AEW President Tony Khan on suspending Sammy Guevara and Jimmy Havoc, Pac’s status with the company

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

AEW President Tony Khan spoke with Joseph Staszewski of the New York Post and was asked about suspending Sammy Guevara and Jimmy Havoc. “I suspended them both,” Khan said. “Very different situations. I just needed to address both. We are addressing both. I think Jimmy really needed the counseling. If and when he were to wrestle again, the most important thing for himself and everybody here is that he sought treatment and counseling. When he asked for that help, we’re gonna help him.

“With Sammy, I think the right thing to do was to suspend him. The comments he made were horrible. I can’t defend them. I can’t even comment on them because they’re unspeakably bad. He has also done a different kind of counseling and he’s in a different kind of counseling and it’s a different kind of coaching. Everybody here, male and female pretty much up and down the roster we talked to felt like Sammy had no history of this kind of behavior. Really people were shocked Sammy had said that…

“I didn’t want to rush into making a decision on either person, so it felt like until I had all the facts suspending was the right thing to do. Then I could make whatever the right decision is. I knew the right decision wasn’t for those guys to just come to TV and not address this stuff.”

Khan was also asked about Pac’s status with AEW. “I really miss Pac a lot,” he said. “Right now the border is not a great situation. As I understand it, if he were to go back to England, if he were to come here and he was able to get in, do a quarantine after travel then he would also, when he tried to go home, he’d be in a two-week quarantine before he could do anything. So it just doesn’t seem like a sustainable situation right now because Pac lives in England, so until travel is sustainable and he could do what he used to do, which is come here and stay and do a few shows and then go back to England and really commute across the Atlantic, it’s very challenging right now. Until it becomes safe to travel back and forth for Pac to make those trips internationally, until the border is really ready, I don’t think we can rush him back even though we’d love to have him.” Read the full interview at NYPost.com.

Powell’s POV: There’s been some debate about how Khan handled the cases with Havoc and Guevara. If some of the serious allegations against Havoc are true, then I hope I don’t see him in an AEW ring again, though I think the company made the right call in sending him to counseling before making a final determination on his future. After all, had they fired him on the spot, there’s a chance that he never would have gone on his own. And the company can still opt to release him rather than bring him back into the fold once he completes counseling. The situation with Pac is certainly logical in terms of having him remain home in England during the pandemic. Khan also spoke about Mike Tyson’s future with the company and the charity aspect of the Fight For The Fallen themed edition of AEW Dynamite on Wednesday. I normally don’t push merchandise for companies, but 100 percent of the proceeds for the Fight For The Fallen t-shirt are going to Florida’s First Coast Relief Fund and Feeding Northeast Florida. As such, if you are interested, check out the shirts at ShopAEW.com.