Former WWE Star On Why Joining AEW ‘Would Be Awesome’

A former WWE star who was recently released has spoken about the possibility of joining AEW, and explained why it would be awesome.

Erick Rowan was one of many names released by WWE on April 15, and was possibly one of the most surprising given he was recently being pushed on SmackDown and then on Raw too.

Speaking on the Lewis Nicholls Show, Rowan, who is now going by the name Erick Redbeard, first discussed the process of being released, saying:

“The thing about all this is we did get a message, like we have an app that we had, and it had a message from Vince. It kind of explained that there’s gonna be some lay-offs. There’s gonna be some furloughs. How the whole economy is churning, they basically have to let people go, and when I heard that, I was like, ‘well, I’m under contract, so I can’t be furloughed. So if they’re gonna let me go, they’re gonna let me go.’ To me, even the last time I was on television was when they killed the spider like the day after because of Backlash because I don’t know why else they would kill it.

“There’s no plans for it, so I was just sitting at home. Like, a lot of guys were just sitting at home. You get that initial shock, and then it’s like, well, OK, what’s next because you got to keep going. My family, they know I got goals and things I want to do outside of wrestling as well as still in wrestling. I’m not event 40 yet. I haven’t even hit the peak of my career. These interviews that I do are so beneficial to show people that hey, I have a voice. I’m more than just some brute in the background of some weekly show or some guy that just terrorizes people with the cage that are smaller than them.”

The former Tag Team Champion then spoke about the possibility of following in the footsteps of ex-tag team partner Brodie Lee (Luke Harper) and joining AEW. He said:

“I haven’t had any conversations. I’m still under a 90-day no-compete clause. But as far as something like that, yes, that would be awesome to be able to show your talents on a national level because they do have a contract through TNT, and they get great exposure. They have a lot of really good guys that work there that know they’re doing, and they’re giving kids chances.

“So yes, I do watch. I do find it entertaining at points and not entertaining at other points, which every show’s like that. There’s other guys on the independents that I’d love to work with. They got some big boys over at Impact. They got some big boys over at ROH. That’s not even getting into overseas stuff, but as far as AEW would go, for me, and I think Brodie would say this as well, we need to stay the hell away from each other. We just keep finding each other somehow.”

Thanks to WrestlingInc for the quotes

• Erick RedBeard
• erick rowan
• AEW
• wwe

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