Trivia / All Elite Wrestling

• Acting for Two: Several of the masked gimmicks that started showing up on Dark and Elevation in late 2021 are in fact main eventers finding an excuse to work with younger talent on TV to help train them. "Infinito" was almost immediately identified as being Bryan Danielson due to his distinctive voice and, somewhat more infamously, because fans cross-referenced images of Infinito's and Bryan Danielson's hands, discovering that their veins looked identical. Contrary to rumor, however, Fuego Dos definitely isn't Cody Rhodes.
• Ascended Meme: Darby Allin has been compared to a little boy dressed as a skeleton saying "I like turtles" since AEW began in certain fan circles. On the 8/22/2020 episode of Dynamite, Ricky Starks, dressed like Darby, mentions the meme during a promo/attack.
• Author Appeal: As a massive fan of the Fighting Game Community, Kenny Omega helped get Fyter Fest on the docket due to his previous connections with Alex Jebailey, the organizer of CEO - the fighting game tournament which previously played host to a one-off NJPW show in 2018 when Omega was the IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Goes both ways, as Jebailey patterned CEO after a wrestling event, complete with winners receiving championship belts instead of trophies.
• Breakup Breakout: Arguably the case for Christian Cage. During his time in the WWE, he was always overshadowed by his partner and best friend Edge (Wrestler), but ever since coming to AEW he's risen to become one of the company's top heels. This is best exhibited when Edge would eventually sign onto AEW, only to find Christian as the reigning TNT Champion and in no mood to rekindle past glory.
• Channel Hop: Dynamite moved from TNT to TBS in January 2022 as a consequence of TNT gaining partial broadcast rights to the NHL; combined with their existing coverage of the NBA, this would've made AEW programming prone to pre-emption or delay, hence the network switch. Rampage will remain on TNT, however.
• Corpsing:
  • During the first few months of Dynamite, the camera had a habit of zooming in on Chris Jericho's face during his entrances. When the crowd started singing his entrance theme, he could sometimes be seen smiling out-of-character. (His cheeks become pinched-in.)
  • During Max Caster's entrance rap at Double or Nothing 2023, Brody King can be seen stifling his laughter at the verse "We leaving Brody King in a sad place, looking like a reject from RuPaul's Drag Race!"
• Creative Differences: The reason why the match between "Hangman" Adam Page and PAC at Double or Nothing 2019 was cancelled was due to reports that either PAC himself or his home promotion Dragon Gate didn't want him to take losses while holding its top championship, the Open the Dream Gate Championship. While PAC would have won at that show, it would have set him up to lose to Kenny Omega later on, and with Kenny working as a face and PAC as a heel, it would have been extremely difficult to pull off a finish that protected PAC without making Kenny look like an asshole.
• Creator Backlash:
  • According to an interview, Brandi Rhodes was the one who chose to shut down the Nightmare Collective group because she realised she didn't like how it was being executed and that the audience was in agreement with her.
    Brandi: So, I think a big misconception is AEW made changes. Not at all. I did. 100%. Because if I'm going to do something, I want to be happy with it. I was not happy with it. I wasn't happy with me in it. I wasn't happy with other people, as far as how they were being perceived and portrayed.
  • Eventually Cody Rhodes himself came to regret his feud with Anthony Ogogo, in particular highlighting his "race relations" promo as a bad idea in particular.
    Cody: I regret almost everything about the Anthony Ogogo angle... A white guy talking about race relations who has an American flag tattoo on his neck, I can see why people would use the term "tone-deaf" when it came to that... It set the angle in a tailspin where it just wasn't a classic, USA vs. UK, fun-spirited deal.
• Demand Overload:
  • The ending of Winter Is Coming 2020, where Don Callis announced on behalf of a newly-crowned Kenny Omega that he will celebrate his World Championship win on the next episode of Impact Wrestling's show Impact!, managed to crash Impact's website for several minutes.
  • The announcement of a shirt commemorating Brodie Lee, with all proceeds going to his family, also crashed Pro Wrestling Tees for several minutes. That shirt would quickly become the site's best selling design for 2020, despite being released less than two days before the end of the year.
  • CM Punk's debut, which naturally came with its associated T-shirt, caused both ShopAEW and Pro Wrestling Tees to suffer frequent crashes for a full day afterwards. The shirt's popularity also resulted in Pro Wrestling Tees running out of ringer t-shirts to print the design on, forcing them to offer a plain substitute while awaiting a restock. In fact, it was reported that North America's supply of ringer t-shirts had a shortage due to the overwhelming demand.
  • Another crash occurred after the release of Danhausen's first t-shirt.
• Development Gag: The Acclaimed got their name from an early proposed name for the Inner Circle.
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • A Coffin Match between Darby Allin and Ethan Page planned for the Road Rager special episode of Dynamite was pushed back to Fyter Fest the week after. The reason for the delay isn't fully known but is widely believed to be in response to a fatal Miami condominium collapse that had occurred in the week after the match's announcement. Since Road Rager was held in Miami, having a match in the city with the aim of burying your opponent would be in very poor taste.
  • The Functional Addict side of "Hangman" Adam Page's personality, in which he would almost always be seen drinking beer in non-wrestling segments or in the intro or celebrations of a match, was dropped after fellow AEW wrestler Jon Moxley entered a treatment program for alcohol addiction, signified when after winning the AEW World Championship, Hangman threw away the beer can given to him by his friends The Dark Order to instead embrace them.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Fuego Del Sol was not made aware that he would be offered a full-time AEW contract after his losing attempt against Miro on the first episode of Rampage, making his reaction to Sammy Guevara giving him one genuine.
  • On the October 27, 2021 episode of Dynamite, one segment involves MJF (accompanied by Shawn Spears and Wardlow) cutting a promo until Sting's music hits for the interruption, only for MJF to reveal that he did that as a prank. Wardlow was genuinely not aware that Sting's entrance would be a fake-out, feeding into the slow-brewing angle of his gradual discomfort with MJF.
• Executive Meddling:
  • According to Christian Cage, TNT did not like that Sting's debut at Winter Is Coming was a complete unannounced surprise, which is why Paul Wight was given a social media announcement prior to his debut (which had received some complaints for being an anti-climatic way to announce his signing) and Christian himself was hyped up as a mysterious big signing.
  • Related to the above, when CM Punk signed to AEW, the company took a middle-of-the-road approach after news of the signing was leaked. Neither AEW nor Punk acknowledged or outright denied the reports to allow a least a little bit of doubt on whether they were true. However, AEW had numerous Punk references leading up to and after the announcement of AEW Rampage: The First Dance in Punk's home city of Chicago which gave TNT something to promote.
  • Tony Khan wanted to get Europe's "The Final Countdown", Bryan Danielson's pre-WWE entrance song, for his AEW entrance, but due to Europe slapping a price tag of $50,000 per play on it (apparently due to the band's alleged disdain for their own song), which was described as "cost-prohibitive, even for Tony Khan", AEW had to go with a different entrance theme for Bryan.^note To put it in perspective, just using the song once a week for every episode of Dynamite would go well over $2.5 million a year, and that's not even counting using it for PPVs and other AEW TV shows like Rampage. Thankfully, at long last, Danielson was able to use the song for his entrance at the second ''Forbidden Door'' pay-per-view in 2023; he used the song again for AEW All Out later that year.
  • Similar to the Bryan Danielson example, Tony Khan said he originally wanted to license Jefferson Starship's "Jane" for Orange Cassidy, as he used the song on the independent scene, and said he tried "about half a year" to license the song, but he never got a formal response any of the copyright holders, leading him to use The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" However, Cassidy did finally get "Jane" as his entrance theme, starting with AEW Dynamite: Blood and Guts 2022.
  • For the Halloween-themed main event of the October 27, 2021 episode of Dynamite, the original plan for the Elite's costumes was that they would do a Squid Game homage, but TNT vetoed the idea at the very last second, leading to them doing Ghostbusters instead. The change was late enough that Mikey Rukus had to throw together their new entrance music the same day as the episode was due to air. A Squid Game parody was also instead done as a special Halloween Episode of Being the Elite.
• He Also Did: The Butcher (a.k.a Andy Williams) is also a guitarist of punk rock band Every Time I Die, and often promotes AEW in their shows. He also has a podcast with The Blade (a.k.a Jesse Guilmette, also known by his previous ring names Pepper Parks and Braxton Sutter) known as Kickin' Ass.
• Hostility on the Set: While CM Punk's arrival was originally received very warmly by the locker-room problems quickly arose between him and the Elite (Hangman Adam Page, the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega), eventually escalating into a backstage brawl between Punk and the Elite that led to both parties being suspended for several months, leading to the famous anonymous comment that CM Punk was "locker-room cancer". After the suspension period ended, Punk assaulted "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry backstage and allegedly threatened owner Tony Khan, leading to his release. Since then "wrestler X or Y took CM Punk's/The Elite's side" stories became a fixture in dirtsheets.
  • While the above is the most famous incident, Andrade and Sammy Guevara also had a brief backstage altercation that led to their suspension.
• In Memoriam: The December 30, 2020 episode of Dynamite is fully dedicated to Brodie Lee, with a card that features the various members of the The Dark Order as faces in addition to a match featuring his son's favourite wrestlers (Cody Rhodes, Orange Cassidy and 10) teaming up against Team Taz.
• Milestone Celebration: The 100th episodes of Dark (August 4, 2021) and Dynamite (September 1, 2021)^note This episode is technically the 101st episode of Dynamite when a special 1-hour Late Night Dynamite episode from September 2020 is counted. It is still the 100th full-length Dynamite episode. were both given the special episode treatment.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • A match between Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley was meant to happen at All Out 2019. However, Moxley later announced on social media that he would be unable to compete at All Out due to an elbow injury. PAC would later be announced as his last-minute replacement after AEW and Dragon Gate settled their creative differences, which had kept PAC from competing at Double or Nothing 2019 and subsequent events. Omega/Moxley would later be rescheduled at Full Gear 2019 instead.
  • Jon Moxley vs. Brian Cage was pushed back a week to July 15, 2020 to allow Moxley to self isolate after his wife Renee Young tested positive for COVID-19 due to WWE's lax testing and social distancing policies. This also had the knock on effect of extending Fyter Fest to a third week to allow that to be the main event.
  • The main event for the 9/23/2020 episode of Dynamite was to feature a six-man tag team match, with Team FTW (Brian Cage and Ricky Starks) and Lance Archer taking on World Champion Jon Moxley, Darby Allin, and Will Hobbs. Unfortunately, Lance Archer contracted COVID-19 prior to the match, putting him out of action. The match was changed to a title defence by Jon Moxley against Eddie Kingston, and with Archer out for an indetermined period the new story direction sees him feuding against Kingston's faction. Incidentally, said faction (Kingston, the Butcher and the Blade, and the Lucha Brothers) came about as a consequence of the pandemic stranding PAC in the UK, leaving his partners in his faction Death Triangle, the Lucha Brothers, without a story.
  • The 17th February 2021 episode of Dynamite was scheduled to feature an eight-man tag team match with Matt Hardy, "Hangman" Adam Page, and Private Party teaming up against Chaos Project and TH2. However, Private Party's Marq Quen couldn't make the show as he was trapped in Texas during a severe winter storm that shut down much of the state; in-kayfabe, he apparently travelled to Texas to meet a girl against Matt Hardy's advice. Private Party and Chaos Project were thus removed from the match to make it a standard tag team match, and the other half of Private Party, Isiah Kassidy, continued to make solo appearances alongside Hardy while awaiting Quen's return.
  • Jon Moxley and Orange Cassidy were supposed to have a world championship tournament match on the November 3 2021 edition of Dynamite. Jon taking a leave of absence to attend rehab led to Miro replacing him in the match.
  • All Out 2022 ended with The Elite as the first AEW Trios Champions and CM Punk as the AEW World Champion. A great footing for upcoming matches, right? Well, an unhinged post-show media scrum from Punk (dubbed the "gripebomb") led to a backstage brawl between him and the Elite (in turn dubbed "Brawl Out"), which in turn led to both parties being suspended and vacating their belts. This also led to a tournament being held to determine the new AEW World Champion, which was won by Moxley, and an expected feud between Punk and a returning MJF to be derailed in favor of (seemingly) a feud between MJF and Moxley.
  • Originally, Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho, who won the opportunity to challenge the AEW Tag Team Champions whenever they wanted from the Young Bucks, were planned to wrestle against Ricky Starks and Big Bill at Worlds End 2023 for the latter duo's titles. However, due to Kenny Omega suffering from diverticulitis, he went on break from wrestling so that he could recover, leaving Jericho in need of a new partner. This resulted in Sammy Guevara, who previously betrayed Jericho to join the Don Callis Family, turning against Don Callis and making amends with Jericho, the two going on to wrestle Starks and Big Bill at Battle of the Belts IX.
• Real Song Theme Tune: A few wrestlers had their theme tunes changed from AEW original music to well-known songs:
  • Orange Cassidy's entrance tune became "Where Is My Mind?" by The Pixies. As of Blood and Guts 2022 he would use "Jane" by Jefferson Starship, which was already his theme in the indies.
  • Jungle Boy's entrance theme became "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora.
  • Jon Moxley got "Wild Thing" by X (US Band), after originally being given the song's original version by The Troggs.
  • Malakai Black uses "Ogentroost" by AMENRA.
  • During both his runs with the promotion, CM Punk used "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour.
  • As a non-wrestler theme, All Out 2021 has "Champion Sound" by Cypress Hill as its theme.
  • Prior to her Face–Heel Turn, Ruby Soho used her namesake song by Rancid^note Ruby is close friends with guitarist Lars Frederiksen, who suggested she change her name to match the song and gave her full permission to use it as her entrance theme.
  • reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly) return to using "Dance Away" by Damn Valentines as their theme, having previously used it in Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling.
  • Hook uses "The Chairman’s Intent" by Action Bronson.
  • During his brief revival of the "Lionheart" gimmick, Chris Jericho would once again use "Electric Head Pt. 2 (The Ecstasy)" by White Zombie.
  • The Joker at AEW All Out 2022^note initially an unidentified male wrestler who won the event's Casino Ladder Match; he was later revealed to be a returning MJF at the end of the pay-per-view, used "Sympathy for the Devil" by The Rolling Stones during his entrance.
  • The debut of Saraya during the 2022 edition of AEW Dynamite Grand Slam used "Zombified" by Falling in Reverse; incidentally, Saraya is in a relationship with its lead vocalist, Ronnie Radke.
  • The Elite (Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks) returned from suspension at Full Gear 2022 to "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas.
  • Roderick Strong uses "The End of Heartache" by Killswitch Engage.
  • The opening theme song for AEW Collision is "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" by Elton John.
  • For two nights only ^note AEW and NewJapanProWrestling's co-produced Forbidden Door II pay-per-view and AEW All Out 2023, Bryan Danielson was able to use Europe's "The Final Countdown", his old Ring of Honor entrance music.
  • Rob Van Dam would use his former ECW theme "Walk" by Pantera.
  • Sting reverted back to Metallica's Seek and Destroy at All In
  • Adam Copeland continues to use "Metalingus" by Alter Bridge, albeit with one alteration (the opening question has changed to "You think you know him?" instead of "You think you know me?").
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Jake Atlas was released from AEW in June 2022 after being arrested and charged with domestic violence. At the time he was inactive due to injury, and had only wrestled two matches for the company. Wrestler Jimmy Havoc was also released after accusations of abusing an ex-girlfriend and last but not least, CM Punk was released after assaulting "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry backstage at a AEW show.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot:
  • When the TNT Championship debuted, the belt was incomplete as the workshop that would've plated it was prioritising the manufacture of medical equipment during the COVID-19 Pandemic. An unplated belt was thus used as a placeholder for a while, and eventually paid off in-story after Brodie Lee won the title, as he and the Dark Order celebrated by destroying the placeholder belt and scattering its remains across Cody.
  • In a funny turn, Jay White's AEW appearance on the February 9, 2022 episode of Dynamite was entirely because Tony Khan misspoke several days earlier. To hype up the debut of Keith Lee, he tweeted that a major "Forbidden Door" appearance was on its way. Since the "Forbidden Door" was understood to be a wrestling signed to one company appearing on another company, this actually didn't apply to Lee, who's a free agent. Realising that he was setting expectations too high, he scrambled to get White on the show to keep his accidental promise.
• Throw It In!: An incident with the Dark Order had one of the Creepers utterly failing at punching Dustin Rhodes. This was later added as part of the storyline in that the Creeper was actually a mole and punished for the failure.
• What Could Have Been: As with any major wrestling promotion, AEW has had to change plans enough over the space of only a few years to require its own dedicated page.

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