William Regal comments on his AEW departure.
William Regal left AEW at the end of 2022 as he requested his option not be picked up by the company, which Tony Khan and AEW agreed to honor. Regal has returned to WWE to be with his son Charlie Dempsey and be a coach. .
Appearing on Distraction Pieces Podcast with Scroobius Pip, in an interview recorded "a few weeks ago," Regal commented on his AEW departure.
"As you know, I left one company, I've gone to another, it's like a blink of an eye, I start back with WWE again and it's like nothing has ever happened and nothing has changed in the slightest. It's weird. Anybody that is listening that's young, I know you don't like listening to older people; make the most of every second you have on this earth. It really is, you get to a certain age and time goes so quickly and we waste a lot of it. Sometimes you think, 'I'm going to make the most of it.' Even trying to make the most of it, you end up not making as much of it as you can and it's gone. I just had a wonderful seven or eight months with a real good group of my friends, and boom, it's gone in the blink of an eye. I haven't even caught up with any of the stuff we've done because it's just the way it is," he said.
Regal joined AEW in March 2022 at AEW Revolution, uniting Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson to form the Blackpool Combat Club. The group would add Wheeler Yuta and Claudio Castagnoli during the year. Regal was effectively written off AEW television on the November 30 episode of AEW Dynamite when he was hit in the back of the head with brass knuckles by MJF. In a pre-recorded promo on the following week on Dynamite, Regal explained why he helped MJF and said that BCC will remain strong.
"This will be the last thing that I'm doing," Regal said of his podcast appearance. "If you're into the wrestling, it was a bit convoluted and finished off the way it finished off where I've been in AEW, but I'm back with the WWE by the time you hear this. I've had people asking me to do things. There is a lot that happened this year and a lot of things that made me go, 'I'm quite happy being not in the limelight.' I have been for many years. I had my time and I had a nice little gig with NXT for a long time where I just showed up occasionally, and then in the pandemic, I was used a lot more because we had to go into survival mode and there were certain characters and it changed things a little bit. I said, 'Don't use me as much, if you don't mind, it should be about the talent, not about me.' This (interview) will be the last thing I'm doing. Unless WWE asks me to do something as myself, I'm doing nothing else about anything or wrestling for at least a year. I'm happy with that. That was one of the things, in the last months of AEW, it was getting far too much about me. It should have been about the talent I was with, not about me. I'm quite happy being in the background. All it is is grief. I've had my run. I couldn't have had a better last few months as far as TV and doing that, but I didn't go there with that intention. The intention was to do something different, and it started off the way it did, but I didn't expect it to end up being this thing that it was for the last seven months where I just became talent. I went there with a different plan because I was asked to go there to help out in a different capacity, and that never transpired. Okay, I'm done."
Regal is the Vice President of Global Talent Development in WWE. As part of his AEW departure, conditions stipulate that he won't be appearing on WWE TV in 2023.
The Blackpool Combat Club remains a featured part of AEW television.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
