AEW star and current TBS champion Jade Cargill recently joined Talk Is Jericho to discuss the offer WWE made her, which Cargill says would have forced her to drop all of her sponsorships and have to relocate away from her family. Highlights are below.
Says WWE was very interested in signing her:
“They called me back. I’m not going to name the person’s hand that I shook. They wanted me. The problem they found that they had mixed feelings about was that, like I mentioned, I don’t need wrestling. I don’t need to do this. A lot of people, especially at the trial, need this, like, this is how they feed their families. They’ve been doing this forever, you know, and for them to get to this point, they will give anything and everything to do it. So they were like, ‘We want you, We’re going to sign you, but we’re kind of worried about how bad you want this, and we’re not just some reality show. We’re not just glitter and lights and cameras.’ I was like, okay. He said, ‘Also you have a child?’ I said, ‘Yeah, you know, I do’, and they were like, ‘Well, what are you going to do?’, because at that time my daughter was two. I was like, ‘Well, thankfully, because I have money, we can pay a tutor to help tutor my child being that we have to relocate to Orlando. I can have a 24-hour nanny, but they were really grilling me about it in which I was kind of cut off. I was like, ‘Well, my spouse can travel with me wherever we go. This could be easy for me. I thought about all the precautions to this, like, I’ve been warned about traveling, I get it.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I get what you’re saying, but this is your family now. I want you to know that.’ I was like, ‘I get it. I totally understand that, but I’ve thought about it, and I want it. I’ve been training for this, this is what I want.’ They’re like, ‘Alright, well, we’ll see. So they sent the contract, they wanted me to do it. AEW came about and I came here, I got the experience, and I felt calm. I remember you (Chris Jericho) and I had this conversation in the car. It made me feel at ease about the decision that I wanted to make. I didn’t have to relocate. I felt at home. I could call the owner of our company and talk to him and he knew my name. He knew my purpose. He knew that I wanted to do this, and that mattered to me. I wasn’t just a number. I wasn’t just this person, like who was this person? He knew exactly who I was, so that made me feel comfortable, and yes, the other company was pissed off that they sent me this 100 page contract, but I made the best decision for my family, and I made the best decision for myself.”
How WWE wanted to drop all of her other business relationships/sponsorships and focus on them full-time:
“They wanted me to cut everything, and these were relationships that I’ve had previously, before I even thought about wrestling that were like five years, six, seven year contracts, that I just couldn’t say goodbye because what if they choose to cut me? What am I going to do after? I would have to crawl back to these companies and ask, ‘Can I have that contract back?’ That’s not professional and that’s not okay. I literally made more money for my sponsorships and things that I did online than my contract they were giving me. I was like, ‘This doesn’t make sense, guys. Like, I have a kid, so unless you guys are going to compensate me, or give me some more money up here.’ and they did. They gave way more than a normal person and way more than my friends that were already signed for about a year or two, but it wasn’t enough. I was like, ‘You know, this is a dream. This is great. But I’m giving up so much for so little. Literally, this is going to cause problems in my household because I have to be on the road all the time. It’s not gonna be easy. I’m used to being the one at home and my spouse is used to traveling and now the roles are reversed. So now, that’s hard. Now I’m going to get the admiration. Meet me halfway.’ I get that, like, ‘Who am I?’ I get that. I don’t have any wrestling experience. I get that, but this is business. At the end of the day, this is a business. So what can you do for me because I know I’m going to do something for you. I’m going to sell tickets, but this is a 45 or 47 year old company and they’re looking at me like, yeah, okay, so are you going to take the contract or not?”
(H/T and transcribed by WrestlingNews.Co)