Report: Pro Wrestling Company Believes AEW Are 'In Trouble' With Paramount-WBD Merger Due To TKO Partnership

An undisclosed professional wrestling promotion believes All Elite Wrestling are "in trouble" when the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is completed due to Paramount's partnership with TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of WWE and UFC, and TKO CEO Ari Emanuel's friendship with Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison.

This viewpoint reportedly stems from personal experience, with Dave Meltzer reporting on Wrestling Observer Radio that a pro wrestling company were in talks over a TV deal to air on Paramount+ in 2025, only for those negotiations to go cold after it was announced in August 2025 that UFC would air on Paramount+ in the United States beginning in 2026.

"Ari Emanuel's a wild card and there is a story that I was told that I did not know that there was a wrestling company that was negotiating with Paramount+. It would have been a little over a year ago, and they did not have a written deal, they were confident in a deal. They were negotiating with people at Paramount, top people, one of them ended up losing his position in the Skydance merger, one of them was still there. The company was confident they would get on Paramount+ because at the time there was no wrestling on Paramount+. As it came down to the wire, they had nothing signed or anything like that, then the UFC deal came in. Once the UFC deal came in, all of a sudden everything got cold with them completely. They don’t know, but their thought was it was Ari Emanuel and their thought is AEW's in trouble," Meltzer said.

Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans for a $110 billion merger in February 2026 and the merger was approved by the US Justice Department in June. The deal has been held up after attorney generals for 12 US states filed a lawsuit to block the merger in July, but a settlement was agreed on Monday, September 21, paving the way for the merger to be completed.

While the undisclosed promotion believes AEW are in trouble and WWE higher-ups reportedly believe AEW won't secure a new TV deal following the Paramount-WBD merger, Tony Khan has been publicly and privately bullish about AEW's post-merger future, partly due to his own relationship with David Ellison. It was reported in March that Tony Khan was thrilled about the prospect of a Paramount-WBD merger, which would also see Paramount take over WBD's minority stake in All Elite Wrestling, and Khan himself has stated that he believes the merger will be "huge" for AEW.

AEW currently airs on TBS and TNT in the United States, as well as HBO Max, with all three properties owned by WBD, with the streaming service also carrying AEW pay-per-views in the US. AEW have aired on WBD channels since Dynamite's premiere in October 2019 and the current AEW TV deal that took effect at the beginning of 2025 is worth $555 million through to the end of 2027. There is also an option to extend the deal for another year until the end of 2028 with a substantial monetary increase for AEW.

To further add to the possible positivity around the deal, Dave Meltzer also reported that there has been talk within pro wrestling that AEW special events may end up airing on CBS following the merger.

"They'll probably get something somewhere because the reality is their television stuff is strong enough that they'll get something somewhere... But I mean, again, David Ellison and Tony Khan know each other from the NFL. I know that they've talked. Tony has clearly been very optimistic about, number one, getting this show in more homes due to getting on Paramount+, getting more backing. He has not talked about the potential of CBS but other people in the business have talked about the potential of CBS for a special or something, a one-time deal like UFC gets. And the idea of buying the pay-per-views like they do with UFC which guarantees AEW the money and will put the pay-per-views in way more homes, so a lot more people will be watching it, which is probably better in the long run. There are people who believe that WWE benefited greatly by these pay-per-views not being a high-cost thing and more people watching it, and therefore it helps everything because far more people are watching the bigger shows than have ever watched them before, especially now that they’re on Netflix worldwide," Meltzer added.

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