Stephon Smith discusses how he got his start in AEW.
All Elite Wrestling is different than most companies when it comes to referee presentation, as the in-ring officiants will often be named on television and sometimes treated as integral parts to certain matches and stories. In other wrestling promotions, referees will often be treated just as a piece of the background to any certain story or match.
The referee crew for AEW seemingly keeps growing every year. In 2022, the company added former NXT referee Stephon Smith to their growing team of officials.
In a new interview with the AEW Unrestricted podcast, Stephon Smith discussed how he got started with AEW after being released from WWE in August 2021.
“I moved to the northeast at the beginning of 2022 and I just wanted to do a bunch of independent shows just to kinda get my name back out there in hopes that doing high profile shows would lead to an opportunity with AEW. I reached out to New Japan, did New Japan, did GCW, did a few other high profile indies in the northeast and then I just kinda put a feeler out there. I sent an email and said ‘Hey, is there opportunities here?’ Then AEW reached back out to me to do Dark in Orlando and that’s just how it all came together. I got the email, it was just an opportunity to come down and do some matches and see how it’ll work out. It just so happens that I did a couple of matches and Tony Khan, being at the forefront of these things, walked up to me and was like ‘Hey, can you be in Atlantic City?’ From Atlantic City, it just kind of spawned into me being a full time referee with AEW. So far, it’s been just a really cool experience to be able to travel around the world, travel around the United States, work a lot of these big arenas [like] T-Mobile, Kia Forum. A lot of these places that you used to watch on TV and be like ‘Man, this would be really dope.’ It would be dope to wrestle in these places because that’s where you see it at. It just spawned into this wonderful opportunity to live a part of my dream that I didn’t get a chance to do in the first part of my career.”
Fans can check out Smith's comments on his release from WWE in 2021 by clicking here.
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