During her podcast Swole World, former AEW star Big Swole explained why she decided to leave AEW and her explanation forced AEW President Tony Khan to respond.
Swole said that lack of structure and lack of diversity were the two biggest reasons she left the company, noting she butted heads and didn’t see eye-to-eye with Kenny Omega a lot during her time there.
“It’s fine to be loose, but I like to have a little bit more structure. I felt like the women shouldn’t have gone through everything they went through just to get on time,” Swole said, saying the company added a lot to the roster but they don’t have enough TV time for all the people.
Swole also said that AEW’s biggest issue outside of structure is their diversity, saying there’s not enough representation.
“There is no representation…truly, and when there is, it does not come across in the black community as genuine. At all,” Swole said. “I don’t know why everybody is so afraid to accept it or say it, but it’s not a good look. What happens is, you have this wonderful company that treats people like family, but there is nobody that looks like me that is represented at the top and in the room with them.”
She noted how her daughter, who watches AEW and rarely watched WWE unless her father Cedric Alexander is on, also asked her why there’s no one like them in AEW.
“Then she started watching WWE because she saw Bianca and Big E. She saw herself represented. It’s 2021. Why are people saying, ‘it will take three years for AEW to have a black champ?’ This is a scripted sport. It should not take that long if you have been watching WWE for 50+ years and you know what not to do,” she said.
In response to her podcast, AEW President Tony Khan said that the top two AEW executives are brown and then mentioned the inclusion of Jade Cargill, Anthony Bowens, Max Caster, Dante Martin, Nyla Rose, Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen who all won on TV this month. He also mentioned the diversity in the TBS title tournament.
But Khan had one final shot at Swole in his tweet.
“I let Swole’s contract expire as I felt her wrestling wasn’t good enough,” he said.
