Former NJPW GM Michael Craven comments on earlier conversations with AEW.
AEW formed at the start of 2019 with top talent such as Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks (Matthew Jackson & Nicholas Jackson), and Cody Rhodes coming over after successful runs in NJPW and ROH.
The reality between AEW and NJPW got off to a rocky start as the two companies did not work together right out of the gate.
"If the two Presidents [AEW President Tony Khan and NJPW President Harold Meij] would have met, I think they would have actually liked each other," Former NJPW GM Michael Craven told Conrad Thompson on Ad Free Shows.
He continued, "The Presidents didn't meet. Even if they did, what would have happened was, 'Let's wait and see what they do first.' They are the new guys. They are a new company. We don't know what their wrestling is going to be like. We don't know what their storylines are going to be like. We don't know how their business is going to go. We had established partners already that were very fearful of this new company. We had partners, such as ROH, that were saying 'they're going to hurt our business so much.' We had to take our partners as a priority first. We don't just ditch partners overnight. You support through the good and the bad. We were more of a wait and see. The big first shot fired was when one of our talent had verbally agreed to a contract and he went to AEW. At that point, it shut down all talks with our company. At that point, New Japan was like, 'they're taking our talent, why do we want to work with them if they're going to poach our talent?'"
When asked who the talent was, Craven said, "Beretta."
Asked to confirm that Trent Beretta verbally agreed to a deal with NJPW before signing a deal with AEW, Craven said, "Yes. I wasn't part of that deal. I just know of it. It's a shame. He would have been high up on the card. New Japan was high on him at the time and wanted to use him a lot more."
It was announced on February 7, 2019 that Trent had signed with AEW.
Elsewhere during the interview, Craven commented on NJPW's initial thoughts on AEW. You can find his comments by clicking here.
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