AEW officials reportedly “have issues” with AAA over how Dragon Lee’s WWE signing went down back in December.
The December 28 AAA Noche de Campeones event saw FTR drop the AAA World Tag Team Titles to Dragon Lee and Dralistico. After the match, Lee relinquished his title and announced that he was signing with WWE.
In an update, a new report from the Wrestling Observer notes that AAA is hoping to have either Kota Ibushi or AEW World Trios Champion Kenny Omega come challenge AAA Mega Champion El Hijo del Vikingo at one of the upcoming TripleMania events, but landing Omega may be an issue because AEW isn’t happy with how the Lee situation went down.
While AEW President Tony Khan did know in advance that Lee was signing with WWE because he also negotiated with Lee, AEW officials were apparently not happy with how FTR lost to Lee and Dralistico, then immediately, while still in the ring, Lee announced that he was going to WWE, and WWE had a story ready with ESPN, and they had footage of the scenario with Lee, now a WWE talent, beating one of AEW’s top tag teams. Lee even pinned Dax Harwood to win the match.
It was noted that Khan, at one point, must have been told that it would be Rush and Dralistico beating FTR, and that would be fine since it was an AEW talent winning and not a WWE guy, and it also made sense for AAA because they would have tag team champions that beat FTR and could be used going forward, which was not the case with Lee as he left the company and had to relinquish his title. When everything went down, AAA’s position was that Lee and Dralistico were the pushed team and that was the advertised match, even though it didn’t make much booking sense to have Lee win the title and then have to relinquish.
The Observer noted that things between AAA and AEW needed to be smoothed out as AAA booked the match as a favor to WWE, and WWE went along with things, at least partially, to rub AEW’s face in it based on how the scenario was orchestrated. AAA booker Konnan reportedly went to Orlando on January 28 to try and fix things, but there’s no word yet on how that went.
It was notable that Lee chose to sign with WWE over AEW because his brother Rush had signed with AEW, and because of how Mexican talents as of late have shied away from WWE for AEW, plus with how they have been treated historically in WWE. The fact is that AEW has so many wrestlers not being used, and Lee figured he’d be used well in WWE NXT for a year, then he could go to the main roster where he can make significant money.
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