Claim made that “there’s going to be a lot of people available” from AEW within the next 18 months
While speaking on Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez of F4WOnline.com talked about Ilja Dragunov’s departure from WWE. During the discussion, Alvarez addressed the large number of wrestlers that are under contract to both WWE and AEW. Here is what Alvarez stated…
“So anyway, in 2019, this business sucked, and Vince McMahon was booking this terrible program, and this group called AEW started, and it was like the best thing to ever happen. It was the best possible timing, and you had a billionaire that was running that place.
So he basically had two billionaires that were running wrestling promotions, and over the next few years, they freaking just signed up everybody. Remember the indie boom of 2016 to 2019? How awesome it was. Well, they killed that dead. That and Covid.
WWE’s got only God knows how many people under contract. AEW might even have double. I mean, they got to have like 250 people under contract. I mean, there are so many people under contract in both WWE and AEW. And there’s only so many spots on television.
And fact of the matter is, there’s a lot of people that ain’t doing nothing right now. And in WWE, you know, they have no issue cutting people as we’re well aware. Tony Khan doesn’t like to play the bad guy, and so he doesn’t like to cut people. So, he just pays them to do nothing for months and months and months on end.
There’s all the tribal stuff. If you hate WWE, then they’re evil for letting people go, and Tony is great for honoring contracts. But at the same time, it’s like there’s definitely a lot of people in AEW that would like out, and he won’t let them out.
So, they just sit at home wanting to wrestle, they get paid, and they’re never used. So, there’s pluses and minuses to both of these, but the fact is I’ve been given the impression that there’s a lot of AEW contracts. He’s not going to cut people, but they are just going to quietly expire, probably like a lot of people.
And there’s going to come a time, maybe six months, a year, 18 months down the road, where there’s going to be a lot of people available. And I think that either the indies are going to blow up again or somebody’s got to come along and see what they can do.
I think that this glory period of 2020 through 2025, if you had any name whatsoever, you were signed somewhere and making a lot of money. I think those days are probably going to be coming to an end.
They’re going to be people leaving WWE. They’re going to be people leaving AEW. And there’s going to be a glut of talent available.”