Wardlow has high expectations for himself in AEW.
Wardlow scored the biggest win of his AEW career at Double or Nothing 2022 when he defeated MJF, officially freeing himself from MJF's contract and allowing him to sign with AEW. Wardlow has now set his sights on the AEW TNT Championship, and while he hopes to collect all the gold, he wants to be a guy who moves the needle for the company.
“I’m very in tune with numbers, and my main goal for AEW is, I want to be the reason we have more viewers. I want to be the reason the female viewership goes up. I want to be the reason that 18-49 demographic goes up. I want to be the reason our ratings are higher,” Wardlow told Blake Oestriecher of Forbes. “I know I can’t do it on my own. It takes help from the other young talent. It takes help from the legends and the guys coming over, but I want to be one of the guys that are moving the needle for this company.”
Wardlow is viewed as a homegrown star in AEW and he knows that bringing in the likes of CM Punk and Bryan Danielson will only help his position in the company grow.
“I’m very proud to say that I’m really an AEW original and an AEW homegrown [star]. I mean, nobody knew of me outside of the Pittsburgh/Ohio area,” Wardlow said. “Maybe a handful of people in Chicago where I worked, but other than that, nobody knew me. I think it was beneficial for me to build myself from the ground up in AEW. I know with CM Punk coming to our company, that’s just a million more eyes on me also and on our company and on our product, and it’s only going to help us to grow. And in the end, once we grow, the guys that are taking the backseat are going to start getting more opportunities. It takes some patience, but it’s also for the betterment of the company.”
On last Wednesday's AEW Dynamite, Wardlow got Matt Hughes and Tyron Woodley on his side as they fed Mark Sterling to Wardlow.
Sterling is still suffering from neck pain.
