The former AEW star has opened up on his time with the company.
Jake Hager’s AEW contract was reported to have expired in May of last year, with the man formerly known as Jack Swagger in WWE calling time on a near five-year stint with the promotion.
Appearing on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Hager reflected on contract negotiations with AEW, revealing that he was made to feel unwanted by the company as his initial deal was nearing it’s end.
“My first contract with AEW was up, and after that, the negotiation process was very one-way. I could tell that—well, I always find a way to say this every day, so I think everyone else should too say f*ck Tony Khan. I could tell that he didn’t want me there. He offered me a year and a half. I was like, ‘Bro, I just did Stadium Stampede twice. Don’t act like Stadium Stampede didn’t put AEW on the map. I was in the debut episode. I was the big spoiler and you offer me 18 months after all that?’”
-Jake Hager
Hager additionally shared an insight into his issues with Tony Khan and highlighted frustrations surrounding talent usage in the aftermath of the infamous ‘Brawl Out’ incident, with some choice words for the AEW President.
“After all the Punk sh*t that went down, the boys got together and we had a meeting. This was the boys only, no office. Sting’s in there, Show, Jericho, Bryan, Mox, they’re all standing at the front talking us through this sh*t. And lo and behold, who comes in the room storming in? Daddy’s little billionaire. And he’s yelling at us because—I think it was Dax and Cash—didn’t want to come in. They didn’t like the storyline so they refused to come to TV that day. And he was like, ‘Listen, I’ll put you in a six-man, six minutes before the show, and you’re gonna do it!’ And we’re all just—all feeling disrespected. I still to this day wish I would’ve stood up and said a lot of things. You just told Sting that you’re gonna put him in a six-man in six minutes, and then you’re gonna honor him for his retirement? We became his little playthings. We had to wait outside his office. His storylines were very good at debuting, but he could never carry anything through. It got to the point where you couldn’t tell him anything. He couldn’t take criticism, he was f*cking up, and we were all just having to dealing with it. We all had blood, sweat, and tears put into that company. We were all there at the beginning. We all had our careers behind us that helped build that company. And then we all had to just sit side-by-side and couldn’t do anything because he wanted to run it the way he wanted to run it.”
-Jake Hager
In response to this revelation from Hager, FTR’s Dax Harwood refuted claims that the pair refused to show up for work, with Cash Wheeler following up this rebuttal by sharing screenshots of DMs between himself and Hager that showed the ex-AEW man apologise for naming the pair without being sure of the details.
Elsewhere in the interview, Hager once again confirmed his comments from earlier this month regarding his retirement from in-ring action, which you can read more about here.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on Jake Hager’s frustrations with All Elite Wrestling as soon as we hear more.
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
