New AEW Star Rejected WWE To Sign With Company
A new name is coming to AEW.
On the August 30 edition of Collision, Hologram saw off Jay Lethal to extend his unbeaten run with the company to 31. However, the biggest talking point came after the match.
As the masked star celebrated, a mysterious video aired on the big screen as the lights turned red in the arena. The video showed the message “Clon activated,” followed by “Access Granted” and “soon.”
It’s been rumoured that the new El Clon character will be played by former AAA star Arez.
AEW Star Turned Down WWE
As reported by LuchaBlog, El Clon will indeed be played by Arez, who has a lengthy history with Aramis, who portrays Hologram.
“The new El Clon character who debuted on AEW Collision is Arez. Many people seemed to figure it out immediately, even though there really weren’t any hints. I think Arez and Aramis are just linked in people’s minds; most US people would’ve been introduced to both of them wrestling each other in places like GCW and MLW, so maybe they’re just linked together.”
AEW initially filed to trademark “El Clon” and “The Clone” back in September 2024 when they first became interested in signing Arez. The star had left AAA six months earlier, in March, and he’s continued to wrestle on the independent scene ever since.
But the story has another interesting wrinkle. As noted in the report, WWE was believed to be interested in bringing Arez back to AAA now that they’re in control of the promotion. But despite that offer, the star has chosen to become All Elite.
“WWE checked him out, liked what they saw, and let him know they wanted to bring him back to AAA as part of staffing up that promotion. (If you’re new, Arez was in AAA from 2018 to 2024, and left after a year of false starts.) Arez let AEW know that he now had another offer, and they needed to make a final decision.
AEW decided to make its own offer, and Arez picked AEW over WWE. I do not know the reasons why he picked one over the other.
This is more notable than just Arez signing with AAAA, as it’s the first known AEW/WWE battle over a Mexican free agent since WWE acquired AAA – but I would emphasize the ‘known’ part.”
Meanwhile, it was recently confirmed that Kyle Fletcher turned down the chance to sign with WWE in favour of signing with AEW. Fletcher said that he and tag team partner Mark Davis chose to join Tony Khan’s promotion after trusting that he’d look after them and let them grow.
It’s also been confirmed that a popular WWE SmackDown star had to turn down an offer from AEW as they’d already agreed to join the sports entertainment giant.