Stokely Hathaway shares his thoughts on the decision to turn The Firm into more of a comedy group.
Ahead of AEW All Out 2022, Hathaway gradually recruited Lee Moriarty, W. Morrissey, Ethan Page, and The Gunns (Austin and Colten Gunn) to form The Firm. At the pay-per-view, they helped a masked man, who later revealed himself to be MJF, win the Casino Ladder Match. MJF confronted AEW World Champion at the end of the show, seemingly setting up a feud between the two. But Punk was suspended following the events of Brawl Out, so AEW had to go in a different direction. As a result, plans changed for The Firm. The group subsequently took on more of a comedic approach, which could be seen throughout the storyline involving Ethan Page and Matt Hardy. It was also evident in Hathaway's match with HOOK on the March 22 episode of AEW Dynamite.
Speaking on Talk Is Jericho, Hathaway discussed the decision to turn The Firm into more of a comedy group. He noted that they read the room and realized the comedy route would be a beneficial approach.
"I guess I didn’t view it that way because I’ve been trying to get into the habit of looking at things from a positive perspective. Regardless of who was in that position, the idea was to go after the world champion. We still had that opportunity. It didn’t, obviously, turn out like the way that most of us wanted, but it was still an avenue to get things going. It was a tough few months to try and figure out ‘what is this group?’ because it wasn’t my idea, I didn’t come up with the concept. The only thing that I really had input in was the name. We were this super serious heel group, and I think you have to read the room, and I made the conscious decision to go, ‘Okay, this isn’t working, let’s go to the comedy route.’ Not full on comedy, but if you go back and watch, you can see where things started to change for us, and for the better," Hathaway said.
In the same interview, Hathaway discussed his debut in AEW. Click here to see what he had to say.
Hathaway will compete in The Firm Deletion match on the May 5 episode of AEW Rampage. Check out the card here.
Catch up on our coverage of the April 28 episode of AEW Rampage here.
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