AEW star and current number one title contender Lance Archer was a recent guest on the Wrestling Inc. Daily to discuss all things pro-wrestling, including why he decided to come to AEW over NJPW, and what it’s like to work in front of fans for the first time since he joined the promotion. Highlights can be found below.
On finally working in front of fans for AEW:
You can’t explain the energy that you actually get from real fans,” Archer pointed out. “We’ve been in an amazing, unique position. Everybody around the world has. AEW, I think, has done an amazing job working with our other talent that have been gracious enough to be ringside and the extra talent that is coming in week after week, and they had that environment that little bit of sound and noise that just keeps you going and doesn’t make it just dead silent, but now actually having fans back, that actually cheering and actually booing and actually having a good time along with the guys and girls that are in and around the ring, it just keeps adding too. It keeps making it that much more fun. I think if you watch the first episode of Dynamite, when we had fans actually back, I think everybody’s energy level was through the roof in comparison. Just because that energy that was being given back to us. It’s fun. We work our butts off to do what we do for the AEW audience, and we’ve been doing it throughout this entire situation, but to actually have some of them back and the yelling and screaming, even though they’re from afar and socially distant and very safe from everything, including myself because you never know what’s going to happen when I come to the ring. But it’s been an amazing experience and it’s very fun to have them back, and hopefully, that just continues to grow.
On choosing to sign with AEW over re-signing with NJPW:
I think it’s one of those things, like I’ve always looked at life as steps in challenges, and I saw this as a next step and a new challenge,” Archer said. “And AEW, even from the very beginning when the Bucks and Cody and Omega and those guys put together the first All In event and everything, I was in huge support of it just because I knew what it could do for the business professional wrestling. And then Tony Khan comes along and helps them start AEW as a whole, as a company. We’re on TNT. Everything that was happening with AEW in the world of professional wrestling and the worldwide attention that it was grabbing, for me, like I said, when it all came about, when the opportunity to sign with AEW came, and it came like out of nowhere. And there was an opportunity either to stay with New Japan or to go with AEW, and again, I saw it as a new step, a new opportunity, a new challenge and an opportunity to be back home on a consistent basis. I love Japan. I loved going out there and I love the fan base, and I loved everything that I was doing out there, but the opportunity to come home and to be on U.S. television and see my friends and family, the idea was to be able to tour the U.S. and be a part of that.
All those things together, just, it was too good not to take. It was one of those opportunities that, again, it came out of nowhere. Beyond blessed especially with what happened with the world pretty quick right after it. It was one of those things, like I was really blessed for the opportunity and the challenge was in front of me, and it was something I absolutely wanted to take head-on.
On who reached out to him regarding AEW:
I’ll just say it was a combination of a lot of people within the AEW upper office that decided that it was a good idea to have the ‘Murder Hawk Monster’ on AEW television,” Archer said. “They saw a killer, and they knew I was Elite, And they wanted me apart of that.
Full interview can be heard below. (H/T and transcribed by Wrestling Inc.)
