London was offered a ‘look’ on Dark instead.
20-plus year veteran Paul London has competed for WWE, Ring of Honor and the most recent television wrestling product he was featured on was Lucha Underground.
During London’s appearance on René Duprée’s Café De René podcast, he expressed that he is not retired from in-ring competition. London would share that last year, he inquired about a coaching/producer position in AEW but was ‘shut down immediately’.
London would add that he was offered a ‘look’ on one of AEW’s Dark programs and brought up that Brian Kendrick left WWE, was brought into AEW and that blew up in the company’s face.
What a lot of people don’t know is that last year, there had been like some very loose discussions between myself and that company [AEW], not Ring of Honor and it was more so like, ‘Hey, I would like to help if there’s a way for me to help from a coaching standpoint or a producing standpoint. You know, I feel I have a lot offer’ and you know, without outright saying, ‘Hey, this doesn’t make any sense’ and, ‘Hey look, this is really bad’ and, ‘Hey look, this is pretty unwatchable,’ there was more so, ‘How can I help you guys kind of sharpen some of these things up a bit?’ Because I had done that at Lucha Underground and I really excelled at it, I really enjoyed it, you know? I was part of that writing team, even though I wasn’t officially a writer there. I was part of the creative discussions and things of that nature and really enjoyed it and really excelled and it was probably the most fun I ever had in wrestling was my time in Lucha Underground. So I was hoping, hey, you know, maybe there’s a need for something like that and was shut down like immediately. Like, ‘No, no, no. We’ve got enough coaches, got enough agents.’ It’s like, really? I don’t think they’re doing their job [London laughed]. I don’t think they’re doing anything. Really? Okay, that’s surprising… it’s one thing to offer me a ‘look’ on their YouTube show which I can’t say was very flattering and then for Brian [Kendrick] to be released one day and then get put immediately on TV and then that whole thing blew up in their face, you know, because they didn’t vet somebody properly, was like, ah, well, you know, ah, good luck [London laughed]. Good luck.
In this same interview, London talked about his past interactions with current AEW producer Dean Malenko. His comments can be read at this link.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit the Café De René podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
