Daniel Garcia makes an interesting comparison.
Garcia spoke with Adrian Hernandez about his rise as a top star in AEW, specifically how it resembled the weird arc of the company itself over the last two years where many fans/analysts claimed the promotion was going through an identity crisis.
It was great. I feel like AEW was in a transition period over the past couple of months,” he said. “It almost resembles my character arc. AEW’s arc resembled my character arc for the past year. Everybody knows my story, I was transitioning from a pro wrestler and then became a sports entertainer. I was stuck in limbo between being a sports entertainer and pro wrestler and finding my way.
Garcia continues, stating that the Continental Classic really revived AEW’s core roots, and has helped them create compelling programming ever since.
I feel like that was the past six months for AEW. AEW kind of went away from its roots for a little bit and was seeming a little sports entertainmentish. Then, the Continental Classic fully brought it back into a pro wrestling product, sports-based product. With the promos and competition based around matches, I’m a fan of a very stripped-down product in wrestling. The Continental Classic brought that back to AEW. It was bare bones, ‘these people are competing for this.’ Super easy to follow, super easy story. It was a shot in the arm we needed, and I was glad to be part of that. If you notice, everyone started doing those backstage interviews after I did it. I’m not trying to say everyone is copying me, but I definitely think that was the catalyst for it.
Elsewhere in the interview, Garcia spoke about Tony Khan’s controversial social media posts about Jinder Mahal and why he didn’t think it was that big of a deal. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)