ABC News is running a new piece that looks at AEW’s approach to mental health.
The article features several quotes from Tony Khan, Hangman Page, Eddie Kingston, and others about how the company allows them to open up about any issues they are dealing with.
You can check out some highlights from the ABC News article below:
Tony Khan on the environment in AEW: “I think having a fun place to work where, you know, we create, like an environment where we really do care about the people here. We try to show it and make the locker rooms here places where people aren’t going to dread coming in, and quite the opposite, where hopefully they look forward to seeing the other people that, you know, you get in the ring and fight.”
Eddie Kingston on the stigma surrounding mental illness: “We’ve lost enough people that, you know, I mean, in our personal lives, you know, away from wrestling, and a lot of us have lost people in wrestling we knew. And it’s because no one talks. And everybody has this stigma that they had to be tough and rough. And, you know what I mean; I can’t let nobody see my weakness. So I can’t then talk to people, you know, so you hold everything in. Then you find different ways of coping. For me, it was drinking a lot. Yeah, I mean, and I know, whatever it was, it was pills and everything like that.”
Hangman Page on being an ‘anxious millennial cowboy’: “In the macho world of pro wrestling, those kinds of emotions are often the least explored and I think people were ready to see that. Many are unable to take into account the cultural shift that’s happened in relation to our attitudes toward even acknowledging our mental health, much less the idea that a character can go through those things without being seen as ‘weak’.
