Former Jacksonville Jaguar Austen Lane Talks About His Experience Working For The Khan Family

In an interview with Wrestling Inc, former Jacksonville Jaguar Austen Lane spoke about what it was like to work for Shad Khan and his son Tony while he played for the team. Here are highlights:

On working for the Khans: “My last year in Jacksonville was in 2012 and the Khans were just coming in. So, I pretty much played for Shad Khan for about a year-and-a-half. So when Shad Khan took over it was like a breath of fresh air. Here comes this guy with his mustache and everything who’s a self-made billionaire who started making auto parts in his garage and now owns one of the biggest auto breaks pads companies in the world. What he’s been able to do is spread the brand of the Jaguars whether it’s adding to the stadium or to the amphitheater where the Fight for the Fallen is gonna be this Saturday. …I think he has a lot of lofty goals and I think Tony Khan really shares his dad’s work ethic and his business sense. Now you have a guy in Tony Khan who has taken a risk in the wrestling world and it looks like it’s paid off.”

On not knowing Tony Khan was into wrestling: “It’s funny because when you’re in an NFL locker room, you don’t really talk about pro wrestling unless there’s a lot of fans of it. When I played on the team, there wasn’t really a lot of wrestling fans so those conversations I wanted to have never transpired. My interactions with Tony were few and far between because he was more on the analytical side of it. I would see him in passing every once in a while, but I had zero idea he was a wrestling fan. I really had no idea until it was announced that All Elite Wrestling was gonna start up and I was like, ‘Man, being in the locker room, we could have talked wrestling but I had literally no idea.'”

On the difference in benefits in NFL and wrestling: “In the NFL the benefits are non-stop, and basically that means they are gonna redo the whole players’ union. That’s gonna determine players’ benefits, their pensions and insurance policy. As far as when I played, the benefits were top-notch. Insurance was covered and all of the medical was covered. If you had an injury then the team would take care of that.”

On if AEW should have those benefits and if the wrestlers should form a union: “Yes, but it’s hard because – yes, [wrestlers] are under contract with AEW – but at the same time the reason why I was able to get all of those benefits was because I had a union that had my back. You want the medical, the benefits and the 401k, but if you don’t have a union to express those goals to upper management, I feel like it’s not gonna transpire. With AEW, the beauty they have is, yes, Tony Khan is the boss, but he’s put people in place like Cody, Kenny and The Bucks that have been wrestling their entire lives. They know the business in and out and anytime you have the faces of the company, and you mix them with the younger talent, conversations with them can start a union.”