On February 18, IMPACT Wrestling announced it had signed Chris Bey to a contract. The timing of the announcement came hours after AEW Co-Executive Vice President Cody praised Bey on a media call, saying he could be a good addition to the AEW roster.
WrestleZone's Bill Pritchard later reported that Bey was signed by IMPACT at the end of 2019 but just made the announcement in February. The timing of the IMPACT announcement made it seem as if they had stolen Bey from AEW.
But as Bey explained to Denise Salcedo of Instinct Culture and Fightful, he never had serious talks with AEW.
"I was just messing around when I did the thing with Cody, I tweeted him out the old picture I took with him the summer before. And then he responds to it, and it’s like ‘Okay, this is wild’...I would also be lying if I said that wasn’t the plan, anything that I put out there into the universe that’s the plan. When I put the picture up with him, I expected him to see it, I didn’t expect a response and I didn’t expect the things that came after that. I didn’t expect for him later that night to follow me on Twitter, and then every now and then to go back and forth with me on Twitter. But while all that was happening, to the public eye, they were all seeing me talk with Cody, I never talked with anybody at AEW. While all that was happening on Twitter, me and Impact were having the conversations, they were talking about how they were gonna bring me on....I remember that morning, I’d sign that deal with IMPACT, if I am being honest, I had signed it two months before this. So two months before the announcement, I was already signed," he said.
"So the whole time while they had the sign Chris Bey hashtag and stuff, I was already signed. I was just riding the wave. I remember waking up and seeing people tweet that Cody was talking about me, I remember checking my phone and I had seen a lot posts about it cause it had happened maybe thirty minutes before I woke up… shortly after I see it, I find the clip and I listen to it and I remember thinking 'maybe if this conversation would have happened,' and then he {Cody} dm’d me and asks me to text him, so I shot him a text message and he asks me if I had signed anywhere and I told him I did, and he just congratulated me and told me we’d see each other down the line…. Right after that and maybe a couple hours later the news dropped... So the internet took it and spun their narrative on it about me signing with IMPACT right under AEW’s nose and all sort of stuff. But the reality was IMPACT talked to me first, they gave me all the opportunities throughout the last year and a half and I have to bring my story full circle."
Bey made his debut on IMPACT on the March 18 episode, defeating Damian Drake. He is scheduled to compete in a fatal four-way match at night two of IMPACT Rebellion against Suicide, Trey, and Rohit Raju.
You can watch the full interview with Bey in the video above. Thanks to Denise Salcedo for passing the transcription along.
