‘The Redeemer’ Miro reflects on his TNT Title win and chats re-signing with AEW.
For 140 days, Miro was in possession of AEW’s TNT Championship. His reign began in May 2021 and he lost the belt in September of that same year.
He looked back on that title reign as he was being interviewed by WhatCulture. Miro expressed that he made the title special by putting in the work. He later stated that he takes some blame for being too good of a champion and the title began to go in a different direction once Sammy Guevara got it.
Well, it’s the man that creates the title, not the title that creates the man. I think everything I did with that title [TNT Championship] was the fruits of my labor. The title didn’t come with all this heaviness. I mean, it came from Darby [Allin] which is a great competitor but, you know, it was — we’re just such different people, such a different style and then everybody that came after that, they tried to take it but that’s just not possible. When I hang onto something, it’s mine and unfortunately, the Sammy Guevara thing came in, he landed on my balls, let’s not forget about that. The finish [of our TNT Title match], he did the four-70,000-do-whatever-the-thing is. I was preparing to protect myself, he landed right on my balls and you can’t kick out of that, nobody can. So I don’t even take fault of that but I take fault — I take a fault of maybe being too good of a champion because ever since I lost that title, that title has gone to sh*ts and that’s nothing but to blame Sammy Guevara for that, so he’s got to bear the cross for that.
Earlier this year, Miro re-signed with All Elite Wrestling. He talked about the formation of ‘The Redeemer’ character and added that one of the reasons he agreed to sign a multi-year deal is because Tony Khan gave him the ball and is letting him run with it.
It wasn’t planned for years, it wasn’t planned at all [The Redeemer character]. It was just thinking, ‘What do we do? Who am I?’ That’s what I was thinking, ‘Who am I?’ I know Tony [Khan] brought me as the gamer guy, as the Twitch guy but I know that’s not me and I know that wasn’t matching the work I do. I’m a vicious animal. I’m going out there, I’m gonna rip your heart out and I understand… I gave it a go, you know? I did the — I was brought with a purpose to be ‘The Best Man’, to be the best man of their wedding [Kip Sabian & Penelope Ford], which okay, I had two weddings. I’ve been married on TV, off TV, I was able to do that. But then soon after that, when everything started going downhill with Kip, especially I wanted to keep that streak alive. You know, I started professional wrestling in WWE with a hot streak of a year. I wanted to do that same thing here. But after Kip kind of screwed me over, he lost that Arcade Anarchy match. You know, it was clear that his goal was somewhere else. He was focused on his wife and I can’t blame him, I was young before. I used to care about my wife more but now it’s not about that. It’s about where you wanna go and I wanna be the champion, I wanted to be the TNT Champion, now All-Atlantic Champion, I wanna be world champion and I can’t do that by putting my wife always first. I have to be focused on my career and I started doing what I know what I do. I had to disconnect myself from Kip, that’s why I had to kind of punish him if you will, broke his little arm. Literally, broke his little arm on that door and I just told Tony now, ‘This is what we do. I’m gonna be me’ and because he’s a great boss, he let me run with the ball. He gave me the ball, he said, ‘Do what you gotta do’ and I’m doing exactly that. He’s not there — he’s not telling me not to smile, not to look at the people, not to do this and that. He’s giving me a clean go and that’s what I’m doing, that’s why I signed a multi-year deal because he let me do all these opportunities. If it was like [a] situation like before, that would have never happened.
This past Sunday at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door, Miro was unsuccessful in becoming the first All-Atlantic Champion. He competed in a four-way for the title and PAC came out as champion.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit WhatCulture with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
