I mentioned if anyone wanted me to write on Malakai Black or Miro that I would. Thanks to Chris Chopping for requesting something on Miro.
If you ever have suggestions feel free to throw me a line at mail@grappro.com
Back in September when Miro made his request to be released from his contract at All Elite Wrestling I wrote God Forsaken Miro, looking back at the last work he did in the company and what he would be looking forward to in AEW. I pointed to the current run of Andrade el Idolo, who had a hot entrance in the Royal Rumble, was a fill-in at WrestleMania, and now isn’t doing too much of note. This time it might be good to look at his whole career in AEW, and to think about what went wrong.
When he made his debut with dyed blonde hair and a Mickey Mouse designer shirt I was fiercely defensive of his debut in the company. I made a defiant protest against the idea that Miro should be recognized not as a former WWE wrestler but as a professional wrestler who once worked for WWE.
It’s funny to think back about that with my recent articles on the Main Event Mafia and AEW’s Two World’s. While it might sound like I now care a lot about whether someone is a former WWE wrestler or not the reality is that it’s less about how I feel and more about how AEW President Tony Khan feels. If former WWE stars are getting put over AEW stars and the only thing you can come up with is that the former WWE star is formerly from WWE? Then yeah that matters.
It’s All ELITE Wrestling and that always needs to matter. The best people for the best positions.
The Best Man
When Miro came to All Elite Wrestling I was so excited. I was a major fan of him the last time I had to watch WWE while covering pro wrestling for Last Word on Sports. I considered Miro something of a throwback in the wrestling business due to his size and power. He never really should have come to North America. He was born for Big Japan Pro Wrestling. But here he was.
His start in AEW as the best man to Kip Sabian was a good way for the company to do a complete reset. All of his baggage. All of his bad storylines with his wife Lana at the time. He needed everyone to forget that and focus on his new journey in All Elite Wrestling. AEW does like to do this with wrestlers as we’ve seen now that we’re in 2025. They like to spend a year allowing a wrestler to fully integrate themselves into AEW and shed their old skin. We just recently saw how Ricochet did it.
Once Miro turned on Kip Sabian and went solo, he became The Redeemer. His theme music, his entrance, his gladiator aesthetic, his promos about his God and his Wife, it was absolutely unique to AEW and gave him a feeling of importance that few wrestlers carried.
The moment you hear those horns and see the fire? There was just nothing like it.
Miro built himself a wrestler that provided something AEW needed. He was a heavyweight wrestler with power and aggression, a real threat for babyfaces in the company. When he beat Darby Allin for the TNT Championship, it didn’t feel like the company was putting a former WWE star over one of their homegrown AEW talents. It felt like a raging rhino who had already destroyed everything in his path taking the TNT Championship.
He was fresh BEEF in a company that needed some big MEAT matches.
Miro’s run with the TNT Championship was also excellent. The wrestling was fine, not great, but it was more about his presence and building up an unstoppable threat as TNT Champion. It was also about creating a monster with a clear Achilles heel. From the matches with Fuego del Sol it was clear that he could be beaten with a well placed move towards his neck, and Sammy Guevera exposed that in their TNT Championship main event on Dynamite.
“You gave me a body of granite and a neck of sand. Is this some kind of a joke?”
Miro threatening to make God his enemy if he isn’t redeemed isn’t something you’d expect to hear on a pro wrestling show.
That Don’t Work For Me Cowboy
Losing the TNT Championship felt like Miro was moving up to the World Championship, and he returned as a fill in for Jon Moxley in the AEW Men’s World Eliminator tournament, only to fall to Bryan Danielson at Full Gear. It surprised me that they went with Danielson over Miro since Hangman Adam Page had just become AEW Men’s World Champion. While Danielson would be a worthy competitor (make no mistake, their two matches are some of the greatest in AEW history), it really felt like Miro would have been the better fit against Hangman Adam Page.
I don’t know if there was ever a plan for him to wrestle Page back then, but fast forward a year later and Tony Khan pitched Miro to be in a battle royal at Full Gear 2022 where Hangman and Miro would be the final two and Hangman would throw him over the top rope. Miro would reject this plan and wouldn’t be seen in AEW again until June of 2023.
It’s good to bring up now because Miro’s career after that Full Gear tournament final with Bryan Danielson was just a giant void. He didn’t work between November of 2021 until June of 2022 and it was said to be due to injury. Returning in June Miro wrestled Johnny Elite (Mundo/TV), beat Ethan Page in an All-Atlantic qualifier, and was one of four men vying for the new AEW All-Atlantic Championship at Forbidden Door, what is now the AEW International Championship.
He would lose that match and would only return to randomly team with Darby Allin and Sting against the House of Black. It’s around this time Tony Khan pitched the Full Gear battle royal idea and Miro turned it down, only to not work AEW for almost a year. Tony iced the battle royal idea until All Out 2023 with the Over Budget Charity Battle Royal which Page won, and it would be the beginning of his feud with Swerve Strickland.
Bulgarian Squash
Miro on the other hand made his return with the debut of AEW Collision, which definitely looked to be a reset for him. Collision had a lot of people who had been on the shelf essential re-debut for Collision, and Miro felt like he’d at least be a major part of the show. He worked two squash matches in June and one more in late July, since shadow booker CM Punk only knew how to replicate bad Jim Cornette booking and say, “Big Man Does Squashes Crowd Go Ooh!” thinking they are in a mudhole holler in Kentucky in front of 200 yokels to sell pictures of Ricky Morton to black lung coal diggers and you know what I’m off course.
The greater issue was that CJ Perry made her debut in All Elite Wrestling. The former Lana, his wife, made her debut at the end of Miro’s match with Powerhouse Hobbs. He won the match with Hobbs of course (Miro wouldn’t lose another match in AEW, meaning his last loss was the Forbidden Door four way) and in the post-match beatdown CJ Perry made her debut.
I got nothing really against her, but what made her an intriguing character for Miro was that much like the God he always talked about, she only existed in his promos. He wouldn’t come home to her until he was a champion again. Now she’s stopping a post match beatdown. I guess she came back home to him? Not really. They played it up like there’s a problem.
Essentially they went right back to the WWE booking conflicts, even having Miro be misogynistic towards her and be jealous of her trying to manage other wrestlers. It’s the same crap they were basically doing in WWE. They could have just had her be his manager and lead him to victories but instead they build a story where she’s managing Andrade el Idolo in the Continental Classic and after he doesn’t win, they wrestled at World’s End.
Miro would defeat Andrade, with the help of CJ Perry turning on Andrade. Then Miro would disappear. Andrade would disappear since he was leaving to WWE. And even CJ Perry disappeared. Miro and CJ Perry apparently split up soon after in real life.
Miro moved back to Bulgaria after the breakup, so that likely made it difficult for him to do anything else in AEW. He wouldn’t request his release until September of 2024, essentially nine months after. No idea if he was sitting in Bulgaria and turning down AEW creative pitches or what.
As for AEW waiting five months to finally release him? My guess is that they felt they were just giving WWE a star for the Royal Rumble if they did release him immediately. They basically waited until after the Rumble to release Miro, Ricky Starks, and Malakai Black. I honestly think they should have released them a week prior, let WWE book them in the Rumble, while also having WWE have to push people out of the Rumble to fit the AEW releases.
It’s hard to say what Miro plans to do next, if WWE is even going to sign him or not. We can speculate he’s no longer in Bulgaria if the photo with Sheamus was recent, but who knows if they want to fit him before WrestleMania or not. Ricky Starks just made his debut on NXT without a new character name, with word that he made that debut in NXT because they didn’t want to mess up any creative plans for anyone on the main roster to fit him in. But that’s Ricky. This is the return of Rusev.
Irredeemable Run
So how do I feel about Miro in All Elite Wrestling? Did it go as good as it could? Could it have gone better? Was he wasted? Was he used properly?
I think everything up to his loss to Sammy Guevara for the TNT Championship was absolutely perfect. You couldn’t ask for a better run in those months. He had a slow burn start, he became The Redeemer, was a perfect heel to beat Darby Allin for the TNT Championship, had a good run as champion, lost the title to a homegrown AEW star, and honestly that AEW star’s run was fumbled and it made people wish Miro was still the champ.
He had some injury issues that were unavoidable, but the news that he rejected a return because he didn’t want to lose to the former AEW Men’s World Champion in a battle royal does make one wonder if that wasn’t the only time he rejected creative to lose to someone like Adam Page. That could have been a great program between the two, and rejecting pitches gets you put on the shelf.
His Collision return wasn’t anywhere as exciting as his first run due to the fact he was mostly working squashes. His match with Powerhouse Hobbs was at least fantastic fun, and brought on a MEAT chant. AEW has been severely lacking at times in providing quality MEAT matches, but it feels like with the Hurt Syndicate and Murder Machines, as well as the current Hobbs feud with Big Bill, that AEW is finally realizing just how much fans love seeing big guys throw big guys around.
The win against Darby, the loss to Sammy Guevara, the TNT defence against Eddie Kingston, the loss to Bryan Danielson, and the MEAT chants against Powerhouse Hobbs will likely be the five matches we will be most fondly about for his run in AEW. I don’t know what happened behind the scenes with him, and speculation is only going to lead to bad feelings. In the end, AEW went with fresh meat, since Miro was expired beef by 2025.
I’m glad we at least got The Redeemer run, and I hope the best for him wherever he goes. I do wish it wasn’t WWE, and wish he’d consider doing a run in Japan. Just imagine Miro and Daisuke Sekimoto throwing bombs at each other for 15 minutes. Why Miro’s God must you forsaken me?
I don’t know what else to say except I agree with what Jenny Omega @G0AwayHeat said:
One of the strangest three-year runs you’ll ever see. https://t.co/Yr3IyRNp6U
— Jenny Omega (@G0AwayHeat) February 10, 2025
