Gabe Kidd joining AEW is pretty funny when you remember how loudly he used to talk about the company. Now the full-time AEW star is admitting he was once firmly on the anti-AEW side — and he really doesn’t care if anyone thinks that makes him a hypocrite.
Speaking to Chris Jericho, Kidd opened up about going from occasional AEW appearances to becoming a full-time member of the roster. He admitted that his relationship with Tony Khan wasn’t always particularly sweet because of how strongly he once backed NJPW.
“Well, it wasn’t all—mine and Tony Khan’s relationship wasn’t always sweet. I kind of used to be a little bit anti-AEW, you know, you could say.”
A lot of that attitude came from Kidd’s fierce loyalty to NJPW. After everything he had experienced with the promotion, particularly around the pandemic era, he developed a massive chip on his shoulder and became determined to defend what he viewed as the company’s identity.
“I had a massive chip on my shoulder, and I was just like, yo, we’ve got to project this thing. This is the promotion where it’s sports-based. It’s the King of Sports. It says it on the logo, and nobody is doing that.”
Kidd became particularly outspoken about wrestlers who left NJPW, accusing some of treating the promotion like a stepping stone. Of course, that leaves him in a pretty hilarious position now that he’s the one who ultimately signed with AEW, and Kidd knows exactly how that looks.
“Because at that time in my life, you know, you can sit back watching now I’m an AEW guy and be like, ‘Yeah, but you just did everything you said you were against.’ I don’t care. Suck your mum.”
Kidd isn’t trying to rewrite history either. He openly acknowledged that he repeatedly called NJPW the best while dismissing other promotions, even when people warned him that he could be burning some pretty important bridges.
“I was saying New Japan is the best and the other companies aren’t. And I’d have people coming up to me, and they’re like, ‘Hey, we know what you’re doing, but you shouldn’t say that. You don’t want to burn a bridge or something.’
I said, ‘All right, well, that might apply for you, but it doesn’t burn a bridge. Listen, I’m an asset.’”
Eventually, though, things changed — and Jon Moxley ended up playing a major role in Kidd finding his way into AEW. Kidd revealed that he actually approached Moxley himself about joining the Death Riders because their storyline of purging AEW and demanding more from its wrestlers lined up pretty damn well with his own anti-AEW attitude.
“And I went to Mox. I said, ‘I want to be a part of this. My whole thing is anti-AEW.’ And even though our visions were different, he saw it and he brought me in.”
That decision ended up becoming far more important than just another wrestling storyline. Kidd says being around the Death Riders helped him through personal struggles he isn’t ready to discuss publicly and gave him a completely different level of confidence.
“I just discovered a new level of confidence when I was with the Death Riders. Like, that changed my life because I was spiraling in some aspects. That is a thing that I don’t want to put out in the world right now, but they helped me conquer that and fight that and just become a better person.”
By the time Kidd sat down with Tony Khan to discuss joining AEW permanently, his opinion of the promotion had completely flipped. He told Khan that he now considered AEW the best wrestling product in the world and that staying with the Death Riders simply felt natural.
“And that was the whole motive when I had my meeting with Tony. I said, ‘I’m coming here because I think this is the best wrestling product in the world, and the Death Riders have changed my life.’
Like, everyone in that team is family to me now, and it only feels natural for me to come here and do that. And just, you know, the best thing is that Mox allows me to be myself.”
So yeah, the guy who once made being anti-AEW part of his entire attitude is now officially an AEW guy. Kidd isn’t pretending those old comments never happened, though — his relationship with NJPW changed, the Death Riders became family, and Moxley apparently gave him a place where he could still be completely himself without sanding down everything that made Gabe Kidd what he truly is.
Do you think joining the Death Riders was the perfect way for Gabe Kidd to transition from being openly anti-AEW to signing with the company full-time? Let us know what you think in the comments.
