak, I love Jolly Old Saint Nick (Khan) and I love the tricks he’s pulling out. I f—ing get it. It’s smart, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t use our brains, right? It doesn’t mean that we can’t go, ‘Oh, this is being leaked intentionally to hurt the company that is the alternative.'”
“It’d be like if Coke out of the blue was like, ‘Hey, I don’t know if you guys knew about this, but Pepsi has a– water in it.’ Everybody be like, ‘Well, I mean, where is that source coming from? It’s coming from Coke.’ Okay, I’m not really going to give much thought to this, right?”
How could the Paramount-Skydance merger affect AEW?
Dave Meltzer addressed the potential impact of the Paramount-Skydance merger and Warner Bros. Discovery speculation in the May 18, 2026 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Meltzer wrote:
“There has been a lot of talk regarding the idea that Paramount/Skydance won’t want (AEW), although it’s the second highest rated regular weekly show on TBS and is so much more cost effective than UFC, plus the company would get a piece of its PPV revenue and have a small ownership stake.
We’ve heard from people in WWE, one of whom said that they realize that decision hasn’t been made and basically the same stuff we’ve said and that everyone following this seems to agree on, that nobody even knows when the merger is going through nor who will even be making the decisions regarding AEW if and when it does.”
MJF’s full interview with CBS Sports is below:
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.