Dustin Rhodes comments on the idea of AEW talents wanting to go to WWE with the new regime in place

Dustin Rhodes reacts to the question of AEW talents possibly wanting to join/return to WWE now that their new regime is in place

Photo Courtesy: All Elite Wrestling

Rhodes feels that if a talent wants to experience WWE, they should go for it.

With the new regime in place for WWE and Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque leading the creative team, the likes of Dakota Kai, Karrion Kross and Dexter Lumis have made their way back to WWE.

AEW President Tony Khan commented on the new regime while on Busted Open Radio in late July and reacted to the notion that talents in AEW might be interested in going to or rejoining WWE now that Levesque is leading the creative charge.

Dustin Rhodes chimed in on the matter at Terrificon 2022 (video via Fandom Spotlite) and feels that if a talent from AEW wants to test the waters, they should go experience it.

[Chuckles] Did you see [Tony Khan’s] interview? Yeah, I mean you got the few that just left there [WWE] that are under five-year deals, right? So we got ‘em for a while. They’re not just gonna up and leave, you can’t do that. That’s what a contract is about. As far as anybody else that doesn’t have that deal, hey man, go for it, whatever. I think experience it if you want to. If you don’t like the current atmosphere, that’s a personal issue. You need to move on. Maybe they’ll do something different with you over there, you know what I mean? I think it’s going to be a change slowly with Triple H at the helm but it’s gonna be a good change, it’s not gonna be a bad change and if not, it’s gonna be a little bit of the same plus a little more wrestling I would say, a little more storytelling which will be great for the business and great for wrestling fans. Yeah, I mean you got so many places you can go now. But two places that really, really stand out are ours and theirs. You have to want one of those two and whatever you do, just make the best of it. If your contract’s up and you’ve had enough with AEW, go, get the f*ck out.

Outside of pay-per-views and weeks when Rampage is live, AEW hosts one live wrestling show per week in Dynamite. Dustin is interested in the idea of the company implementing house shows to venture into other cities outside of the one that is hosting their main programming for the week.

I know Tony Khan is more about the television product instead of live events right now and that’s definitely easier on our bodies, but at the same time it’s like, okay, you wrestle once a week, you know? You need to keep your body in tune and it would be nice if we had some live events and we ventured out to the state we’re in, a couple of the smaller towns or whatever to get to TV in Boston or something, right? But right now, I don’t think we have that on the books. Hopefully someday though.

The latest AEW special was Battle of the Belts III which was headlined by Claudio Castagnoli defending the ROH World Championship against Konosuke Takeshita. POST Wrestling has an audio review of the show which can be heard here and the written version is at this link.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Fandom Spotlite with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions. 

About Andrew Thompson 9448 Articles
A Washington D.C. native and graduate of Norfolk State University, Andrew Thompson has been covering wrestling since 2017.