Conversations about Aubrey getting in the ring began after Double or Nothing.
While AEW was in Washington D.C., they taped an episode of Rampage which featured the in-ring debut of referee Aubrey Edwards. She teamed with Mark and Papa Briscoe to defeat Jay Lethal, Jeff and Karen Jarrett.
Aubrey scored the win for her team by submitting Karen via a Figure-Four Leg Lock. She reflected on the experience as she was speaking to the Battleground Podcast.
She shared that conversations about her getting in the ring to compete began after she took the guitar shot from Karen at Double or Nothing. Edwards joked that she’s retiring undefeated.
I mean, just to peel back the curtain a little bit, the story itself between me and Jeff Jarrett and his posse had kind of started sort of at our Seattle show back on January 4th where there was some sort of hullabaloo, the ref didn’t see the finish. We thought Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett had won the tag titles and then I run in because hey, I’m local and this is gonna get a big reaction from the crowd. I overturn the match, we restart and the heels end up losing so it’s kind of this thing and it kept kind of finding ways to weave itself together with everything we were doing whether I was reffing their matches or we’d have a ref bump, someone would run in, whatever it might be and that sort of culminated at Double or Nothing where I ended up getting hit in the head with a guitar and out of context, this is really fun to explain so, I’m glad people know this is a wrestling podcast… And it’s one of those things, with wrestling, it’s really important to have storytelling and long-term payoffs for our fans, right? So, it’s one thing to say, yeah, sure, we’re gonna hit a referee with a guitar and she’s gonna go down, but that’s cool in the moment but where does that go? And when you have the traditional heels and babyfaces, if the heels don’t get their comeuppance and the babyfaces don’t end up on top in the end, then you’ve really just upset your fans. Why are they getting invested then? This is traditional storytelling. We have three acts we follow. It’s as old as Shakespeare, even older, right? So from that, the moment of Double or Nothing where the guitar shot happened, that’s where we sort of started talking like, ‘Okay, well what is the next logical step for this?’ Then they asked if I was willing to wrestle and I said, ‘Dude, I can’t even lock up correctly.’ I’m a dancer and then 22 years of ballet didn’t teach me how to do a headlock takeover. Those moves don’t translate man (she laughed). Still physical, but very different form of entertainment and it just came down to like, ‘Well how can we really play this up? And how can we have fun with this?’ And it was really cool to get opportunities. I get to choke Karen out in a promo, I had a live promo on Rampage which was insane and then, it ended up coming down to the match which was great and it just felt really cool. It felt really cool, like the way we kind of structured everything. I went over with the Figure-Four but that’s also Jay Lethal’s move. So there’s like that little bit of meta-ness that the long-term fan really appreciate because they get it in the moment like, oh, this is that deeper story and that part of wrestling that’s really nice. It’s not just on the surface, who wins and loses but what are those little details that reward us as viewers watching this product for so long? It was cool, I’m glad it’s over, I’m retiring undefeated.
It’s official, I’m retiring from in-ring competition. Not being able to walk for like two days without pain. But yeah, it’s like I never wanna do that again.
On the 6/21 Dynamite, Jeff Jarrett lost to Mark Briscoe in a Concession Stand Brawl. Jarrett said if he lost, he will never be seen in AEW again.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit the Battleground Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
