One former AEW star opens up about his exit from the company.
Brock Anderson, son of WWE Hall of Famer Arn Anderson, signed with All Elite Wrestling in 2021. Anderson left AEW when his contract expired in the fall of 2023.
Speaking during a virtual signing with K & S WrestleFest, Brock Anderson was asked when he knew his AEW career wasn’t going down the right path for him, and he opened up about signing with the company during the the COVID-19 pandemic.
“About two years in, probably. Hindsight’s 20/20. It was a brand-new company. They’d only done a handful of TVs before COVID. Then they went into COVID. So in one sense, it was the best place for me to be because it wasn’t like I could be out on the indies, they weren’t running. So at least I was there.
When I was there, Cody was there. We were at Jacksonville, at Daly’s Place. During the TV days, they would have all the young guys out there, and some of the boys [would be] watching, and they’d be like, ‘That was good, this was bad.’ In that respect, it was good.
Like I said, it was a newish company and we were in the middle of a global pandemic. We didn’t know if we were going to develop a training center or any of that, it was early. You’re just like, okay, we’ll keep doing this and see what happens, [we’ll] see how they bring us along.”
Continuing, Brock Anderson explained that he wasn’t getting enough match time to improve his in-ring work as AEW does not have a training school and he was only working short television matches.
“Once we got out of the pandemic, we were rocking and rolling, it was just TVs, and that school never came. After doing those five-minute Universal matches, you can’t really get better doing that. It’s too short of a time, you don’t learn how to wrestle.
After about a year and a half, I was like this is…it’s great, I loved everybody there, I appreciate the opportunity, Tony [Khan] and everybody. It’s just, where I was, I needed to be somewhere where I could actually get repetitions and learn the business.”
“It Was The Best Decision I’ve Made” – Brock Anderson On Leaving AEW
According to Brock Anderson, leaving AEW was the best decision he could have made for himself at the time. Anderson is now signed to MLW.
“They sent me another, they wanted to redo the current deal I was on, but it was not enough, so I was like maybe we just don’t do this and we go our separate ways. I think it was the best decision I’ve made. If I just stayed there and worked the five, six times a year that I was guaranteed, I would never have the mentor I have sitting to my left [CW Anderson] and all the knowledge I’ve soaked up in that short amount of time.”
h/t Fightful