Last week, there were reports online claiming that Jim Ross, Chris Jericho, and The Elite were banding together with Tony Khan to start a new wrestling company. Khan is the son of Shahid Khan, the billionaire owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

For weeks, Jason Powell at ProWrestling.net has been talking about the interesting social media activity of The Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega and others. They are following Tony Khan on Twitter and Khan is following them. Powell did not have any more information on the story so he held off on reporting anything but the story blew up last week with claims from SEScoops that AXS TV is involved and that plans are in place for the promotion to launch in late 2019 or early 2020. AXS has denied any involvement and Jericho posted a denial on Twitter.

It turns out that there is interest but the details reported late last week were not accurate. Bryan Alvarez was asked to comment on the story on today’s Wrestling Observer Live. This is what he said:

“Right now, nothing is going on. A year from now, maybe something will be going on. It’s so premature to be talking about any of this and there are many aspects of this story that are just not true. There’s really nothing to talk about except some guy has an interest in starting a new promotion and his father has a lot of money. That is literally… that is where the story is right now. Anything beyond that is very very premature.”

Bryan pointed out that long-time wrestling fans have heard things like this before. Since WCW closed down in 2001, there have been dozens of people who have talked about starting a new company to compete with WWE and most of them never got off the ground and none of them have come close to competing with WWE. There was a similar story years ago about the Wilpon family getting into the wrestling business and nothing materialized. What usually ends up happening is these promoters realize how expensive it is to run a wrestling company and they find out how difficult it is to get a TV deal that pays good money.

Bryan added, “if there is more then we will talk about it but right now that is the story.”

The Elite would not be legally able to discuss anything with a competing company until January when their current deals expire. At that point is when WWE can reach out to them with a money offer.











