Swerve Strickland Blasts AEW Backstage Reports
The AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland doesn’t like all the negative backstage reports about All Elite Wrestling.
As the popular AEW World Champion for the past four months going into the biggest show of the year at All in London, Swerve Strickland is doing everything he can to make AEW a great place to be.
While there is a lot of anticipation for Swerve Strickland’s massive AEW World Title defense against Bryan Danielson’s career at AEW All In, there are also constant questions about what the backstage atmosphere in AEW is like. That’s because of numerous backstage incidents that have happened such as Britt Baker getting into an argument with MJF, which led to Baker getting suspended for it.
During an interview with Barstool’s Rasslin, Swerve Strickland agrees with what Will Ospreay said recently about things getting blown out of proportion. Swerve would go on to say a lot more than that.
It’s been great. I think that everything’s been exploited, definitely been blown out of proportion with a lot of things. They say it’s every other week, but it’s like, go back the last week, what did you hear? Go back the week before, go back the last month, go back to almost six months now, you’ve heard nothing.”
“So therefore to me, it’s almost calculated to a t, before every pay-per-view, right before every big moment we have, there’s always something that comes out because there’s always bickering in a locker room, that’s universal in any workplace. I’m pretty sure you have it with people behind the camera. But I’m pretty sure people said some things that they’re not particularly proud of, or you’re not happy about. It happens. But it’s not made for the internet. It happens, and then it goes away.”
“It happens everywhere. So to me, I’d rather have people care and be upset about something than not give a damn at all. These are people that are passionate about their jobs and their work and what they do, and they’re also probably the best at what they do. So those people take a lot of those things to heart. That shows me y’all care. Literally, to me, it’s about who’s saying what to how loud it’s being said to what forum.”
“Like I said, I feel like AEW is always on the defensive of those things, and that’s what comes with being the alternative. We have to play defense a lot in those scenarios, but that doesn’t stop us from continuing to put on great product and great shows. That doesn’t stop us from people wanting to still come over and be in All Elite Wrestling. That doesn’t stop any of that. So y’all can have fun with the story, but then okay, cool, we back to business, making money and doing great business and growing.”
Swerve Strickland Says AEW Has Competitive People
As he continued, Swerve put over the AEW roster for being full of talented, competitive people who care about what they do.
“What do I do in those situations? We rally, we get back on the train, we get the show started. We put on a great product. I don’t let it faze me and I try not to let it faze other people. You kind of give them that motivational speech to keep them on.”
“We look at the NFL, and we see the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterbacks fighting each other, and nobody’s saying the Pittsburgh Steelers are gonna fall apart, and the organization’s done for and they’re gonna lose everything. No, it’s ultra-competitive. These are competitive people. It happens everywhere.”
AEW All In takes place on Sunday, August 25th at 1 p.m. ET. Check out AEW’s website for information on how to order the show.