Joey Janela has made some bold claims regarding AEW Dark, claiming that the Tuesday YouTube show exists solely to “pad out” the company’s win/loss records.
‘The Bad Boy’ was part of the company’s original roster but as the company progressed, he rapidly dropped down the card as he was restricted to the company’s YouTube programming – Dark and Dark: Elevation.
Speaking with Renee Paquette on her podcast The Sessions, Joey Janela explained how these Monday and Tuesday night shows exist primarily to progress AEW’s win/loss records:
“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.”
The GCW icon continued, as he explained how he told Brett Lauderdale and John Carlo of his plans to quit All Elite Wrestling, stating that wrestling during COVID at three o’clock in the morning with no live audience wasn’t “worth the mental health issues”.
Janela’s AEW contract expired at the end of April, with Joey having openly spoken of his dissatisfaction with AEW’s management and talent relations teams. It was reported that Tony Khan was “hot” upon learning of Janela’s comments on Chris Van Vliet’s Insight podcast.
He wrestled his final match for AEW on 15 January – aired 1 February – as he lost to Lee Moriarty. By that point, Joey hadn’t wrestled on Dynamite for almost a year, losing to ‘Hangman’ Adam Page the previous May.
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