Christian Cage remains one of WWE's most underrated Superstars and, since 2021, he's been making an impact in AEW. The former WWE World Heavyweight Champion was forced to retire in 2014 due to concussion issues, only to be cleared for the 2021 Royal Rumble in what proved to be one of the match's best moments.
He didn't sign with WWE at the time and, in an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Cage explained that Dean Ambrose/Jon Moxley reached out to him and suggested he sit down for a chat with AEW President Tony Khan.
"I think we [Cage and WWE] were back-and-forth a little bit and we never got as far as numbers or anything like that. I think it was more like scheduling stuff, like what I was willing to do and I think we were trying to get some traction there and a friend of mine, Jon Moxley, called me and we were talking and when he found out that I wasn’t signed, he was blown away by that and he said, 'You should have a conversation with Tony Khan,' and I was like, 'I don’t know...'"
"Well, he said, 'You’re actually an idiot if you don’t. You hold all the cards here. You have the ability to pick the stage where you finish your career. You should at least have a conversation, don’t you think?' I said, 'Yep. If Tony wants to talk to me, I’d love to have a conversation with him...' It was that day, it was a Wednesday so they were doing TV that day and when their show was on, I got a text from Tony. Yeah, saying, 'Hey, how are you?' I said, 'I’m great. How are you?' And he said, 'Should we talk?'"
"I said, 'I think we should' and so he called me the next day and we talked on the phone for almost three hours and halfway through that call, I knew AEW was the place for me and not only that, but working for a guy like Tony Khan. That’s basically how it all came to fruition was just from that one phone call and then we talked one other time later in the week and then that was it."
Cage, who turned 50 late last year, is showing no signs of slowing down. Elsewhere in the interview, he confirmed that he'll continue wrestling as long as it's still fun.
It also sounds like Cage will end his in-ring career in AEW as his current deal still has a good few years left on it (though we'd be shocked if a WWE Hall of Fame induction doesn't happen for him somewhere down the line).
"I always said that I would do it till it wasn’t fun, and that was my barometer on it so, how can I not be having fun right now? It’s still fun, it’s still fun. I have no timeline, I signed a contract. I think I have another three years left on this contract so we’ll get to the end of that and then see what happens but you know, I feel like I have a lot of knowledge."
"I don’t know everything but I know a lot and I feel like I think [about] the business differently and I layout matches and I see matches differently than other people do. I would like to, at some point, when the time is right to obviously give back to the business that has done what it’s done for me."
The former AEW TNT Champion also admitted that the disappointing unsanctioned match he had with Randy Orton during WWE's COVID era in 2020 was a big part of why he pushed to be cleared. And why he signed with AEW.
"I was not [medically cleared]. Probably not the smartest thing to do [the punt], but there were ways around it at the time in the Performance Center. So that’s what we did. But I was not happy about that day because I felt that I could do more, and then when the ratings came in, it was the highest-rated show in a long time."
"I was like, 'Wow, people really thought I was gonna wrestle, and they were excited to see me wrestle.' I feel like I kind of let them down. So that was another thing that was in my head. Is this how I want to go out? It was unsanctioned. Do I want that to be the last memory people have of me being in the ring? It wasn’t."
Do you think Cage made the right choice by signing with AEW instead of sticking around in WWE? As always, you can let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.