Exclusive News On When Andrade First Met With Tony Khan

Andrade met with Tony Khan in Florida the week he was released from his WWE contract in March. Khan was motivated to sign Andrade, given that he did not have a 90 day non-compete, however a deal wasn't made.

Negotiations stalled because of Andrade's demands, which included wanting creative control and veto power on losing. Andrade also wanted to work for other companies outside of WWE. We are told that Andrade's deal with AEW does not have any creative control.

Andrade was also in talks with IMPACT. They were willing to guarantee part of his creative control demands but they were too far apart on the number of dates as he would be paid per date and not a guaranteed downside, which is how a lot of recent Impact deals are structured. They were pretty close on a one-off appearance at one point.

ROH was also reportedly interested in Andrade. Andrade's close friend Rush is the ROH World Champion, and his ROH contract expires in January.

After a slow down in getting the deal done, Andrade signed with AEW this week. They had been working on the language in the deal for several days.

Update June 7 at 10:55 pm ET: Corrected the article to state that Andrade's deal does not have a creative control clause.