As many of you saw during Friday night’s episode of Dynamite, Andrade El Idolo made his official AEW debut, aligning himself with Vickie Guerrero. According to a report from Wrestling Inc, Andrade and AEW President Tony Khan met in Florida during the same week he was released from his WWE contract back in March. As previously reported, Andrade did not have the standard 90-day non-compete clause, which led to Khan wanting to sign him right away. With that being said, a deal wasn’t made at the time.
Andrade reportedly wanted complete creative control and veto power over losing matches. This caused the negotiations to move much slower than anticipated. A deal was eventually reached that Andrade would get a ‘limited amount’ of creative power over how the end of his matches would take place. Andrade also wanted to be able to work for companies other than AEW. The two sides had been working on the ‘language’ of the contract over the past few weeks and eventually put pen to paper earlier this week.
In addition to AEW, Andrade was also in talks with Impact Wrestling and they were also willing to work with him over his demands for creative control. The two sides couldn’t reach a deal on the number of dates though. Impact Wrestling would have also paid him per date with no guaranteed downside. Both sides were said to have been close to agreeing on a one-off appearance at one point but it never happened.
ROH was also said to have been interested in Andrade. His friend RUSH is their current World Champion and his contract expires in January.
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