Swerve Strickland Thinks Not Being ‘That Well-Known’ Prior To Signing With AEW Worked In His Favor

Swerve Strickland talks about not being ‘that well-known’ prior to signing with AEW.

At AEW Revolution 2022, Swerve would be announced as a new signing for the company, quickly becoming a staple of AEW programming, first as a tag team alongside Keith Lee as Swerve In Our Glory, then as a singles star, eventually becoming the AEW World Champion.

While speaking to Insight with Chris Van Vliet in a new interview, Swerve Strickland noted his belief that not being as well known prior to signing actually worked in his favor.

“Which worked in my favor, because they didn’t have anything to compare me to. A lot of people were like, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Who’s this?’ On the day that I did the contract signing at Revolution, I was just like, I can take this as a disrespectful way and be bitter about it and feel petty, or I could use this in my favor and be like, okay, they know me, this is a fresh start. Once again, that rock bottom feel, there’s nowhere else to go but up. I’m not having to compare myself or work towards what I did in the past; I felt like that was so tough for a Bryan Danielson, because he was coming from being Daniel Bryan. He’s a Hall of Famer, just that in itself, is a Hall of Famer. So Bryan coming into [AEW], and for people that only know him as being Daniel Bryan to doing what he did as Bryan Danielson in AEW, that’s a whole other Hall of Fame career. Just like 2 to 3 years of him doing what he’s done here in AEW, so I feel like he had huge shoes to fill. Moxley the same way. Moxley reinvented himself three, four times here in AEW. Those guys had it harder than I did, I feel like, because they had this huge reputation. They had the big names when they came in. They’re coming in and already had super successful careers in WWE to like, Oh, I hope he’s better than what we’ve seen there. Or like, Oh, he’s not as good as what we saw over there, they already had the comparison.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Swerve spoke about why he feels he’s presented differently in AEW than his time in WWE. You can read more about that here.