Jake Hager shares how he became All Elite.
It was on the inaugural episode of AEW Dynamite that Hager made his debut for the newly formed promotion, aligning himself with Chris Jericho and his Inner Circle faction. During a recent appearance on AEW's Unrestricted podcast, Hager explained how Chris Jericho training with his MMA coach opened the door to Tony Khan and AEW.
"It was August 2019 when the ink was dry on the contract. It was during that summer. What happened was, Chris was training with my head coach Josh Rafferty. He's the head coach of all my camps. Chris was getting good training from him and they did a video package on Chris getting ready for his match at Double or Nothing. My training for MMA, I had (a fight) in May and we were running into each other all the time. We started talking, told him about getting into MMA to be a bigger star in pro wrestling, amongst other things. He dug what we were doing. I told him I had reached out and was like, 'Hey, are you interested?' and I hadn't heard anything, everybody wants to work for AEW. I think what happened was, Gallows and Anderson, possibly, were going to be in Inner Circle, but they re-signed (with WWE) so I got bumped up or came into the picture. However you want to phrase it, Chris told Tony he wanted me for the job and the rest is history. Tony made sure I wasn't a scumbag, he had a couple of phone calls with me and I got to be elite," Hager said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Hager explained how the Undertaker helped put his value as a wrestler into perspective. Click here to learn more.
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