Tony Khan will reportedly not be granting any AEW release requests

As previously, Malakai Black confirmed reports that he asked for his release from AEW but then clarified that he is still with AEW and will be back “pretty soon.”

During Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com addressed the reports that certain AEW wrestlers have asked for their releases…

“Nobody’s getting released, that’s the doctrine. [AEW President] Tony Khan made that very clear I guess in the last couple of days. So now it’s just, [Malakai Black’s] not being released, Buddy Matthews isn’t being released. Now they may be back sooner than before. They were wanting to go and trying to get a way out.

It’s not to say it’s hard and fast, and there’d be no way they’d never give anybody a release. But I think it’s pretty much the deal that if this happened in any other company, would those people get releases, and the answer is no. They signed the contract, so basically now their option is to sit at home – and [Tony Khan] can extend the contract if they sit at home – or wrestle. So now they’re gonna wrestle. He [Malakai Black] waved goodbye and now he’s coming back and he’s gonna blame me.”

“They really came after [Tony Khan], it’s pretty blatant that [WWE] came after so many of the guys. Basically everyone who had worked there, there might be an exception, every name that you would think of that had a previous relationship with Triple H was contacted and told to ‘try and get your release and come in.’ Several went to Tony and said, ‘they’re contacting us we have no intention of going’ and several said ‘we want the release’ and have been told no.”