Report: Several AEW Stars ‘Don’t Want To Be There’

Report: Several AEW Stars ‘Don’t Want To Be There’ AEW

For much of AEW’s formative years it was seen as the ‘cool place to work’, or as MJF once put it, All Friends Wrestling.

However, ever since the double-whammy of the incident at All Out, combined with Triple H’s takeover of WWE creative, the tide started to turn and many, many reports of discontent and unhappiness among talent began arising from the AEW locker room.

And while Tony Khan was able to ride out much of the stormy conditions in late 2022 and seemingly beginning to steer the ship back in a positive direction, it seems that all is still very much not well behind the scenes.

This was even suggested by Darby Allin on this week’s Dynamite, who pointed out the abundance of current AEW talent who were openly unhappy with their status in the company.

While discussing this on the latest Wrestling Observer Radio, (subscription required) Dave Meltzer stated there are “several” AEW stars that don’t want to be a part of the company, with many not shy of the fact, as Darby pointed out in his promo.

Meltzer spoke of Darby’s promo and the problem addressing it on TV presents:

“With the whole thing of Darby Allin talking about, ‘All these guys complain, all these guys wanna leave’ and everything like that. Okay, that’s true, but to talk about it on your own television show, basically by doing that, you’re telling people you’re the secondary company.

“We’ve seen this since May when this really started happening, and it’s done the company no good.”

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On the unhappy AEW talent in particular, Meltzer said a combination of a lack of fear of repercussions, as well as a poor attitude from select ex-WWE talent is the issue:

“One of the weaknesses with AEW, two things, number one is that so much of the talent complains publicly, which makes the company look real bad, because there’s no fear.

“There’s people who don’t wanna be there. And signed contracts because they didn’t think WWE wanted them, and then they had… some people have the WWE attitude coming in and some people don’t. Some people from WWE are tremendous assets to this company, and some people have been anything but that, and it’s a case-by-case basis.”

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There are several AEW stars who have reportedly wanted to leave the company in recent months to potentially head back to WWE, with names rumored including Malakai Black and Andrade El Idolo.

Overall, Meltzer believes that by pointing these things out on your own product, it only serves to paint AEW as the inferior product.

“The fanbase has gotten softer, they’re not as into it as they were, because they’re being told… before then, it was like, ‘We’re gonna be number one, or we’re the better product but they’re the older product, we’re the younger cooler product and all this’.

“Now it’s like, ‘Everyone wants to be there (WWE), half our guys wanna be there or tease they wanna be there, and we’re the product with the guys that either aren’t good enough to be there or the few guys who don’t wanna be there’.”

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While Darby’s comments were noteworthy, Meltzer was also critical of Jungle Boy’s comments on MJF never working Dark, Elevation or Rampage, making them seem more like lesser shows to Dynamite.

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1 year ago by Jamie Toolan

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