Kazarian is not happy with AEW.
It’s been nearly two years since the inaugural AEW World Tag Team Champion left the company and Kazarian has not been shy about his creative frustration towards the end of his AEW career. One of those frustrations stems from AEW breaking up SCU, which consisted of him, Christopher Daniels, and Scorpio Sky.
Kazarian went on the Battleground Podcast and talks about his experience working for his ex-employer. The 47-year-old vents about the missed opportunity of not taking advantage of SCU’s popularity:
"Honestly, SCU was never used on the early AEW television to our full potential, and what I mean is what brought is to the dance, the stuff we were doing on BTE and the stuff like our microphone stuff, and just us as a unit, that was never featured the way it could have, and should have been in my opinion.
In the early days, SCU got really, really hot in the last year of Ring of Honor, the last year we were there in Ring of Honor, 2018 in particular, and our faction was right up there with The Elite in terms of popularity and rivaling those guys. For whatever reason, we were never presented as that version of SCU."
After Kazarian and Scorpio Sky dropped the AEW World Tag Team titles, they disbanded quickly. Kazarian notably faded into doing episodes of AEW Dark and Elevation, while Tony Khan tried to elevate Scorpio Sky into the main event scene.
Kazarian is right about the trio never really given a chance to shine in AEW. In fact, these days, Christopher Daniels mainly plays an authority figure and Scorpio Sky is currently M.I.A. Sky hasn’t fought on AEW television since September 16, 2023. Kazarian has been thriving in TNA/Impact Wrestling however. He’s been a central focus of the promotion since he returned full time. Kazarian previously stated that he enjoyed a good part of his time in AEW, but he needed matches of substance and meaning, something that diminished as time went on.
"I had some great moments... but the matches for me had less and less meaning to them [over time]," Kazarian said on Talk is Jericho. "All I wanted was the opportunity to have meaningful matches... it was just matches for the sake of matches. I'm realistic, I know I have more years behind me than I do in front of me, and with the time I have in front of me, I want to maximize that and give my best version. I don't feel like I was given the opportunity to display that."