On a recent edition of the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, Aussie Open reflected on their journey to AEW and the circumstances that eventually made them sign with Tony Khan’s promotion.
Kyle Fletcher and Mark Davis also discussed the details regarding their conversations with NJPW, as well as the offers they had received from WWE around the same time.
Aussie Open lost the ROH World Tag Team Titles to MJF and Adam Cole during the “Zero Hour” pre-show of AEW All In 2023.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Davis on the struggle of his injuries before joining NJPW: “From the inception of COVID to maybe the beginning of 2022, a good couple years, just broke. You can’t wrestle, you can’t make a living, you have a normal job, which is okay, but it’s depressing as hell. Where do you go from here? What do you do next? You don’t know what’s happening with the world or anything. Just born from that, we were both like, ‘the next thing we do, we want to have a bit of security.’ We need to know we’re going to get paid X amount of money a month and it’s going to come in, we can afford our bills, and there is no stress. We don’t have to stress about a t-shirt design and pushing that out. That’s been one of the biggest things that has fueled us since we came back. From the first tour we did with New Japan, we had that discussion with the President [NJPW President Takami Ohbari], we sat down and said, ‘we want to be here. We love New Japan Pro-Wrestling, we love the style of pro wrestling here, we want to be a member of the team.’ That was the beginning of November, and it was a while before we heard back. The response we heard from them was, ‘we’ll give you a deal in July.’ This was December of last year. ‘We’ll give you a deal in eight months.’”
Davis on the team working with ROH and Tony Khan: “We hit a point and hit a threshold where, we put the time in, we waited and committed to New Japan, we had offers from WWE to do NXT and NXT UK, that we refused, because we wanted to commit to doing New Japan, and it was a difficult struggle. In May, Dontaku tour, we were the IWGP Tag Team Champions, we were the New Japan Strong Tag Team Champions, and it’s the last day of the tour we’re wrestling TMDK and the night before, House of Torture stole our titles and we run to the ring to get them back. I duck a clothesline, kick them in the crotch, I roll out and my knee just felt off. ‘My knee is done.’ We did this tag match, six-man tag, eight to ten minutes, and it doesn’t feel good. I had issues with it post-ACL tear, post return to wrestling, I had it checked, I know my meniscus is torn and is causing me issues. I’m fairly confident that’s what it is. I talk to the trainer at New Japan, ‘my knee isn’t okay. I can’t straighten, I can’t bend it, it’s locking, I’m in pain, I’m pretty sure it’s my meniscus.’ He looked at it, worked it over, ‘it’s your IT band. It’s your hip. You have a tight hip. Maybe tomorrow it’s okay.’ He gave me a compression bandage and some heat patches. ‘It’s okay tomorrow.’ Tomorrow included a 17 hour travel day to America, on a flight I couldn’t upgrade. It was a very frustrating 48 hour period, and upon coming to America, there was a Ring of Honor taping we were supposed to be involved in. We got there and I was like, ‘I don’t think I can wrestle, I need to get my knee looked at.’ The trainers looked at it, ‘it’s your meniscus.’ ‘That’s what I thought it was.’ It’s a thing I expected to happen, it was a frustrating point in time because we were tag champions. I was in Orlando, I passed Tony [Tony Khan] in the hallway, ‘come and talk to me.’ He sorted it. He got my knee fixed. He didn’t have to.”
Fletcher on how AEW made them the best offer at the time: “That was kind of how it started. Talk to Japan, talk to AEW, go back and forth. It ended up being, New Japan just waited to wait. Tony came back and was like, ‘Okay, here is a deal,’ put it in front of us and we went, ‘We can’t say no to it.’ As much as we love New Japan and we’re trying to hold out, there is this awesome offer put in front of us to work. That gets put in front of you and after waiting for that security, it was impossible to turn down.”
Fletcher on the offers from WWE: “The first time we spoke to them was 2019. It was when we were just gearing up for World Tag League. It was for a NXT UK deal. We were like, ‘We want to do this New Japan thing, maybe we can revisit it after that.’ That’s how it was left. The injury happens, COVID happens, the next time we spoke to them was this year when we talked to New Japan, they were saying ‘wait’ and we put feelers out everywhere and we had a little bit of a conversation. It didn’t get too deep, but there was interest there. The best situation was for us here. The talks didn’t get super deep.”
