When WWE fans want to discredit more than one member of the AEW roster, their first argument is that the promotion is full of former WWE people.
Jon Moxley? Sure, he’s a huge star in AEW with one of the best resumes in the promotion’s history, but he was also Dean Ambrose, the OG member of The Shield and a former WWE Champion. Bryan Danielson? Sure, many fans would call him Mr. Ring of Honor because he defined the formative era of that promotion, but his WrestleMania 35 moment seemingly makes that moot. What about Christian Cage? Sure, he’s become the kind of singles star that no one ever pushed him like that during his time in WWE or even TNA, but he’s still one half of Edge and Christian, who will go down in history as one of the defining tag teams of the TLC era. Go further down the line, and if a performer was RAW or SmashIn the eyes of a large portion of the fan base, they are WWE guys, especially if they ever had gold on the main roster.
And yet, when you look at AEW’s current top stars, the name at the top of the list is probably Swerve Strickland, the former world champion who was known for a time as Swerve Scott in NXT’s Hit Row faction.
So what’s going on? Why aren’t these fans trying to discredit Strickland as just a WWE guy, but instead claiming that WWE messed up on The Realest? Is it because he traded Top Dolla for Prince Nana and Now You Know for Big Pressure? Well, maybe it’s because he’s being booked like a real star, and not just as a member of a gimmick faction with no real shot at the World Championship.
When Strickland spoke about his wrestling career on the show of the same name with Rich Eisen, he was asked why he never reached his current level in WWE. His answer, while brief, is incredibly insightful.
“Political moves. Only political moves, I can say,” Swerve said of WrestleZone. “I’ll just leave it at ‘political moves.'”
Translation: Someone, probably Vince McMahon, didn’t believe in him as a top star, either because he’s 6’1″, because he dances to the tune of his own drum machine, or for some other reason that’s easy to speculate about.
When asked by Eisen why he was so successful in the AEW, as opposed to his cup of coffee on SmashStrickland was much more candid in his response, noting that he had seized and taken advantage of every opportunity presented to him.
“I don’t care about the opportunity and the time it took me to work my way up from the bottom. You can put me in battle royals, I’ll lose them all, I don’t care. Just give me the opportunity to prove myself. Give me the opportunity, like, ‘Hey, can I get a minute of TV time here in this spot?’ ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Okay, I’m going to make something matter,'” Strickland explained.
That’s something you can’t ask for anywhere else. You can’t just ask for a minute and get it, that’s really hard. I don’t care if it’s Dynamite, Rampage, Collision or Ring of Honor, getting TV time is valuable. It’s up to you what you do with it. It’s about opportunity, because I know a lot of people out there who are very, very talented and would dream of getting a minute of TV time.”
Had Strickland re-signed with WWE as some fans have wanted him to – which would not have been possible given his contract with AEW – who knows where he would be now. However, considering that only Cody Rhodes has truly risen to top star status since leaving AEW for WWE, it is unlikely that he would be anything more than a contender for a mid-card title, which he has lapped several times in Tony Khan’s company.
Swerve Strickland talks about building a relationship with Tony Khan
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Elsewhere in his appearance on The Rich Eisen ShowStrickland talked about his relationship with his friend from the show, Tony Khan, and how it helped him find a home in AEW.
“It wasn’t always just about me and what I wanted, and I had to learn that in the middle of my time in AEW. I had to learn what Tony needs, what I can offer Tony, what he needs now,” Strickland explained about 411 Mania.
“That’s what he’s looking for, and he just can’t find it, or there’s nobody offering it to him. He needs me in the tags, I’ll go in the tags, cool. What does he need, he needs a great challenger to face Orange Cassidy for the International Championship, give it to me. I’ll do it, alright. We need a good fight from Sting, we need something big for him, Swerve can do it. That’s how the relationship started, just like that, put me anywhere, I’ll get it done.”
While wrestlers don’t necessarily need to get along with their bosses to be successful (such as the most famous storyline of the Attitude Era, which saw “Stone Cold” Steve Austin feud with his horrible boss), Strickland clearly made a name for himself in AEW, establishing himself as a reliable partner for the fledgling promotion. This is probably why he was booked like a real star for what is widely considered to be one of the better world title matches in the belt’s history).
