Joey Janela Says Dark & Elevation Exist To ‘Pad Out’ Win/Loss Records

AEW

As the original group of AEW contracts begin to come due, several original AEW stars have seen their contract with the promotion expire without being renewed.

One of the names who was let go by AEW was Joey Janela, who was featured heavily in the early days of AEW, before eventually being relegated primarily to AEW Dark and AEW Dark: Elevation until his contract expired back in May.

Janela was a recent guest on Renee Paquette’s The Sessions podcast, where he detailed his story with Sonny Kiss on AEW Dark, but how it never featured on Dynamite, before claiming that Tony Khan only uses Dark and Elevation to ‘pad out’ win/loss records.

He said:

“I don’t regret anything about my AEW run. The things I regret are not getting an action figure. If we did a little promo package like that every other week or every week, and built that up, I’m sure it would have been [different], our careers would have been a lot different at this point. But it’s just when I felt like it was time I said listen, this is time. Tony said, ‘Listen, we want to bring you back to TV.’

So we had to figure out a way to get out of this Sonny Kiss tag. So Cody [Rhodes] let me create this whole storyline where I broke up with Sonny and they let me. I would just go to QT [Marshall] or Cody or whatever, and really, Dark is not Tony’s priority, It’s really just to pad the records for storyline purposes.

So I would just go to Cody or I would go to QT and I’d say ‘Alright, this is what we’re doing this week, this is what I’m doing this week.’ And I did that. And there was a couple of weeks where they didn’t bring me out to TV. So it went on way too long, but the payoff was good with me and Sonny. And unfortunately, I beat Sonny in that last match because the plans were to bring me and Kayla back to TV.”

Janela last wrestled for AEW on the February 1 episode of Dark, where he lost to Lee Moriarty.

transcription via Inside The Ropes

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• Dark
• aew dark
• Joey Janela
• AEW

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