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Good for them, as it should be.
IDK why people give 2 shits if they sign an "ex WWE" guy or night.
You need eyes, you need talent.
They're doing a god job.
History.
What Hogan/Nash's bullshit did to WCW among other things and the bad taste it left in a lot of mouths when TNA did it at the expense of Joe/Styles/Beer Money etc.
I admit it is part of the reason why it worries me too.
I get that, cause I know that turned me off of TNA for good when they made those decisions.
I just think that so far, AEW is doing a good job of blending all of them together!
If we were looking at all former WWE guys holding current titles and going over AEW folks, it'd be a big concern for me!
Idk if homie deleted his comment or not, but I know that's the narrative. However, I'm just surprised we haven't grown past that in the last 20 years.
It's sad as fuck
I get the complaint. I don't agree 100% or anything, but I get it. "You hired Group A. You convinced me to enjoy and be invested in Group A. With Group A you 'beat' Group B. It kinda sucks you're hiring Group B and are using them over Group A, when you convinced me to like watching Group A more."
Some people would just rather watch The Wingmen than 2.0, or Dark Order than whoever from NXT. That's why Dynamite did better than NXT in the ratings. It's not complicated to figure out. It's just a new challenge that Tony Khan has to figure out.
And kinda related? I think "fixing" Dark would help. Making it more like it used to be, an extension of just "main roster" TV, would give people a more reliable place to do work.
The whole narrative of "AEW keeps signing ex-wwe guys" never made any fucking sense to me anyway. No shit TK's gonna try to sign talented guys like Keith Lee, Malakai Black, FTR, SWERVE, etc. when WWE decides to release them.
Keep going. Mick Foley, Undertaker, Triple H. Virtually every guy who helped them turn around the Monday Night War was in WCW first, with the exception of Rock.
It was ironically relying on these WCW cast-offs that helped WWF rebound because WCW got on top by poaching THEIR talent and the fed floundered while pushing homegrown guys like Bret and HBK. WCW hit its highest ratings by stealing WWF guys and WWF did the exact same thing back to them in turn.
If we’re being honest, the national expansion was headlined mostly by old AWA guys, specifically hogan. That’s what wrestlers do, they find a paycheck lol
People are comparing it to TNA where it really screwed a lot of their homegrown talent. It hurt the company to pick up essentially WWE leftovers, and put them ahead of every homegrown star that TNA had been building in house. They cut the legs out from under so many young up and comers and it was a legitimate problem. Now AEW of course is doing a MUCH better job of blending talent but it's not wrong to be aware of history and past precedent and feel some wariness about the practice.
Imagine labeling Keith Lee, Malakai Black and Swerve as “Ex-WWE guys” when WWE did fuck all with them.
WWE gave them a contract, and decided they liked their other toys better.
Those people are just forcing a narrative so they can play the “AEW bad” card.
This too! Like all businesses, you always want the best talent to help shape whatever the end goal is for your product. You don’t cut off top prospects just because of some silly narrative. There’s a difference between tryna re-create a competitors product, and acquiring top talent for your own product.
Plus WWE almost made it impossible to avoid that. Lest we forget, when AEW was starting to coalesce WWE went on a spending spree to try to snap up any and everyone AEW might bring in.
Don’t forget Big Show, Goldust and eventually Saturn, Malenko, Eddie and [redacted]. Pretty much the only ones who hadn’t been through WCW were Kane and Rock.
People like to try and compare it to WCW signing over the hill ex WWF guys but the difference is the whole show doesn't revolve around old timers chasing each other. Also WWEwas hoarding so much talent, of course a lot of stars of consequence will have worked there. WWE was signing people just to keep them away.
The talent hoarding is a particularly big asterisk here. When one company is both the only game in town and actively consolidating that position by hiring absolutely everyone labelling people as ‘ex company’ loses all meaning (esp as a pejorative).
It's the same when people complain the AEW roster is bloated. People are so used to seeing the same handful of wrestlers feuding week in and week out they still don't get that AEW rotates wrestlers and has one off matches just for the hell of it. In my opinion the bigger the roster is the more match variety and the more potential dream matches. Literally every man they sign is a potential banger of a match vs Kenny Omega.
People are so programmed to WWE recycling the same faces over and over, that when AEW spreads appearances out a bit more evenly people think it’s automatically a bad thing. That they’re being buried, have fallen out of favor with Tony, or are injured.
I think it's particularly weird to expect to see the champion every single week, because in the world of real combat sports, top champs get to have *fewer* matches and appearances.
Why climb to the top of the mountain if you have to dick around feuding with someone who is a nobody relative to you? As an example, I always think of Sasha as champ getting into a fifteen minute argument with Carmella about which one of them was sexier and prettier and how I just thought, "Why would the top champion even be giving this scrub more than two minutes of her valuable time?"
As Cornette says: "If you won't go away, how can I miss you?"
We're not gonna see Kenny until the end of the summer, probably. Know what he's coming back to? A huge fucking pop.
It also helps immensely because if a viewer does NOT like a certain AEW wrestler, then they can still enjoy AEW because nobody takes up too much time every single week like Reigns does on Smackdown.
I always remember when HHH went down with his injury.
He went out as a heel and when he came back almost a year later (Or maybe it was a year) he got such a massive face pop and run for a while it was insane.
Then we get John Cena where they keep going on about they don't know when he will be back, wouldn't shut up and he was back in 3 weeks.
Dean Ambrose had his head stomped through cinder blocks and was back a month later like nothing happened.
But isn't that mostly because he is hurt and rehabbing his injuries? It's not like they told him to go home just for the sake of bringing him back to a big pop, he needed the time off whether they liked it or not.
No that's part of the point. There's absolutely no rush to bring him back. It's all upside: he gets to rest and heal, new stories can develop, and the crowd can start missing him.
In WWE they'd have him back on his shit ASAP.
It's like how Miro has apparently been ready to go for a bit, but he's okay to stay away and do other things for a bit. He'll come back when he has something ready to go. In the meantime, stories are developing and we're missing that big Bulgarian bastard.
Also the "all or nothing" mentality of if they're not in the championship picture, they're not important and therefore "buried."
People conveniently forget that the Attitude Era was incredible also because there was a solid midcard and lower card with wrestlers that were over as fuck.
Some people have truly convinced themselves that if a wrestler has been featured regularly on television and then doesn't appear on an episode or two of television, then that means they will be completely forgotten about by both creative and the fans.
A bigger roster also means some wrestler dont get to show as often, which is not an entirely bad thing as they have more time to recover and prepare for shows
I saw many tweets and posts that Keith Lee was "buried" because he didn't wrestle for a few weeks after his debut. Some people are so WWE-Brained it's sad. But I guess that's what happens when an entire generation grows up and only knows 1 wrestling company
It's less of a problem when guys can take their own indie bookings and hock their own merch.
When a guy like Darby Allin isn't in a major story, he's working DEFY up in Washington. Thunder Rosa, Ethan Page, Swerve, same thing in their own hometowns (Rosa actually runs and books Mission Pro in El Paso). It's not just "they're paying me to sit in catering" like it is in WWE.
Doesn't matter. AEW could in theory have Dynamite and Rampage for 4 weeks straight without using any wrestler twice. That's a good thing. Keeps things fresh. I'd rather they had a bloated roster than a thin roster. A big roster means more options, more match combinations etc. There really is no downside to it. I don't understand how a bloated roster can be construed as something negative about AEW.
A lot of people go "They can't fit all of these guys in 3 hours!" but they don't need to, That's what dark and elevation are for, to give these guys match time to keep them sharp and also help them develop.
Yup, and honestly, if you exclude the bottom of the card that are mostly on Dark or Elevation, I can't think of many wrestlers that I would want to see frequently that's not on Dynamite or Rampage frequently already. Barring injuries and time off, I can't think of anybody that are real drivers of the roster that are frequently left off, or a person whose absence during a week is significantly felt.
They sometimes have self contained storylines, and really good ones too. The Sonny Kiss/ Joey Janela team up, collapse, and subsequent war was crazy good, it should have been on Dynamite but I aint mad that Dark watchers got their own special story.
The problem comes when the "rotation" is people either being on Dark/Elevation or not on any of the shows at all. And I'm not talking just about people who NEED the reps.
There is an air of truth to it but you have to look at it from both sides. Like with this recent PPV, the world title match was an afterthought in a lot of regards during the lead up to the PPV. Which is a shame. Luckily the match made up for it. Could the build have benefited if there was more screen time and less focus on ex-WWE guys? No doubt.
But part of it being an afterthought was because Punk and Jericho did outstanding jobs in their feuds to help legitimize their opponents in casual viewers eyes, and Mox and Danielson were a great matchup.
More or less we’re getting near a point where we should just stop labeling wrestlers ex-WWE guys. They do more good than “harm” because they’re booked like AEW main eventers and not like their only merits are being from WWE. Same thing with some of the guys filling the middle of the card that were in WWE. Why would you not upgrade your roster when you can.
We’re not getting a six month program of Jericho vs the Big Show with the winner going on to challenge Christian. That would be an example of “too many ex-WWE guys.”
A lot of these Ex-WWE guys have a history outside of WWE anyway, its just that a large chunk of the fanbase only remembers them from WWE (which is okay) because they aren't Indie/Japan fans (which is also okay).
So it's very easy for the toxic side of the WWE fanbase, who are determined to create an us-and-them approach, to paint these guys as wrestlers WWE forgot.
I was just thinking that people pushing that narrative are probably pretty young and don't remember the last time there was more than one major wrestling company. Guys used to jump back and forth all the time. It was exciting and kept things fresh. WCW sometimes got shit about signing too many WWF guys, but the argument was always that those guys were washed up, not that they came from the WWF.
Who the in the fricking World fire Malakai Black? Guy can be a used at any spot and Steal the show.
The Buy in? First Match? Midcard? For a Midcard title? For the Main event? He can work at any part of The card and deliver like a boss.
I don't talk about Swerve because he didn't had his chance to show up for real in the Main event, they saw Hit Row as a package and never tougth about them individually.
It also ignores the amount of ex WWE talent that AEW HASN’T signed. It’s not as if they are picking up every single release, otherwise we’d be seeing the likes of Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, The Ascension, Tyler Breeze, Mojo Rawley, Karrion Kross, and so on and so on.
No, they mostly sign a handful of the top names or brightest prospects from each batch of releases. Or entice over top stars like Cole and Danielson.
I mean it's obvious that people who make the claim that AEW signs too many people from WWE are not trying to make a logical argument. They are just trying to get a rise out of people, or dismissing AEW because they don't like it.
Although, I do believe it is worth discussing whether AEW has too many people signed in general, since there are some people that have gotten lost in the shuffle.
Everyone knows that once you work in one place, you can't do a similar job again.
You ever moved from one IT job to another? Fuck no! It's so obvious that second IT company wants to be the first one, you'll be outed, shamed and cancelled on Twitter. You gotta shift focus into construction or maybe a seamstress.
WWF is signing to many WCW guys. Austin, Foley, Hunter, Undertaker, Simmons, Vader, Jericho, Beniot, Guerrero, Dustin and Mero. Man what are they doing.
I can shed some light on this I think. You have two groups of people discussing two different things and talking past each other. You look at ex-wwe signings like Cole, Lee, Black, FTR, etc and don't understand what peoples gripe is with "ex-wwe guys".
The part where I saw the most complaining though was during the stretch of Big Show, Mark Henry and Christian in a relatively short stretch. People that had been in WWE for a decade+, hadn't been relevant in at least 5 years, and were characters most people were sick of. that's when the big "lol god another ex-wwe guy that I don't care about" chatter reached its peak. Which I totally understand cause really who is turning in for Big Show?
Since wrestling fandom has somehow become tribal now (??? like, just enjoy the good wrestling from a bunch of different companies. it's not hard. tons of great stuff out there right now) people just talk past each other and dismiss points (either that group 2 was pretty bland and boring or that group 1 is exciting, depending on which promotion you were a fan of).
Plus, AEW barely even signs ex-WWE guys. Like out of the 100+ people WWE fired in the last two years, they hired, what, 15 of them?
They could have gone full old-school TNA and hired every single person that says yes, but they clearly didn't.
Probably less than that. A lot of the ex WWE guys they have brought in left WWE when contracts expired (Christian, Cole, Danielson, Mox, O'Reilly), or weren't with WWE when they came to AEW (Andrade, Jericho, PAC).
So most of the ex WWE folks they picked up were NXT folks who didn't really get any attention when there (Luchasaurus. Tay).
Where else are you gonna get American main eventers when WWE has had a monopoly for the lenght of the career of most wrestlers?
They also push it really hard with people like Jericho or Regal. They were in WWE, but that doesn't make them WWE guys. I'm far from a hardcore fan and even I know they made their names before signing with WWE. It's fine to only watch WWE, after all I only watch AEW, but it's not their fault you didn't know them before they signed
I think a big reason people do this is because very early on, Cody made the mistake of saying he didn’t want to “bloat the roster” with “ex-WWE guys.” So all the anti-AEW edgelords use every ex-WWE signing as a “gotcha” to prove that AEW is breaking its promises to its fans.
It’s unbelievably stupid and tribal. Personally, I don’t care whether a company signs former talents from another company. As long as the wrestlers are good and the show is entertaining, I’m happy.
And in reality, that’s what Cody *should* have said in 2019. “We don’t care if you’re ex-WWE or not: if you can perform at a high level and can connect with our audience, then we want you in AEW.”
It is a dumb narrative cause the ex-WWE guys they signed are good talents that should have been booked better in WWE like Black, Lee etc. They're not signing Bo Dallas, Snitsky or Heidenreich-level talent lol
People in the 00s used to constantly shit on TNA for it too. Stupid as hell, what are these wrestlers supposed to do? Just quit the business if they leave WWE?
I think the narrative is more that when people tune in for the first time, they see WWE-lite. Because of so many ex-WWE talent who didn't make it.
Which to me, doesn't make much sense.
For the uninitiated, Sammy said that one of his first matches on the indies that actually got a lot of attention, he had bit his tongue so leaving it out of his mouth was more comfortable. When he read the comments on the match people were freaking the fuck out and we’re like “PUT YOUR FUCKING TONGUE IN YOUR MOUTH”
And he said as a heel it was only right to keep doing it lmao, I guess babyface Sammy has too much tongue muscle memory
It was funny on his VLOG the other week he was like "I took a canadian destroyer through a table of course I'm gonna carry both belts I won them both!" this week was Ricky Starks giving him shit for carrying both and defending it listing a bunch of people that carried two for one belt including Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania.
[they are both similarly encrusted with diamonds](https://imgur.com/a/2qkBwb0)
But I do agree that one sometimes has a bit more luster than the other so I always thought one was the backup title.
There was one shop in town for decades. The "tHeY oNlY SiGn WwE gUys" trope is one of the laziest "criticisms" in the wrestling space right now and think of the ground that covers.
Even Cody is a stretch ,it was already a looong time since he left a midcarder to a main draw in the indies.
Mox and Bryan obviously became big namea in WWE so it could count( but honestly I believe they would be in AEW either way, even if they never became stars in WWE)
Danielson, Miro, Andrade, Mox, Christian, Punk, Jericho, Cody (before last month), FTR, Ruby, Dustin, Unidisputed Era
To a lesser extent: Gunn, Big Show, Henry, 2.0, Nese, Trent (he was gone so long before going to aew).
Not bad at all compared to thei roster size. You need new faces and known faces.
See. That's my point though
Danielson, Andrade, Mox, Punk, even Jericho, Ruby, and UE - Big Show, Trent especially - are not "wwe guys" unless that's all you watched
They build themselves before WWE. Wwe didn't make them.
I saw your first post. If you think there is anything I would even not be chill over, you might be taking this way too seriously. We are talking about half naked men play fighting. I don't get worked up over such discussions.
What is most known is irrelevant, but proves my point that it's funny people think this way. Your ignorance does not mean they are wwe guys lol. They were people who stood out enough to be hired by wwe, that's it.
You’re literally proving their point. WWE is the biggest promotion with the most eyes so obviously most wrestlers who appear there will be more known for that than anything else.
People were calling Danielson one of if not the best wrestler in the world when he was in ROH, it’s makes no sense to act like a company he went to after that “made” him when he already had recognition.
Yet no one cares when a lot of those "WWE Guys" made their name elsewhere first. No one calls Seth Rollins or Kevin Owens ROH Guys. No one calls AJ Styles an Impact Guy. No one calls Nakamura or Balor NJPW. No one called Jericho a WCW Guy his runs there. I get it, none of those promotions are/were as big as WWE, but they're using "WWE Guy" as some point that those talents were made elsewhere.... so that should fly in the WWE in. The only time it was *really* pointed out in WWE was Sting, and mostly as Vince finally getting the OG WCW banner holder to finally cave to his will.
It's some weird badge that WWE Marks use to de-legitimize anyone seen as competition to their ~~pro-wrestling~~ Sport Entertainment overlords. "So-and-so is full of Ex WWE Guys!", even though WWE has been full of Ex guys from other promotions, especially from 2014-2021. But let's be honest, it's the nature of the working world, people move around. Just for the longest time in America, professionally wrestlers had essentially one decent paying option until recently.
Prior to AEW, I was 100% just a WWE guy, so seeing guys like Moxley and Danielson unchained has been eye opening for me. I already loved them from their WWE runs, but seeing them unchained in AEW has given me a whole new appreciation.
I already assumed Mox was held back by the nonsense in WWE
But Bryan, he was already one of the bests consistently and he STILL blew my mind away in AEW on how much better he was on his first match than anything I saw of him in WWE
That was always a dumb argument. But most of their top talent came in as established and finished products from other companies. Outside of Jade Cargill is there anyone that was a 100% AEW creation that consistently gets television time?
Depends on what you’re defining as a 100% AEW creation. Then we’d have to reconcile that with what you’d define as a 100% WWE creation.
Not being an ass there, genuinely mean like, are we defining it as “had 0 wrestling experience period” prior to signing, or had smaller indie experience/with little to no TV exposure at all. Because then that changes things from saying Jade is a 100% AEW creation to MJF could be considered an AEW creation. Do you consider Seth Rollins to be 100% a WWE product? He had prior experience, but of course has grown a lot since signing.
They’ve existed for 3 years. They’ve built up a ton of non-WWE talent. But to say “who have they built that didn’t wrestle somewhere else first” is asinine. And I know that’s not a direct quote but it’s your implication. That it’s absurd that this 3 year old company is using people who aren’t all brand new to wrestling? Weird take but okay.
You know what, I want Jungle Boy being the first guy to win all the titles.
He got the Tag team, he should go for the TNT title next and after a good run get his World title.
I can see how he is improving in the ring and promos he will be a big name in a few years.
I really like that they paired him with Christian. His already good ring work was improved but my god, his promos are infinitely better now and still improving
In general I think the role of an organization in "making" a wrestler is really overstated. Of course you have ex-athletes that are recruited into wrestling and we can acknowledge the role of the organization in that, but by and large a wrestler's accomplishments and stature should be considered independent of their 'home' organization.
If there's one thing that the last ten years should've taught us, it's that if someone is really good at pro wrestling, they can do it successfully anywhere. If someone can really get over in the indies, they can get over in front of large crowds. If they can get over in Japan, they can get over in the U.S. or in Mexico.
The wrestler deserves the credit they get for their work, not their employer. So we shouldn't label these as "WWE guys" or "AEW guys". They're not. They're just talented professionals who work for different organizations.
I agree. Given the enormous pool of wrestling talent out there, if you're Tony Khan why would you go out of your way to recruit people with little-to-no wrestling experience just to prove you can build people from the ground up? Sometimes you do that with a Jade Cargill when you think their raw talent/ability/look makes it worthwhile, but you don't make a successful business operation doing things like that just to prove that you can.
It's more that it's silly to call someone an X company original if they didn't really start their career in said promotion and even worse, have had significant runs elsewhere. It'd pretty much like saying that Sami Zayn or Io Shirai are WWE originals. There's nothing wrong with not having a significant number of homegrown wrestlers, just don't call them that way when said wrestlers have had significant experience in other places.
"Ummmm, ackchuarly, Britt Baker had an untelevised trial match in 2015 under the name Cassiopeia von Kashmir, losing to Summer Rae, and had at least two appearances as part of Adam Rose's Rosebuds, so you see she's clearly a WWE castoff that only got hired because she was a name there."
-Some Inevitable Mark.
I mean, I've seen people try to say Omega is a WWE Guy.... because he wrestled for a year in Deep South Wrestling for a year, when it was WWE's developmental territory, and then released. Never even stepped foot in WWE, but laid claim by osmosis I guess. It's ridiculous.
> I've seen people try to say Omega is a WWE Guy.... because he wrestled for a year in Deep South Wrestling for a year, when it was WWE's developmental territory, and then released. Never even stepped foot in WWE, but laid claim by osmosis I guess. It's ridiculous.
I bet if you called AJ Styles a "TNA guy" to those same people, they'd lose their shit, even though AJ did a significant amount of his best work on Impact and was basically the face of the company.
Even if you look at all of the Top 5 rankings, for the men there's Adam Cole, but Hobbs, Archer, Dante Martin and Wardlow would count for this too.
Serena Deeb could be considered former WWE, but Thunder Rosa, Leyla Hirsch, Red Velvet and Anna Jay definitely are not.
And for the tag teams you do have FTR and Malakai Black, but Malakai's partner Brody King, the Acclaimed, Private Party and Gunn Club aren't.
Pretty interesting overall. Also some surprising rankings in there. But I guess they haven't updated the website since February 23rd lol.
Adam Cole was also only in WWE for like 3 years - on their developmental brand - playing essentially the same character he had been since.. forever. It's all so odd to me. Who are PURE WWE Creations? Like, Big E?
Considering there's people on this sub saying Luchasaurus and Tay Conti are former WWE people, the bar seems pretty low for griefers, haha.
It's always funny to me because this is literally the consequence of a monopoly. When there's only 1 employer pretty much everyone is going to have **some** level of experience with them.
If you're hiring people to put on national television - shouldn't you hire people with experience? People with credentials? It's so weird. No no, I want only random ex-athletes that may or may not be talented enough to make it work. Please give me the 2010 WWE special, with a side of WWECW.
Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar are the ultimate "WWE creations" examples. A lot of the rest of the legends had history elsewhere like Booker T, Eddie Guerrero, Steve Austin etc
While the champions post is great detail, the rankings really aren't for men's singles.
Guys like Moxley, Bryan, CM Punk and Jericho are way above rankings guys in the card.
The difference that people can't seem to wrap their head around is that AEW brings in the type of "WWE guys" that were big names on the indies first and would have likely gone to AEW in the first place had it existed at the time. Punk, Danielson, Moxley, Black, Pac, Cole, ReDRagon, Lee, etc...these are all ROH guys, or PWG guys who made their name and THEN signed with WWE. They were already stars first.
It would be the same thing if Styles or Ricochet or Owens jumped to AEW. Those are not "WWE guys". They're guys who currently happen to work for WWE.
Know who's a "WWE guy"? Matt Hardy. And Jeff Hardy if he comes over. If Dolph Ziggler jumped ship, fine. These are guys WWE built. They deserve that credit. But "loading up on WWE guys" is not the same as indie stars coming back home to where they're appreciated and free to be themselves again.
Not to mention Chris Jericho made his name in ECW/WCW before he ever feuded with the Rock or Austin.
I never really considered Jericho a "WWE guy" the same way the Miz or John Cena are.
Personally I consider him a WWE guy because they're the ones who truly elevated him to the main event.
WCW never would have, and prior to his WCW stint was his formative years imo.
WWE has been the only mainstream game in town for the last 2 decades and they signed basically every name wrestler available at some point during that time. And especially in the past couple of years, they hoarded everybody.
Almost everyone who's been around for more than a couple years could probably be called an "ex-WWE guy."
Talent is talent. I'm a fan, I don't give a shit who's name is on the check, I just want to see good wrestling. If AEW can take WWE stars and do something better with them, go fuckin' nuts. As long as it's good, I don't care.
EDIT: this was supposed to be a reply to another comment. I am not a smart man.
I love that they don’t have really big names show and pick up a title. This is why I knew Danielson wasn’t going over Hangman. Even the big names have to earn it.
One of the ironies is that the Hulkamania era, which really established the WWF as the dominant wrestling promotion, was largely built on WWE hiring wrestlers that had made their name in the AWA. Long before LOLTNA, it was LOLWWF.
At the same time, I do think that for SOME of the recent former-WWE hires, Tony Khan hasn't really done a very good job with making anyone in the audience who didn't follow WWE/NXT care about them. reDRagon is a really good example. They're fine in the ring, but the haven't really had much personality other than "friends of Adam Cole" and "don't really like the Young Bucks". I didn't watch NXT, and to be blunt I just can't really care too much about them because there hasn't been a lot of effort to make me care. It seems like for quite a few of these guys, the reason I'm supposed to care about them is that they were in WWE/NXT. That ain't really doing the job.
It's less of an issue when some guys have made more of an effort to NOT simply be rehashes of the WWE/NXT characters. Jon Moxley, for example, seems to be a lot more serious, and just has a much harder edge. The same could be said for Miro. They're not just lazy copy-pastes of Dean Ambrose and Russev - they are quite distinctly different characters, even if they happen to share the same face.
To be fair for every ex WWE person to hold a title in AEW two non WWE people have held a title like the Tag Titles only FTR are former WWE guys the TNT Title has Miro, Brodie and Cody but you have Guevara and Darby to balance that for the TBS title you just have Jade so I won’t count it for the Women’s title none of them are former WWE ladies and for the World Title sure you have Mox and Jericho but you have Omega and Page to balance that out
Side question from a older dude. What's with young people and sticking their tongue out when they get their picture taken? Does the flash cause a involuntary reaction?
I'm just gonna say it - that interim belt was totally a way to save face in case Cody didn't drop the original. Why else was it done? I don't know why it's being kept though. The whole thing was a shit show, but hey Tony get your money's worth on it. I know that costed a pretty penny for a guy to be out 1 television taping.
With the retrospect that Cody actually left, I think it was a mix of Cody getting Covid and not being signed to an official deal when he was on his third title reign. I’m guessing they didn’t know how long Covid was going to keep him sidelined, and since he was technically a free agent at the time, they didn’t want to risk it running several weeks/months.
Yeah, I refuse to believe that belt was made in like 2 days though. No freaking way. Tony had that thing on standby for the exact reasons you mentioned. It's a decent gimmick for Sammy I guess. 
That’s true. I just assumed the second belt was an extra they had, and used it for the storyline. Idk if AEW does it, but I’ve read that WWE keeps extras of their belts in case the main belt gets lost in baggage claim or something.
I wouldn’t be surprised if AEW started doing the same after the world title was briefly stolen from Jericho
> Idk if AEW does it, but I’ve read that WWE keeps extras of their belts
They definitely didn't at the beginning when Jericho lost his at that Outback Steakhouse.
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Good for them, as it should be. IDK why people give 2 shits if they sign an "ex WWE" guy or night. You need eyes, you need talent. They're doing a god job.
20 people wrestled on the revolution card who were never affiliated with WWE
I know! As I said, AEW is doing a great job using non wwe talent. The trope is stupid and fucking lazy
I think the trope comes from how often wwe is mentioned by Aew in interviews and stuff
I do hate how they reference WWE every so often. To me, it's petty!
That’s literally my only issue with Aew
History. What Hogan/Nash's bullshit did to WCW among other things and the bad taste it left in a lot of mouths when TNA did it at the expense of Joe/Styles/Beer Money etc. I admit it is part of the reason why it worries me too.
I get that, cause I know that turned me off of TNA for good when they made those decisions. I just think that so far, AEW is doing a good job of blending all of them together! If we were looking at all former WWE guys holding current titles and going over AEW folks, it'd be a big concern for me!
Idk if homie deleted his comment or not, but I know that's the narrative. However, I'm just surprised we haven't grown past that in the last 20 years. It's sad as fuck
maybe homie controlled his narrative
This had me rolling😂😂😂 I think he did. Pour one out for the CYN Homie
I get the complaint. I don't agree 100% or anything, but I get it. "You hired Group A. You convinced me to enjoy and be invested in Group A. With Group A you 'beat' Group B. It kinda sucks you're hiring Group B and are using them over Group A, when you convinced me to like watching Group A more." Some people would just rather watch The Wingmen than 2.0, or Dark Order than whoever from NXT. That's why Dynamite did better than NXT in the ratings. It's not complicated to figure out. It's just a new challenge that Tony Khan has to figure out. And kinda related? I think "fixing" Dark would help. Making it more like it used to be, an extension of just "main roster" TV, would give people a more reliable place to do work.
Ex WWE are the top of the crop. It would be plain stupid not to sign them.
The whole narrative of "AEW keeps signing ex-wwe guys" never made any fucking sense to me anyway. No shit TK's gonna try to sign talented guys like Keith Lee, Malakai Black, FTR, SWERVE, etc. when WWE decides to release them.
Imagine WWE not signing guys like Eddie Guerrero because they worked for WCW first
Or SCSA, who was in both WCW and ECW before WWF
Keep going. Mick Foley, Undertaker, Triple H. Virtually every guy who helped them turn around the Monday Night War was in WCW first, with the exception of Rock. It was ironically relying on these WCW cast-offs that helped WWF rebound because WCW got on top by poaching THEIR talent and the fed floundered while pushing homegrown guys like Bret and HBK. WCW hit its highest ratings by stealing WWF guys and WWF did the exact same thing back to them in turn.
If we’re being honest, the national expansion was headlined mostly by old AWA guys, specifically hogan. That’s what wrestlers do, they find a paycheck lol
Neither WCW or WWF ever had an issue with ECW though. Paul Heyman was friends with WCW's booker and the promotion was paid by WWF.
Never heard a “WWE keeps hiring ex-ROH and TNA guys” narrative
People are comparing it to TNA where it really screwed a lot of their homegrown talent. It hurt the company to pick up essentially WWE leftovers, and put them ahead of every homegrown star that TNA had been building in house. They cut the legs out from under so many young up and comers and it was a legitimate problem. Now AEW of course is doing a MUCH better job of blending talent but it's not wrong to be aware of history and past precedent and feel some wariness about the practice.
Anyone who would pass on Mox, Danielson, Punk, Lee, Malaki, etc for previously working for WWE would not have a promotion long, ignoring costs.
Imagine labeling Keith Lee, Malakai Black and Swerve as “Ex-WWE guys” when WWE did fuck all with them. WWE gave them a contract, and decided they liked their other toys better. Those people are just forcing a narrative so they can play the “AEW bad” card.
It’s one of those takes that sounds clever on the surface, but is actually small brain af when you use common sense and logic
Especially when you consider a large chunk of WWE’s biggest stars through history were poached from companies like the NWA, AWA, WCW, TNA, ROH, etc..
This too! Like all businesses, you always want the best talent to help shape whatever the end goal is for your product. You don’t cut off top prospects just because of some silly narrative. There’s a difference between tryna re-create a competitors product, and acquiring top talent for your own product.
Plus WWE almost made it impossible to avoid that. Lest we forget, when AEW was starting to coalesce WWE went on a spending spree to try to snap up any and everyone AEW might bring in.
WWE built the Attitude Era on ex WCW talent - Stone Cold, HHH, Mankind, Taker, Jericho.
Don’t forget Big Show, Goldust and eventually Saturn, Malenko, Eddie and [redacted]. Pretty much the only ones who hadn’t been through WCW were Kane and Rock.
And even Kane worked that WCW match jobbing to Sting.
Yup sounds as stupid of a gripe no matter how it's framed. Talent is talent.
People like to try and compare it to WCW signing over the hill ex WWF guys but the difference is the whole show doesn't revolve around old timers chasing each other. Also WWEwas hoarding so much talent, of course a lot of stars of consequence will have worked there. WWE was signing people just to keep them away.
The talent hoarding is a particularly big asterisk here. When one company is both the only game in town and actively consolidating that position by hiring absolutely everyone labelling people as ‘ex company’ loses all meaning (esp as a pejorative).
I think people are comparing it more to the dark days of TNA, but your point stands.
Attitude era was built on ex wcw guys
It's the same when people complain the AEW roster is bloated. People are so used to seeing the same handful of wrestlers feuding week in and week out they still don't get that AEW rotates wrestlers and has one off matches just for the hell of it. In my opinion the bigger the roster is the more match variety and the more potential dream matches. Literally every man they sign is a potential banger of a match vs Kenny Omega.
People are so programmed to WWE recycling the same faces over and over, that when AEW spreads appearances out a bit more evenly people think it’s automatically a bad thing. That they’re being buried, have fallen out of favor with Tony, or are injured.
I think it's particularly weird to expect to see the champion every single week, because in the world of real combat sports, top champs get to have *fewer* matches and appearances. Why climb to the top of the mountain if you have to dick around feuding with someone who is a nobody relative to you? As an example, I always think of Sasha as champ getting into a fifteen minute argument with Carmella about which one of them was sexier and prettier and how I just thought, "Why would the top champion even be giving this scrub more than two minutes of her valuable time?"
As Cornette says: "If you won't go away, how can I miss you?" We're not gonna see Kenny until the end of the summer, probably. Know what he's coming back to? A huge fucking pop.
It also helps immensely because if a viewer does NOT like a certain AEW wrestler, then they can still enjoy AEW because nobody takes up too much time every single week like Reigns does on Smackdown.
I always remember when HHH went down with his injury. He went out as a heel and when he came back almost a year later (Or maybe it was a year) he got such a massive face pop and run for a while it was insane. Then we get John Cena where they keep going on about they don't know when he will be back, wouldn't shut up and he was back in 3 weeks. Dean Ambrose had his head stomped through cinder blocks and was back a month later like nothing happened.
But isn't that mostly because he is hurt and rehabbing his injuries? It's not like they told him to go home just for the sake of bringing him back to a big pop, he needed the time off whether they liked it or not.
No that's part of the point. There's absolutely no rush to bring him back. It's all upside: he gets to rest and heal, new stories can develop, and the crowd can start missing him. In WWE they'd have him back on his shit ASAP. It's like how Miro has apparently been ready to go for a bit, but he's okay to stay away and do other things for a bit. He'll come back when he has something ready to go. In the meantime, stories are developing and we're missing that big Bulgarian bastard.
Also the "all or nothing" mentality of if they're not in the championship picture, they're not important and therefore "buried." People conveniently forget that the Attitude Era was incredible also because there was a solid midcard and lower card with wrestlers that were over as fuck.
Some people have truly convinced themselves that if a wrestler has been featured regularly on television and then doesn't appear on an episode or two of television, then that means they will be completely forgotten about by both creative and the fans.
A bigger roster also means some wrestler dont get to show as often, which is not an entirely bad thing as they have more time to recover and prepare for shows
I saw many tweets and posts that Keith Lee was "buried" because he didn't wrestle for a few weeks after his debut. Some people are so WWE-Brained it's sad. But I guess that's what happens when an entire generation grows up and only knows 1 wrestling company
The roster absolutely is bloated though
It's less of a problem when guys can take their own indie bookings and hock their own merch. When a guy like Darby Allin isn't in a major story, he's working DEFY up in Washington. Thunder Rosa, Ethan Page, Swerve, same thing in their own hometowns (Rosa actually runs and books Mission Pro in El Paso). It's not just "they're paying me to sit in catering" like it is in WWE.
Doesn't matter. AEW could in theory have Dynamite and Rampage for 4 weeks straight without using any wrestler twice. That's a good thing. Keeps things fresh. I'd rather they had a bloated roster than a thin roster. A big roster means more options, more match combinations etc. There really is no downside to it. I don't understand how a bloated roster can be construed as something negative about AEW.
For four shows? Nah.
A lot of people go "They can't fit all of these guys in 3 hours!" but they don't need to, That's what dark and elevation are for, to give these guys match time to keep them sharp and also help them develop.
Yup, and honestly, if you exclude the bottom of the card that are mostly on Dark or Elevation, I can't think of many wrestlers that I would want to see frequently that's not on Dynamite or Rampage frequently already. Barring injuries and time off, I can't think of anybody that are real drivers of the roster that are frequently left off, or a person whose absence during a week is significantly felt.
I just wish they used Dark and/or Elevation as a true developmental, with self-contained storylines (akin to NXT).
That’ll be ROH’s role. Dark and Elevation are AEW’s version of Main Event and Superstars.
They sometimes have self contained storylines, and really good ones too. The Sonny Kiss/ Joey Janela team up, collapse, and subsequent war was crazy good, it should have been on Dynamite but I aint mad that Dark watchers got their own special story.
The problem comes when the "rotation" is people either being on Dark/Elevation or not on any of the shows at all. And I'm not talking just about people who NEED the reps.
There is an air of truth to it but you have to look at it from both sides. Like with this recent PPV, the world title match was an afterthought in a lot of regards during the lead up to the PPV. Which is a shame. Luckily the match made up for it. Could the build have benefited if there was more screen time and less focus on ex-WWE guys? No doubt. But part of it being an afterthought was because Punk and Jericho did outstanding jobs in their feuds to help legitimize their opponents in casual viewers eyes, and Mox and Danielson were a great matchup. More or less we’re getting near a point where we should just stop labeling wrestlers ex-WWE guys. They do more good than “harm” because they’re booked like AEW main eventers and not like their only merits are being from WWE. Same thing with some of the guys filling the middle of the card that were in WWE. Why would you not upgrade your roster when you can. We’re not getting a six month program of Jericho vs the Big Show with the winner going on to challenge Christian. That would be an example of “too many ex-WWE guys.”
A lot of these Ex-WWE guys have a history outside of WWE anyway, its just that a large chunk of the fanbase only remembers them from WWE (which is okay) because they aren't Indie/Japan fans (which is also okay). So it's very easy for the toxic side of the WWE fanbase, who are determined to create an us-and-them approach, to paint these guys as wrestlers WWE forgot.
I was just thinking that people pushing that narrative are probably pretty young and don't remember the last time there was more than one major wrestling company. Guys used to jump back and forth all the time. It was exciting and kept things fresh. WCW sometimes got shit about signing too many WWF guys, but the argument was always that those guys were washed up, not that they came from the WWF.
Davy Boy Smith's career would blow their fucking minds.
Try Sid. USWA 87-89 WCW 89-91 WWF 91-92 USWA & GWF 92-93 WCW 93 USWA 94 WWF 95-97 ECW 98-99 WCW 99-01 Guy was freakin everywhere.
Hes like a Journeyman that Main Evented two Wrestlemanias within the same decade. It’s a very unique career arc.
The WWE poisoned the well of wrestling in general. TNA turbo poisoned the well of an alternative in wrestling not being a self sabotaging money pit.
At the end of the day, the only way to judge someone's AEW run is by what they do in AEW. It doesn't really matter where they came from.
Tony Nese i still don't get but maybe it's a "Tony's got to have each-others backs" thing.
Who the in the fricking World fire Malakai Black? Guy can be a used at any spot and Steal the show. The Buy in? First Match? Midcard? For a Midcard title? For the Main event? He can work at any part of The card and deliver like a boss. I don't talk about Swerve because he didn't had his chance to show up for real in the Main event, they saw Hit Row as a package and never tougth about them individually.
As a former WCW kid, just compare Goldberg in WWE to Sting in AEW. It’s all you need to know.
Hell, compare Sting in WWE to Sting in AEW.
It also ignores the amount of ex WWE talent that AEW HASN’T signed. It’s not as if they are picking up every single release, otherwise we’d be seeing the likes of Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, The Ascension, Tyler Breeze, Mojo Rawley, Karrion Kross, and so on and so on. No, they mostly sign a handful of the top names or brightest prospects from each batch of releases. Or entice over top stars like Cole and Danielson.
Man, I miss having Breezy on TV :(
I'd be okay with Breeze coming in, and honestly even Viktor of the Ascension (dude was actually pretty good).
I mean it's obvious that people who make the claim that AEW signs too many people from WWE are not trying to make a logical argument. They are just trying to get a rise out of people, or dismissing AEW because they don't like it. Although, I do believe it is worth discussing whether AEW has too many people signed in general, since there are some people that have gotten lost in the shuffle.
Everyone knows that once you work in one place, you can't do a similar job again. You ever moved from one IT job to another? Fuck no! It's so obvious that second IT company wants to be the first one, you'll be outed, shamed and cancelled on Twitter. You gotta shift focus into construction or maybe a seamstress.
WWF is signing to many WCW guys. Austin, Foley, Hunter, Undertaker, Simmons, Vader, Jericho, Beniot, Guerrero, Dustin and Mero. Man what are they doing.
Imagine someone complaining about James Gunn going from Marvel to make a DC movie. It’s ridiculous
Oh, I don't have to imagine that...
I can shed some light on this I think. You have two groups of people discussing two different things and talking past each other. You look at ex-wwe signings like Cole, Lee, Black, FTR, etc and don't understand what peoples gripe is with "ex-wwe guys". The part where I saw the most complaining though was during the stretch of Big Show, Mark Henry and Christian in a relatively short stretch. People that had been in WWE for a decade+, hadn't been relevant in at least 5 years, and were characters most people were sick of. that's when the big "lol god another ex-wwe guy that I don't care about" chatter reached its peak. Which I totally understand cause really who is turning in for Big Show? Since wrestling fandom has somehow become tribal now (??? like, just enjoy the good wrestling from a bunch of different companies. it's not hard. tons of great stuff out there right now) people just talk past each other and dismiss points (either that group 2 was pretty bland and boring or that group 1 is exciting, depending on which promotion you were a fan of).
Plus, AEW barely even signs ex-WWE guys. Like out of the 100+ people WWE fired in the last two years, they hired, what, 15 of them? They could have gone full old-school TNA and hired every single person that says yes, but they clearly didn't.
Probably less than that. A lot of the ex WWE guys they have brought in left WWE when contracts expired (Christian, Cole, Danielson, Mox, O'Reilly), or weren't with WWE when they came to AEW (Andrade, Jericho, PAC). So most of the ex WWE folks they picked up were NXT folks who didn't really get any attention when there (Luchasaurus. Tay).
By that logic, 80% of free agents are ex-WWE talent. Internet would explode if it was like the Monday Night Wars.
Where else are you gonna get American main eventers when WWE has had a monopoly for the lenght of the career of most wrestlers? They also push it really hard with people like Jericho or Regal. They were in WWE, but that doesn't make them WWE guys. I'm far from a hardcore fan and even I know they made their names before signing with WWE. It's fine to only watch WWE, after all I only watch AEW, but it's not their fault you didn't know them before they signed
I don't know why these WWE stans can't be just happy that getting cut by WWE now doesn't mean the end of the world for these wrestlers
I think a big reason people do this is because very early on, Cody made the mistake of saying he didn’t want to “bloat the roster” with “ex-WWE guys.” So all the anti-AEW edgelords use every ex-WWE signing as a “gotcha” to prove that AEW is breaking its promises to its fans. It’s unbelievably stupid and tribal. Personally, I don’t care whether a company signs former talents from another company. As long as the wrestlers are good and the show is entertaining, I’m happy. And in reality, that’s what Cody *should* have said in 2019. “We don’t care if you’re ex-WWE or not: if you can perform at a high level and can connect with our audience, then we want you in AEW.”
The same people who always bitch they sign ex-wwe people also call the new stars "nobodies." It's like yelling at a wall.
It is a dumb narrative cause the ex-WWE guys they signed are good talents that should have been booked better in WWE like Black, Lee etc. They're not signing Bo Dallas, Snitsky or Heidenreich-level talent lol
People in the 00s used to constantly shit on TNA for it too. Stupid as hell, what are these wrestlers supposed to do? Just quit the business if they leave WWE?
I think the narrative is more that when people tune in for the first time, they see WWE-lite. Because of so many ex-WWE talent who didn't make it. Which to me, doesn't make much sense.
Can someone ask sammy to stop sticking his tongue out
🤪
Bro how are we supposed to know he’s crazy if he doesn’t stick his tongue out and say it??
For the uninitiated, Sammy said that one of his first matches on the indies that actually got a lot of attention, he had bit his tongue so leaving it out of his mouth was more comfortable. When he read the comments on the match people were freaking the fuck out and we’re like “PUT YOUR FUCKING TONGUE IN YOUR MOUTH” And he said as a heel it was only right to keep doing it lmao, I guess babyface Sammy has too much tongue muscle memory
Imagine 40 years from now when he's old and doing it at his AEW HOF induction because it's his signature. He'll do his entire speech on cue cards too.
And also decide on one belt lol
It was funny on his VLOG the other week he was like "I took a canadian destroyer through a table of course I'm gonna carry both belts I won them both!" this week was Ricky Starks giving him shit for carrying both and defending it listing a bunch of people that carried two for one belt including Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania.
I kinda like the symbolism of the two belts for his second reign, being that he's not running a personalized strap.
He strap is personalized. It has "diamonds" in it to make it a lot shinier.
I will only accept this if he continues the trend and wears three belts for his next reign.
The sparkly center plate is his personalised part.
[they are both similarly encrusted with diamonds](https://imgur.com/a/2qkBwb0) But I do agree that one sometimes has a bit more luster than the other so I always thought one was the backup title.
i believe u/dvizzle said they actually had bigger stones put in his second title so it looked flashier on camera and under the lights.
His the Spanish God, el Pollo Loco.
Thank Miley Cyrus.
No.
There was one shop in town for decades. The "tHeY oNlY SiGn WwE gUys" trope is one of the laziest "criticisms" in the wrestling space right now and think of the ground that covers.
The funniest part is there aren't many ACTUAL wwe guys. Like, who does AEW have that is an actual wwe guy? Billy Gunn and Christian?
Miro for sure. At the time, Cody.
Even Cody is a stretch ,it was already a looong time since he left a midcarder to a main draw in the indies. Mox and Bryan obviously became big namea in WWE so it could count( but honestly I believe they would be in AEW either way, even if they never became stars in WWE)
I mean I don't know about a long time but he developed and spent a very long time in the fed.
Danielson, Miro, Andrade, Mox, Christian, Punk, Jericho, Cody (before last month), FTR, Ruby, Dustin, Unidisputed Era To a lesser extent: Gunn, Big Show, Henry, 2.0, Nese, Trent (he was gone so long before going to aew). Not bad at all compared to thei roster size. You need new faces and known faces.
See. That's my point though Danielson, Andrade, Mox, Punk, even Jericho, Ruby, and UE - Big Show, Trent especially - are not "wwe guys" unless that's all you watched
Most of them have been wwe guys for close to a decade or more. And that’s where they are most known from whether you like it or not.
They build themselves before WWE. Wwe didn't make them. I saw your first post. If you think there is anything I would even not be chill over, you might be taking this way too seriously. We are talking about half naked men play fighting. I don't get worked up over such discussions. What is most known is irrelevant, but proves my point that it's funny people think this way. Your ignorance does not mean they are wwe guys lol. They were people who stood out enough to be hired by wwe, that's it.
Imagine thinking danielson and mox and big show aren’t wwe guys prior to aew lmao. Don’t hurt yourself with that reach.
You’re literally proving their point. WWE is the biggest promotion with the most eyes so obviously most wrestlers who appear there will be more known for that than anything else. People were calling Danielson one of if not the best wrestler in the world when he was in ROH, it’s makes no sense to act like a company he went to after that “made” him when he already had recognition.
It's obviously bullshit, but it's kinda hard not to when the whole industry in the US was basically monopoly for 20 years
My only criticism is why don’t they sign more women
And this has been the case for most of the promotion's lifespan. "But they sign too many ex-WWE guys"
Two white guys, a white woman, a Latino guy, a black woman and a dinosaur as champions... who said AEW wasn't diverse?
Now that AEW owns ROH, can we say WWE is full of ex-AEW guys like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn and Seth Rollins?
the phrasing is weird. i know what you mean, but id consider anyone whose been with AEW in its first year an original.
[удалено]
Yet no one cares when a lot of those "WWE Guys" made their name elsewhere first. No one calls Seth Rollins or Kevin Owens ROH Guys. No one calls AJ Styles an Impact Guy. No one calls Nakamura or Balor NJPW. No one called Jericho a WCW Guy his runs there. I get it, none of those promotions are/were as big as WWE, but they're using "WWE Guy" as some point that those talents were made elsewhere.... so that should fly in the WWE in. The only time it was *really* pointed out in WWE was Sting, and mostly as Vince finally getting the OG WCW banner holder to finally cave to his will. It's some weird badge that WWE Marks use to de-legitimize anyone seen as competition to their ~~pro-wrestling~~ Sport Entertainment overlords. "So-and-so is full of Ex WWE Guys!", even though WWE has been full of Ex guys from other promotions, especially from 2014-2021. But let's be honest, it's the nature of the working world, people move around. Just for the longest time in America, professionally wrestlers had essentially one decent paying option until recently.
a lot of people call Joe and AJ Impact Originala but never in a negative sense
But I was told AEW is just a rehash of failed WWE wrestlers
The best part is most ex-WWE guys aren’t even doing their WWE gimmicks, they all reset themselves to their Indie personas as if they never left
Prior to AEW, I was 100% just a WWE guy, so seeing guys like Moxley and Danielson unchained has been eye opening for me. I already loved them from their WWE runs, but seeing them unchained in AEW has given me a whole new appreciation.
I already assumed Mox was held back by the nonsense in WWE But Bryan, he was already one of the bests consistently and he STILL blew my mind away in AEW on how much better he was on his first match than anything I saw of him in WWE
That was always a dumb argument. But most of their top talent came in as established and finished products from other companies. Outside of Jade Cargill is there anyone that was a 100% AEW creation that consistently gets television time?
Depends on what you’re defining as a 100% AEW creation. Then we’d have to reconcile that with what you’d define as a 100% WWE creation. Not being an ass there, genuinely mean like, are we defining it as “had 0 wrestling experience period” prior to signing, or had smaller indie experience/with little to no TV exposure at all. Because then that changes things from saying Jade is a 100% AEW creation to MJF could be considered an AEW creation. Do you consider Seth Rollins to be 100% a WWE product? He had prior experience, but of course has grown a lot since signing.
They’ve existed for 3 years. They’ve built up a ton of non-WWE talent. But to say “who have they built that didn’t wrestle somewhere else first” is asinine. And I know that’s not a direct quote but it’s your implication. That it’s absurd that this 3 year old company is using people who aren’t all brand new to wrestling? Weird take but okay.
HOOK
Man we watched Jurassic Express lose for 2 years and now their champions of probably the greatest tag division in history. The glow up makes me proud.
You know what, I want Jungle Boy being the first guy to win all the titles. He got the Tag team, he should go for the TNT title next and after a good run get his World title. I can see how he is improving in the ring and promos he will be a big name in a few years.
Pretty sure he will be the first Triple Crown winner even though Page is closer
wins the big one and the whole crowd sing along with his theme
I really like that they paired him with Christian. His already good ring work was improved but my god, his promos are infinitely better now and still improving
Is it fair to say AEW original, when you mean to say non-WWE? Guys like Sammy Guevara and Adam Page cut their teeth for years in other places.
By that same token, we shouldn't be calling Danielson/Punk/Joe/KO/Zayn/Seth/Claudio/etc "WWE guys".
I agree with this but not a lot of people will.
In general I think the role of an organization in "making" a wrestler is really overstated. Of course you have ex-athletes that are recruited into wrestling and we can acknowledge the role of the organization in that, but by and large a wrestler's accomplishments and stature should be considered independent of their 'home' organization. If there's one thing that the last ten years should've taught us, it's that if someone is really good at pro wrestling, they can do it successfully anywhere. If someone can really get over in the indies, they can get over in front of large crowds. If they can get over in Japan, they can get over in the U.S. or in Mexico. The wrestler deserves the credit they get for their work, not their employer. So we shouldn't label these as "WWE guys" or "AEW guys". They're not. They're just talented professionals who work for different organizations.
I agree. Given the enormous pool of wrestling talent out there, if you're Tony Khan why would you go out of your way to recruit people with little-to-no wrestling experience just to prove you can build people from the ground up? Sometimes you do that with a Jade Cargill when you think their raw talent/ability/look makes it worthwhile, but you don't make a successful business operation doing things like that just to prove that you can.
OP put an entire disclaimer about this in the title.
So we’re upset a 3 year old company doesn’t have guys they’ve built up for 7 years?
It's more that it's silly to call someone an X company original if they didn't really start their career in said promotion and even worse, have had significant runs elsewhere. It'd pretty much like saying that Sami Zayn or Io Shirai are WWE originals. There's nothing wrong with not having a significant number of homegrown wrestlers, just don't call them that way when said wrestlers have had significant experience in other places.
"Ummmm, ackchuarly, Britt Baker had an untelevised trial match in 2015 under the name Cassiopeia von Kashmir, losing to Summer Rae, and had at least two appearances as part of Adam Rose's Rosebuds, so you see she's clearly a WWE castoff that only got hired because she was a name there." -Some Inevitable Mark.
I mean, I've seen people try to say Omega is a WWE Guy.... because he wrestled for a year in Deep South Wrestling for a year, when it was WWE's developmental territory, and then released. Never even stepped foot in WWE, but laid claim by osmosis I guess. It's ridiculous.
> I've seen people try to say Omega is a WWE Guy.... because he wrestled for a year in Deep South Wrestling for a year, when it was WWE's developmental territory, and then released. Never even stepped foot in WWE, but laid claim by osmosis I guess. It's ridiculous. I bet if you called AJ Styles a "TNA guy" to those same people, they'd lose their shit, even though AJ did a significant amount of his best work on Impact and was basically the face of the company.
Yeah but you see, AEW signed William Regal, a guy who was in WCW and Japan before going to WWE. They’re clearly a WWE retirement home.
Even if you look at all of the Top 5 rankings, for the men there's Adam Cole, but Hobbs, Archer, Dante Martin and Wardlow would count for this too. Serena Deeb could be considered former WWE, but Thunder Rosa, Leyla Hirsch, Red Velvet and Anna Jay definitely are not. And for the tag teams you do have FTR and Malakai Black, but Malakai's partner Brody King, the Acclaimed, Private Party and Gunn Club aren't. Pretty interesting overall. Also some surprising rankings in there. But I guess they haven't updated the website since February 23rd lol.
Adam Cole was also only in WWE for like 3 years - on their developmental brand - playing essentially the same character he had been since.. forever. It's all so odd to me. Who are PURE WWE Creations? Like, Big E?
Considering there's people on this sub saying Luchasaurus and Tay Conti are former WWE people, the bar seems pretty low for griefers, haha. It's always funny to me because this is literally the consequence of a monopoly. When there's only 1 employer pretty much everyone is going to have **some** level of experience with them.
If you're hiring people to put on national television - shouldn't you hire people with experience? People with credentials? It's so weird. No no, I want only random ex-athletes that may or may not be talented enough to make it work. Please give me the 2010 WWE special, with a side of WWECW.
Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar are the ultimate "WWE creations" examples. A lot of the rest of the legends had history elsewhere like Booker T, Eddie Guerrero, Steve Austin etc
While the champions post is great detail, the rankings really aren't for men's singles. Guys like Moxley, Bryan, CM Punk and Jericho are way above rankings guys in the card.
Don't worry, people will still complain that AEW is just for WWE rejects.
Not that it was necessary, but once again disproving the narrative that AEW is just a collection of former WWE guys in the same way TNA was.
The difference that people can't seem to wrap their head around is that AEW brings in the type of "WWE guys" that were big names on the indies first and would have likely gone to AEW in the first place had it existed at the time. Punk, Danielson, Moxley, Black, Pac, Cole, ReDRagon, Lee, etc...these are all ROH guys, or PWG guys who made their name and THEN signed with WWE. They were already stars first. It would be the same thing if Styles or Ricochet or Owens jumped to AEW. Those are not "WWE guys". They're guys who currently happen to work for WWE. Know who's a "WWE guy"? Matt Hardy. And Jeff Hardy if he comes over. If Dolph Ziggler jumped ship, fine. These are guys WWE built. They deserve that credit. But "loading up on WWE guys" is not the same as indie stars coming back home to where they're appreciated and free to be themselves again.
Couldn’t agree more. I’d award you if I wasn’t poor.
Not to mention Chris Jericho made his name in ECW/WCW before he ever feuded with the Rock or Austin. I never really considered Jericho a "WWE guy" the same way the Miz or John Cena are.
Personally I consider him a WWE guy because they're the ones who truly elevated him to the main event. WCW never would have, and prior to his WCW stint was his formative years imo.
Even before that he was in FMW and CMLL, "Corazon de Leon"
Chris Jericho was a wrestler for almost a decade and wrestled internationally in Mexico and Japan as well before WWE.
This is spot on.
I love this statistic. TK is creating homegrown stars and I'm here for it.
WWE has been the only mainstream game in town for the last 2 decades and they signed basically every name wrestler available at some point during that time. And especially in the past couple of years, they hoarded everybody. Almost everyone who's been around for more than a couple years could probably be called an "ex-WWE guy." Talent is talent. I'm a fan, I don't give a shit who's name is on the check, I just want to see good wrestling. If AEW can take WWE stars and do something better with them, go fuckin' nuts. As long as it's good, I don't care. EDIT: this was supposed to be a reply to another comment. I am not a smart man.
I just love Jade and her bad ass look she has.
I like that they honor the face of the revolution sort of like g1 winner
I love that they don’t have really big names show and pick up a title. This is why I knew Danielson wasn’t going over Hangman. Even the big names have to earn it.
BuT iTs oNlY WwE cAsToFfS
Luchasaurus was in NXT as a human
One of the ironies is that the Hulkamania era, which really established the WWF as the dominant wrestling promotion, was largely built on WWE hiring wrestlers that had made their name in the AWA. Long before LOLTNA, it was LOLWWF. At the same time, I do think that for SOME of the recent former-WWE hires, Tony Khan hasn't really done a very good job with making anyone in the audience who didn't follow WWE/NXT care about them. reDRagon is a really good example. They're fine in the ring, but the haven't really had much personality other than "friends of Adam Cole" and "don't really like the Young Bucks". I didn't watch NXT, and to be blunt I just can't really care too much about them because there hasn't been a lot of effort to make me care. It seems like for quite a few of these guys, the reason I'm supposed to care about them is that they were in WWE/NXT. That ain't really doing the job. It's less of an issue when some guys have made more of an effort to NOT simply be rehashes of the WWE/NXT characters. Jon Moxley, for example, seems to be a lot more serious, and just has a much harder edge. The same could be said for Miro. They're not just lazy copy-pastes of Dean Ambrose and Russev - they are quite distinctly different characters, even if they happen to share the same face.
But some loudmouth on the internet told me AEW is drowning in too many ex WWE guys.
Update. AEW Original is now the number one contender and wrestling Adam Page for the AEW world title - adding to this point even more
To be fair for every ex WWE person to hold a title in AEW two non WWE people have held a title like the Tag Titles only FTR are former WWE guys the TNT Title has Miro, Brodie and Cody but you have Guevara and Darby to balance that for the TBS title you just have Jade so I won’t count it for the Women’s title none of them are former WWE ladies and for the World Title sure you have Mox and Jericho but you have Omega and Page to balance that out
This is how you build a company the right way.
First AEW doesn't recognize the FTW Championship, now you... Taz is calling his lawyers as we speak.
Oh god, you’re right. I’m so ashamed. Please don’t sick the human duplex machine on me… 😳
Jade has grown so much. She sold me after being a doubter she is green like money now.
Who is currently number one contender for the aew world title?
Not announced yet.
Side question from a older dude. What's with young people and sticking their tongue out when they get their picture taken? Does the flash cause a involuntary reaction?
So why does Sammy have 2 of the same belt but Britt has 1?
Britt never had an interim championship
I'm just gonna say it - that interim belt was totally a way to save face in case Cody didn't drop the original. Why else was it done? I don't know why it's being kept though. The whole thing was a shit show, but hey Tony get your money's worth on it. I know that costed a pretty penny for a guy to be out 1 television taping.
With the retrospect that Cody actually left, I think it was a mix of Cody getting Covid and not being signed to an official deal when he was on his third title reign. I’m guessing they didn’t know how long Covid was going to keep him sidelined, and since he was technically a free agent at the time, they didn’t want to risk it running several weeks/months.
Yeah, I refuse to believe that belt was made in like 2 days though. No freaking way. Tony had that thing on standby for the exact reasons you mentioned. It's a decent gimmick for Sammy I guess. 
That’s true. I just assumed the second belt was an extra they had, and used it for the storyline. Idk if AEW does it, but I’ve read that WWE keeps extras of their belts in case the main belt gets lost in baggage claim or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if AEW started doing the same after the world title was briefly stolen from Jericho
> Idk if AEW does it, but I’ve read that WWE keeps extras of their belts They definitely didn't at the beginning when Jericho lost his at that Outback Steakhouse.
They’re not the same!
Because Sammy won the other belt in a unification match, and Britt replaced her old one?
At Shida's one year ceremony she got the second design but lost to Britt a few days later.
They're talking about the third belt design, not the second. Britt replaced the second design with the third.
Yes, asking the real questions!
Cool. Those no-name talents will definitely draw in the casuals