Swerve Strickland looks back on his time with WWE.
Now one of the top stars in All Elite Wrestling, Swerve Strickland spent two years in WWE between 2019 and 2021. In the company, the star was most known for being the leader of Hit Row, with the highlight of his run being when he captured the NXT North American Championship just months before being called up to Friday Night SmackDown. However, after a lacklustre stint on the main roster, many were left feeling WWE could’ve done more with the man who went on to become AEW World Champion. Now, Strickland has compared his presentation across both AEW and WWE.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Strickland detailed how the organisation has got to believe in somebody for their talent to truly shine.
“I explained it to somebody. It’s like, you can have a talented quarterback drafted number one. If he’s not in an organization that allows him to be a franchise quarterback, he’s not going to play like a franchise quarterback. So your quarterback and your talent on a team is only as good as your organization allows you to be. If they don’t allow you to be as great as you possibly could be, then you’re not. That’s how I felt like in NXT, like the organization wasn’t surrounding me to position me as a franchise player because they didn’t believe it. And for certain things, it’s like, I don’t know if I gave them the belief anyway at the time. I gave them the talent. That’s why they had me there. They have talented people there, but the belief is a different thing.”
-Swerve Strickland
Swerve is one of All Elite Wrestling’s true success stories, being a former AEW World Champion who’s also one of the four men that can say they’ve main evented Wembley Stadium for the company.
This past weekend, Strickland made his return to our screens for the first time in over two months, appearing after Samoa Joe had defeated Hangman Page to once again set his eyes on AEW’s top gold.
During the interview, the star discussed how momentum and belief led to him becoming the first black men’s world champion in AEW. You can read more about that here.
Strickland also recalled his infamous syringe spot with Hangman Page at All Out 2024. You can read more about that here.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on Swerve Strickland as soon as we hear more.
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