Jay White and Wrestling Free Agency
Jay White signed with AEW—what does the landscape look like and what questions will be pondered for future free agents?
Jay White (Credit-NJPW1972.com)
Why are you looking to make a move?
This is the question I always lead with in my profession as a recruiter. You end up asking the question at least three different times throughout an interview with any candidate. You do it because the candidate will most likely not give you an honest answer because they don’t want to come off shitty. You’ll hear platitudes like, “Well…I’m looking for growth.” You’ll ask what does growth mean? You’ll hear, “Um, I’m looking for new challenges.” You’ll ask what would challenge you at this phase in your career? You’ll hear, “Uh, well, yanno…opportunities.” This dance will go on until I point blank ask them, what’s going to make you want to join our company?
The point is, you don’t really know the motivation behind someone’s genuine desire to change companies. Sometimes candidates don’t know themselves. Not because they’re ignorant or not self-reflective, for most of the American workforce, there’s just an intuitive gut feeling that something is amiss, that something isn’t right, and your job as a recruiter is to help them find their why to help them make themselves feel successful in their next landing spot.
So what made Jay White sign with AEW? And what does this mean for other free agents in the future?
As fans in a tribalist wrestling war, we see only what we like about our preferred company and try to tailor it to the wrestler and why it best suits their situation. We ignore that there’s shit they’re toiling over totally oblivious to us as fans. We also have a biased, false notion of what makes someone a WWE guy vs. an AEW guy.
Truth be told, the moment I saw Jay White debut the Switchblade persona in New Japan, I got the notion he was a WWE guy. That there was finally a true heir to Triple H (circa year 2000 Triple H specifically). Right away, he had it—an evil heel playing 4D chess with his opponents, musculature, and wet wet wet hair. Weeks ago, there would be dirt sheets Tweeting that White was 80 or 90 percent most likely to go to WWE. As things do, plans changed, and word came out earlier this week he supposedly wasn’t talked about during Mania weekend.
For the sake of an argument, let’s say WWE was interested, how secure would one feel going to a company in the midst of a merger? Sure, the combined net worth of the still to be named amalgam of WWE and UFC has a valuation of $21B, but how much of that is going to go to the talent as they build their new infrastructure? After working at a massive corporation with massive greed, one cliche I learned that would be forever true was rich guys tend to have this penchant for making themselves richer off the backs of the workers they exploit. So in this new company, how many WWE wrestlers will get cut before it’s even officially formed? Will any new free agents be signed with a no-cut clause? Will the new company want WWE wrestlers and UFC Fighters to be at the (relatively) same pay scale?
One must also consider the oh so important, Goddamn, Pal factor. In good conscience you gotta think a wrestler is going to feel at least somewhat dirty knowing they’re going to work for someone who is a workplace bully, an adulterer, a serial sexual harasser (allegedly!), and rapist (allegedly!). It’s impossible to not assume a wrestler is going to find WWE more attractive under Triple H’s creative vision then trying to keep your sanity dealing with the ever changing whims of whatever hair is up Vince’s ass. Is Vince at the helm of creative worth the risk, even if, let’s imagine, the money is better than AEW? Did Jay worry that Vince would one day decide his Aussie accent doesn’t play with an American audience and Vince would lose interest in him as a toy? And chief amongst these dilemmas, if Vince keeps that mustache how the fuck are you really going to work there?
Going to AEW is familiar. There’s relationships and (one would think) friendships there. Unless there wasn’t some underlaying reason we’re not privy to that made him want to leave NJPW, there’s still an association with them as well.
For future free agents, will AEW feel too crowded already? If there’s not an official brand split (vomiting in my mouth using that phraseology) between AEW and ROH, or if that Saturday show doesn’t come into fruition, is there going to be such a bloat amongst the semi to main event that wrestlers could feel like they’re floundering? A subjective take, but AEW is creatively more satisfying than WWE has been during it’s operation, but the divide is large between the two financially. There’s an inherent human nature to want to be with whatever and whomever is deemed the biggest, and if Vince doesn’t fuck up creative so bad that it hurts the bottom line and that gap between the two promotions does widen, will wrestlers stop seeing AEW as the best in-ring professional wrestling company but as a well-funded Indie?
After the inevitable cuts that come after Mania, will we see more big guys in WWE and wrestlers with (give or take) better workrate go to AEW? Will it be that simple to differentiate?
With Jay White being the biggest free agent off the market, and The Elite supposedly the next biggest stars to be potentially on it, it’ll be interesting to see how much the landscape changes in the next six months. That being said, Jay White in AEW will work out tremendously. He’s going to have 4 star plus matches whenever he’s given time and his merch will sell and, even better, not be too embarrassing looking to wear amongst non-fans. And even though he refused to Too Sweet me at Lone Star Shootout last year, I’ve forever been, and forever shall stay, a Jay White fan.
Switchblade (Credit-NJPW1972.com)
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