AEW star Anthony Henry appeared on AEW Unrestricted, where he discussed various topics, including working with NXT through WWE and EVOLVE’s partnership.
Henry said, “At the time, Evolve had started working with NXT. There were NXT talents coming in to do these shows and that was definitely helping out with attendance, basically the NXT guys would wrestle the Evolve guys. We worked up to the point where we did a Evolve show on the WWE Network and I was a part of that. I came in for some NXT stuff; I was kind of, in essence, getting looked at; guys like Austin Theory were already there and getting in there and things like that. I was like, okay, I kind of see where this is going, Evolve guys are kinda headed that way. I came to an NXT show, was supposed to do some work, and I was speaking to the doctors. I was very honest with the doctors in answering questions, as I normally am. The doctors became a little bit more suspect, like, ‘So you’ve been hit, you’ve had a concussion?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I’m a wrestler, yes. I don’t know many that haven’t. I’m not saying I have a history of it but yeah, I’ve been hit, for sure.’ It became, we don’t want to use you and now we’re no longer interested in signing you. Also, I get a call from Gabe the next day. I’m not throwing Gabe under the bus or anything, he did what he thought he had to do, he calls me and he’s telling me the situation and this is what they said. I’m like, ‘Okay.’ Obviously I’m let down, but then he hits me with, ‘I don’t think I can use you anymore either at Evolve cause we’re doing this now and we’re connected. If I use you, then I don’t want to be looked as like I’m using someone who is a liability I guess.’ He was beat up about it, he didn’t want to, but I understood his position I guess, he needed the job.”
On considering retirement during the pandemic:
“At that point, I didn’t even know if I wanted to wrestle. You’ve also got to take into fact that COVID hit right after this. So then, COVID hits and there’s no wrestling at all. I’m hit with this news, COVID hits, I can’t wrestle on the indies. I’m just kind of like, I’m gonna do a few indie bookings when they started coming back, but that might be it, I’m probably gonna retire. I think I even put it out on social media.”
On signing with WWE:
“Near the end of 2020, I get a phone call from Gabe and Gabe’s like, ‘Hey, do you still want to retire?’ I’m like, ‘Depends.’ He’s like, ‘Would you want to come in and do this thing for WWE?’ It’s a tryout but it wasn’t really a tryout, it’s basically, you’re getting signed. I didn’t even want to do it, I honestly wanted to be like, ‘Screw you, I don’t care, I don’t wanna do it.’ My wife was like, ‘Nope, you should do it. If you don’t do it, you’re gonna beat yourself up and you’re gonna be really mad.’ Thanks to my wife, I did it. It was a tryout but it was really just a bunch of indie wrestlers and as long as we didn’t do anything stupid or mess anything up, we were getting signed. Now, I will say, out of like 12 of us, I think four of us ended up getting signed.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
