Strickland feels he’s now doing the opposite of what he did in WWE.
The main event of the 3/27 AEW Dynamite saw Swerve Strickland best Konosuke Takeshita. With that win, Strickland secured himself a shot at Samoa Joe’s AEW World Championship at the Dynasty pay-per-view on 4/21.
Looking back at Strickland’s past, he told McKenzie Mitchell on her ‘Threads’ show that one mistake he made with Hit Row, NXT and WWE was not asserting himself as the leader. He feels he’s doing the opposite of that in AEW and is making sure he’s in the star player role.
If there’s one mistake I’d say I made in the past with like Hit Row and NXT and WWE, I should’ve stepped up and been, just, I’m the leader of this instead of trying to be a team player. Team player, I wanted everybody to be happy and I wanted everybody to get their piece of the pie and I wanted everybody to enjoy the good time and everybody shine and now in AEW, you’re seeing me, like, nope, I’m the star of the team, give me the ball, I wanna score. But pass it to me. Not your time. I need to score first because we need to win.
It is a selfish thing but it’s not an ego thing, and that’s the difference what people really get lost with and it’s easy for the fan base to get so loud that you start listening to it instead of, they’re not playing, you’re on the field playing. You’re on the court scoring. Brett Favre and Tom Brady aren’t listening to fans when they gotta throw a touchdown.
There is going to be a contract signing on 4/3 to make the AEW World Title match between Joe and Strickland official. The last time they were in a title match was at Revolution in a three-way involving Hangman Adam Page in which Joe retained by tapping out Page.
If the quote(s) in this article are used, please credit Threads with McKenzie Mitchell with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
