It has been reported that Bobby Fish and the officials at AEW were unable to come to an agreement on the financial terms prior to his release last month.
After his one-year contract was not renewed on August 31, Fish was able to become a free agent. It was reported the week before last by the Wrestling Observer that the door is not closed on Fish and AEW possibly reaching a new deal in the future, but that he was released when the two sides could not agree on a new deal.
In an update, a new report from Fightful Select notes that Fish and AEW had entered into discussions about possibly renewing his deal, and that there was some interest on both sides about continuing the relationship. However, the two sides were unable to come to terms financially, and so they parted ways.
It was stated that AEW thought the split was somewhat amicable until Fish’s tweets criticizing CM Punk’s in-ring work. These tweets actually came after Punk’s match with Jon Moxley on the August 24 edition of AEW Dynamite, as can be seen below. Punk was later challenged to a fight by Fish on an episode of The Undisputed podcast, which can be found at this link.
According to reports, there were conflicts between Fish and Punk while Fish was employed by the company; however, these conflicts did not have any bearing on Fish’s decision to let his contract expire. After the match that Punk and Fish competed in on the October 27, 2021 episode of Dynamite, which Punk won, Fish is said to have expressed to a number of people that he did not appreciate Punk’s attitude.
Fish is still friendly with many people in the company.
It was also said that once Kyle O’Reilly’s injury occurred, there weren’t many creative plans in place for Fish.
According to what has been said up until this point, there has been no discussion of WWE attempting to contact Fish, nor has he been mentioned creatively.
Fish is already accepting independent bookings, and has upcoming matches and seminars planned.
Fish’s most recent appearance on AEW TV was on the August 3 episode of Dynamite, which marked the return of The Undisputed Elite. It would appear that Fish, O’Reilly, and Adam Cole turned on The Young Bucks in order to begin some sort of feud, but after that, none of the three has been seen again. After suffering an ankle injury during his match against Darby Allin on June 17 at Rampage, Fish was sidelined for a period of time earlier this summer, but he made his comeback with a victory over Blake Li during the Dark: Elevation tapings on July 13, and that victory was broadcast on the episode that aired on July 18.
After being let go by WWE on August 6, 2021 as part of budget cuts, Fish worked the first event for Battleground Championship Wrestling and then the MLW Fightland tapings on October 2. In the first round of the Opera Cup Tournament, he defeated Lee Moriarty, but in the semi-finals, he was eliminated by Davey Richards, who went on to win the tournament and become the MLW National Openweight Champion. After that, Fish made his debut in AEW on the episode of Dynamite that aired on October 6, 2021. During the show, Fish challenged the then-AEW TNT Champion Sammy Guevara, but he was unsuccessful. Later on that night, AEW made the announcement that Fish had signed a contract with the company. After that, he got back together with Cole in November and O’Reilly in December, both after they had left WWE and made their debuts in AEW. After making their official comeback to tag team competition as reDRagon, Fish and O’Reilly were unsuccessful in their attempts to win the AEW World Tag Team Titles at Revolution in March and on the April 13 Dynamite.
Based on recent comments on a podcast, it looks like Fish would be open to a WWE return if they are interested. Fish said the following a couple of weeks ago prior to his exit from AEW:
“I do remember the first time I was at NXT, he gave the post show talk to the group, I remember it was at Full Sail. He laid out some things and the vision and the way that he saw certain things, etc, etc. By the time he was done talking, I don’t know if it was, you know, 20 minutes or 30 minutes, but by the time he was done talking, I just remember thinking to myself, like as a pro wrestling fan, pro wrestling guy, pro wrestler, whatever you want to call it, if you could listen to that speech and not support this guy, like, lose my number. We can’t be friends because his way he saw the whole thing was just awesome. Number one, I’m a fan of the way he sees the business. But two, he really wants the business itself to thrive and to go on to have uncharted success. Then after being there with him for the better part of three or four years or whatever, and being the Undisputed Era, going through the WarGames and all that stuff, I would go to war for that man, hands down. If he tells me, ‘Listen, I need you to run through that wall’, I’m gonna try. If he tells me he thinks I can do it, like, alright. I will try.”
