Former TNA World Champion Josh Alexander made his long-awaited AEW debut as the Wild Card participant in the 2025 Owen Hart Foundation Men’s Tournament on the AEW Dynamite: Spring BreakThru show.
But in a little known fact, “The Walking Weapon” tried to be part of AEW from the very start.
During a recent appearance on Casual Conversations With The Classic, Alexander revealed that The Young Bucks essentially turned down his original request to be part of the company.
“Full disclosure, before I signed with TNA, I heard murmurs of this new company starting up,” Alexander said. “It didn’t have a name at the time, nothing had been announced.”
Alexander continued, bringing up a conversation he had with The Young Bucks in 2009.
“I had worked with the Bucks, so I reached out to one of them and was like, ‘Is this a real thing?’ They were like, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Would there be any interest in me because I would love to be part of something like this.’ They said, ‘Not right now,'” he said. “That’s when TNA came along and I went there. I was very lucky to have the opportunity to go to TNA. Being older and little wiser, I’ve come to understand that everything does happen for a reason and you have to follow the path that you’re on. It might get rocky at times, but everything works out in the end.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
