During a recent appearance on the AEW Unrestricted podcast, AEW & ROH star Jay Lethal discussed why he considered joining AEW after ROH had gone on hiatus (prior to Tony Khan eventually purchasing the company), along with loyalty towards ROH.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Jay Lethal on when he first considered joining AEW and making the decision to stay loyal to ROH: “They (ROH) let everybody go. The odd part is, the year before they let everybody go, I was considering coming to AEW because I felt like the only reason that I hadn’t gone to AEW and jumped ship in the very beginning was that I was extremely loyal to Ring of Honor. I felt like with everybody leaving, they needed to have somebody stay and try and help. I felt because they were so loyal to me, I was going to try to stay and help. My duty to them was slowly coming to an end. They were good to me, so I was good to them for a time and it was time to start exploring other options. That was in my mind. But I didn’t do it. I stayed and continued to help out Ring of Honor. Then as luck would have it, about October, we’re in the pandemic. They’re having these sporadic shows. Everybody’s getting paid still which we’re all excited about. Kudos to them for tipping their hat because we had a lot of people on the roster, particularly a lot of overseas people that they didn’t let go. They kept them too and paid them. So kudos to them. But it was just the perfect storm of events, not having many shows, not drawing too well when we did have the shows, paying everybody – they couldn’t take it anymore. The company closes and now I can finally explore that option that I was thinking about.”
On working with Sonjay Dutt: “Getting to work with your best friend in the whole world is a dream come true. There’s this adage for some wrestlers that this doesn’t really feel like work. But then you put on top of that getting to work with your best friend closely in a group and it’s unreal. He has always been this stand-up representative of what I feel like a real man is. He takes care of business. He doesn’t tiptoe around. If there’s an issue, he wants to tackle it right away. Let’s not let it fester, no tiptoeing around. He taught me a lot about how to let people treat me and how to treat other people, what is okay to stand for, and what’s not okay.”
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