Every year, usually around the late spring, the World Wrestling Entertainment company (who by their own admission are not a pro wrestling company) releases a bunch of their talent. This release list spurs a reaction from All Elite Wrestling fans which is essentially: who wants to hit up the yard sale?

Signing wrestlers that came from the WWE has been both a success and a failure for AEW in the past. Without these releases you don’t get Swerve Strickland for example. But every once in a while there’s someone like Miro who comes to AEW, doesn’t work out, and it leads to people not wanting to see anyone with WWE in their past resume come to All Elite Wrestling.

Heck, with the rumours of Mariah May leaving the company to WWE, some don’t even want you to say you liked WWE in the past. Not working for them like May isn’t enough.

This is a typical fan reaction of course. What is also a typical fan response is to see these releases and ask yourself who would be a good add to All Elite Wrestling.

I was a bit harsh about it suggesting I’d write an article about who from the release list is better than a Star Wars pancake maker I forgot my aunt got me a few years back. My memory of it was so lost I called it a waffle iron. I’d probably use it more if it made waffles.

Really, I’m just a bit annoyed about the constant whiplash of people either wanting a stop to all signings because Malakai Black was a disappointment and then the moment Shayna Baslzer is available, they think fondly to her time in NXT like eight years ago and want to see her signed. Do you want AEW to close the door and Tony Khan to stop, “being a mark” or do you only want that to happen when the talent doesn’t align with your own marking?

I’m not going to run down all of the folks who got released from WWE and decide if who is better than my pancake maker that burns Darth Vader shapes into really thin pancakes. These are human beings who just lost their jobs performing as professional wrestlers for a company that doesn’t care about professional wrestling. It’s a tough situation for some people who thought they’d fulfill their childhood dreams working for the guy who spits water.

What I will do is talk a bit about what pro scouting is and how pro scouting is what really determines who is and isn’t right for All Elite Wrestling.

What is Pro Scouting?

I use the term pro scouting because I’m used to it in hockey. The National Hockey League has two levels of scouting: pro scouting and amateur scouting. Amateur scouting is for the junior level and college level players around the world who need to be drafted into the National Hockey League. I discussed how AEW could do this their own way in AEW Amateur Development last year.

Pro scouting in the National Hockey League is watching the people who play for other teams and see who could be a fit for your squad via trade, waiver pick-up, or free agent signing. It’s about figuring out who could work for you at the NHL level instead of those who are teenagers. I explained it a bit on BlueSky:

There’s a word count limit or else I also would have added medical history.

When you pro scout, you don’t just take the word of those around you. You do real work in seeing if a person is a fit for your promotion. To give an example outside of AEW, a great pro scouting acquisition was Steve Maclin. Maclin was Steve Cutler of The Forgotten Sons and never really got a lot of promo time in NXT or WWE. TNA Wrestling signed him and gave him the chance to do all of the things as a singles competitor he didn’t get the chance to do in WWE. He would eventually win the TNA World Heavyweight Championship in 2023 and is still an important figure in the company.

For an All Elite Wrestling example look no further to someone like Aramís, better known as Hologram in AEW. AEW had scouted him for years and actually planned to sign him but the pandemic made that difficult. He finally signed in February of 2024 with a gimmick created exclusively by AEW President Tony Khan. Hologram has been a success for AEW and his tag team with Komander with Los Titanes del Aire has even made waves in CMLL.

Pro scouting is how you find fits. You have to do your homework.

What About The Ghosts?

Back in September I discussed wrestlers who had essentially become Ghosts of AEW. These were wrestlers out with injury or undisclosed reasons and whether AEW should bring them back or let them walk. I suggested keeping Daniel Garcia, Penelope Ford, and Powerhouse Hobbs, with those three coming back to AEW and finding success at various levels. I also suggested letting go of Ricky Starks. He’s with the Saints now.

In this discussion, the ghosts would be wrestlers who don’t work out. You do your pro scouting, you bring them into AEW, you try to make it work, and it doesn’t. How do you respond?

This tends to be where people say that former WWE talent burned them. They will bring up the WWE trained wrestlers and say AEW shouldn’t touch anyone like that, it just doesn’t work.

Yet someone often mentioned as the reason AEW should be “once bitten twice shy” is Malakai Black, a guy who as Tommy End had a similar career trajectory to a lot of the best AEW stars. Worked indies, worked PWG, had experience in Japan (Big Japan), and yet his AEW run has always felt like he had one foot out the door to head back to WWE. He’s returned there. Right back to feuding with The Miz. What an honour.

The reality is nobody has a 100% success rate on scouting. There is no sports team, nor wrestling promotion where every single person they bring in is a success. It’s certainly disappointing when someone doesn’t work out and you wish they would have. It makes you think about who could have had that time over them, why it didn’t work, and what you can do to prevent a failure in the future.

You notice how nobody asks that about Cody Rhodes? Or Frankie Kazarian? Or Mike Santana?

People only ask those questions when it’s a wrestler they already didn’t like. They only want the wrestlers they didn’t like to be a lesson AEW needs to learn. When it’s somebody they might have been a big fan of, or even just someone they thought was serviceable? They don’t want to really ask those questions.

Like I said, you absolutely cannot save everyone. You absolutely cannot keep everyone. You absolutely cannot sign every person that will work out. Even great companies have let great talent slip. In hockey, a great example is Mark Tardif, who was drafted by the dynasty Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s and left to play in the WHA to become the all-time leading scorer of the league. Did Montreal let a great player go? Yes. Was Tardif going to become that great in Montreal? Who knows. But it didn’t stop Montreal from winning more Cups than anyone else in the 1970s because of all of their other good decisions.

In the world of professional wrestling, you of course want to win these decisions more than you lose. You don’t want to be bleeding great talent. You don’t want All Elite Wrestling to simply be a pit stop for people to go elsewhere. That’s where great pro scouting comes in to play. You need to find people who fit.

For every Bobby Lashley there’s a Mike Bailey, Mina Shirakawa, and Josh Alexander.

Building a System

It might feel a bit like I’m softening up on the idea of bringing in some of the releases from WWE since I’ve argued that there could be a chance for some of them to come into AEW and be a fit.

The reality is there’s definitely people out there who used to work in WWE that I think would fit in AEW. Look no further to Fabian Aichner, who was released back in February. I think he would be a great fit for AEW. If not AEW? Ring of Honor.

In my talk of an AEW Amateur Development program, much of it was about building relationships around the world so talent can be sent for excursion to further develop. This is more for the younger talent still developing.

My hope is that Ring of Honor can eventually become a true AAA development for All Elite Wrestling. With a proper amateur system in place, ROH can be for those who can’t get on AEW TV and need to show a new coat of paint for Tony Khan to be interested in them. It should also be for the young developing wrestlers to get some of their first shots. It can also be the place for people who got released from the WWE/NXT system you’re not 100% sure there’s a place for.

Look to a team like MxM who has made a comfortable niché for themselves in Ring of Honor with their act. There’s proof you can make it work in ROH. Someone like Aichner could really prove to the AEW/ROH system that he deserves to be thought of as more than the guy given a bad Italian gimmick by WWE.

I could also see the return of Priscilla Kelly, who worked in NXT as Gigi Dolin. Kelly worked All Out 2019 in the Casino Battle Royale during the Buy In as well as faced Britt Baker at Bash in the Beach on Chris Jericho’s Rock N’ Rager cruise ship. Still only in her late 20s, she’s had some work on NXT but I don’t know if she’s the finished product to head right to AEW television beyond her presentation. Proving she can be a great wrestler in Ring of Honor and develop there first would be a great first step in knowing if she’s meant for AEW.

Should AEW sign Aichner, Kelly, or anyone else? Their success will be up to how AEW handles their pro scouting in seeing if they will be a fit, and then it’s up to the wrestler to commit to improving in the AEW system and being that fit. You won’t find a better example of someone who got signed after a release and then made the most of every opportunity they received than Swerve Strickland. Not everyone can be Swerve, but you can absolutely work that hard.

Anyway, if someone wants to see a Darth Vader waffle maker be All Elite, I’m open to negotiations.

Photo by Will Byington used with permission