AEW’s Tony Khan Reveals How American Top Team Deal Came About

Dan Lambert’s start to life in AEW was fairly innocuous, appearing in the crowd with members of American Top Team, but after lambasting the AEW crowd week after week, things got physical when American Top Team attacked The Inner Circle’s Chris Jericho and Jake Hager.

Now fully entrenched in AEW, it seems as though ATT are here to stay - at least for the time being - and AEW President has revealed how the deal to bring Lambert and ATT into AEW came about, saying to Z100 New York:

“You know the way it happened is, I’ve never told the whole story before is about a year and a half, really a few months before the pandemic, at the beginning of 2020, I had dinner with [Jorge] Masvidal in Miami and we just talked business. We had a great talk. Then they told me that Dan’s, you know, American Top Team, Dan Lambert, have you heard of him? I was like, ‘Yeah, from IMPACT. He was Bobby Lashley’s manager in IMPACT. He did a really nice job.’ They said he’s a huge fan in real life, and that’s the deal is he’s like the biggest wrestling fan. I was like, ‘Oh, wow. Really? He’s pretty good, good personality. You know, I’d love to meet him sometime.’ They’re like, ‘Would you want to meet him right now?’ I was like, ‘Sure, come over and hang out.’ So he came over to where we’re having dinner. Fastest friends ever. Became really tight with Dan and he lived in Florida. Then through the pandemic, you know, we have a very small bubble of people and then we would have everybody who came to the shows at first before we let the fans in the outdoor seated bubble away from the wrestlers with like distancing and stuff. At first, it was really just a very small group of people. So Dan came in and took the COVID test and was with us in the bubble for a while and he, at one point, he brought a belt collection to show just for the historians because he has the world’s greatest wrestling belt collection. Just brought a few cool things. He has like Buddy Rogers belt. Like all this cool stuff.”

Lambert and Khan are both self-confessed wrestling nerds, so a friendship between the two wasn’t surprising:

“His favourite stuff outside of, you know, like we have these common interests because Dan loves wrestling and football so much,” continued Khan “He’s a big Miami football guy and also the world’s biggest wrestling fan. He became friends with me and then UFC was doing their bubble in Jacksonville too and we were basically set up almost as peripheral bubbles. That’s how Dana [White] and I really became good friends because he was setup right across the street from me in his bubble. We were in Daily’s Place and they were across the parking lot in the arena, so Dana and I became good friends. I brought him to meet my dad and I just love him.

“Dan and I became friends and then he’s such a good talker and he cares so much about wrestling, and that’s where I had the idea, you know, Scorpio Sky’s got the MMA background. The Men of the Year, originally I wanted as foils for Sting and Darby, but they had such great chemistry. I really thought that there’s long-term potential with Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page. Scorpio Sky, an MMA fighter with a good record, and Ethan Page, a double black belt, which a lot of people don’t think of originally when they think of Ethan Page, a guy with two black belts in Karate and Taekwondo. So I thought that would be really cool, training in American Top Team with Dan to build up as badasses. Then Dan, getting to live his dream as a wrestling manager is pretty cool but he’s just great at it.

“Then, you know, it got more and more heat, and that’s when I talked to Chris [Jericho] and Chris and Dan, you know, really could play off each other and there’d be something really special here. Now it’s gotten even stronger. Inner Circle’s in a great position. Look how over Chris is as a baby face. Jake Hager is a legit MMA fighter getting to work against other MMA fighters; with Junior dos Santos on Friday night, across the ring with Masvidal being out there, and now Sammy Guevara is a TNT champion. So it’s an exciting time.”

H/T: Wrestling Inc.