On April 1, AEW announced the parting of ways with a number of talents, including Brandon and Brent Tate who were “The Boys” as Dalton Castle’s long time valets. The trio had held the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Championships twice with Castle.
They had been on ROH TV in February, in a storyline where Castle lost custody of The Boys to Johnny TV. On yesterday’s conference call, Khan said The Boys were let go because they “no showed” events.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Brandon Tate posted a multi-part message, beginning with “This had to be addressed.”
We had planned to stay quiet publicly about our release to take nothing away from the biggest show of the year for ROH in Supercard tonight out of respect to the locker room that will be on it. Due to Tony’s comments and the numerous fans, media outlets, friends and coworkers that have reached out to us, that isn’t an option for us anymore. We want to apologize to the Ring of Honor fans and to the AEW fans that were invested in the storyline and were expecting the both of us to be there.
With so many fans wanting answers in addition to numerous people that have voiced their comments at the thought of us really just no showing on the some of the biggest opportunities of our lives due to Tony Khan’s statements, here it is.
My brother and I were told that we would be included in this story through Supercard and there were plans for us to be with John and Taya leading up to the show. We were asked to pitch several ideas for ourselves insinuating we would get the opportunity to show that we can wrestle more in the future.
On March 16th, our scheduled date following “Dalton losing custody”, for the first time in our history of flying in North America previously with Sinclair ROH and now Tony Khan’s ROH, our travel was booked out of Nashville instead of our home airport of Knoxville. (The screenshots of this interaction with management and travel including the times are in the comments.)
On Monday April 1st, we were contacted by management accompanied by HR on a call to inform us of our release due to “budget cuts.” At that time we raised concerns and repeatedly questioned if the release was due to the travel issues, we were repeatedly and adamantly assured that this was not the case and based solely on budget cuts.
Since Tony’s statement, we reached out yesterday providing the specific details asking for Tony to clear this up. We have gotten no response. Unfortunately in the court or public opinion for a lot of people commenting, it’s assumed that we’re guilty from 1 man’s words until we now have to prove we’re not.
We’re now forced to release this info along with the screenshot proof to keep people from putting us down on social media or on this evening’s show. We understand that putting this out is detrimental to our careers but our back is against the wall on this and it was either this or let Tony Khan go on saying we no showed.
We want to thank each and every fan who has reached out and made your voices heard as well as the locker room members who have reached out that know the truth as well. We hope you all still enjoy the show this evening for the sake of the wrestlers putting on their best and appreciate how much we’ve seen that people really care about two boys who were always considered replaceable.
Then followed a message thread with names redacted:
Also released on April 1st were: Anthony Henry, Stu Grayson, Gravity, Dasha Fuentes, Slim J, Parker Bordeaux, Jose The Assistant and Jora Johl.
Today AEW took some hard knocks. Not only have The Boys fired back at Tony Khan but:
- Brandi Rhodes said this about AEW in an interview with The Athletic: “What I feared with that company, I was seeing before my eyes. When you start to see things drift from the original vision and … I’ve seen this happen before, then you start to (think) this may not be what we thought it was.”
- Interviewing Rhea Ripley on the Pat McAfee Show, Pat himself made this in reference to AEW speaking about Rey Mysterio: “He would be at that OTHER place in front of like 600 people.”
- Also on the Pat McAfee Show, HHH said this about WWE’s competition these days: “We were building up against something. Right now, we’re up against ourselves. We’re up against the Attitude Era, we’re up against the Ruthless Aggression era, whatever you want to call it. The best of the absolute best of WWE… that’s what we’re working against.”
- Earlier this week, CM Punk also had a lot to say about AEW on the MMA Hour.
TOP PHOTO: Dalton Castle and The Boys at the Icons of Wrestling Convention & Fanfest on Saturday, December 17, 2022, at the 2300 Arena, in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by George Tahinos, https://georgetahinos.smugmug.com
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Tony Khan responds to The Boys’ rebuttal: ‘I stand by what I said’