Mike Bailey is All Elite.
For months, it was rumored that the former X-Division Champion would be making the jump over to All Elite Wrestling once his contract expired in late 2024. Originally, there were rumors that he was supposed to debut in the Continental Classic, but that was shot down as his contract with TNA Wrestling didn’t end until January 1st.
AEW officially confirmed that Bailey would be coming over with a brief video package introducing the new AEW member.
Fightful Select reports that the reason that it took Bailey so long to debut was because there were visa issues holding him up. Now that everything is clean, Bailey will finally get to somecase what he can do on AEW television. Plans for the 34-year-old aren’t exactly clear just yet.
If you don’t know who Mike Bailey is, he’s been one of the bright spots for TNA in the last couple of years. Bailey has wrestled around the world; Game Changer Wrestling, DEFY Wrestling, Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and of course, TNA/Impact are just a short list of companies he’s competed in.
In 2023 he had a classic with Will Ospreay at Bound for Glory. He’s also had excellent matches against El Hijo del Vikingo, Mustafa Ali, and Josh Alexander. Once Bailey’s video was released on Collision, he went on to confirm his AEW status on social media:
There were even some reports that WWE was interested in the former TNA star. In fact, Bailey said on the Talk is Jericho podcast that he was hired for NXT in 2022, but was eventually fired without being brought in:
"January 2022 is when I debuted with TNA, with IMPACT then. But it was a long road, even then. When my ban came up, the day, I tweeted a little highlight video that I made, a little announcement my ban was ended and then that got a lot of attention and that got me talking to everyone. That got me signed with NXT for a couple months until they let me go without actually hiring me.
"After that video came out, I had already been talking with TNA, talked to some people from AEW, talked to NXT, got a bunch of offers and ended up taking the NXT one. Very excited to be there, they do the background check, they do the visa paperwork, that takes a couple months. Just (a) couple days after I submit the visa paperwork, for this one, you have to go and do a whole career retrospective and all the articles with all your accolades, you have to gather that and send it in. So I worked on that for several weeks, sent it all in. Then I see they’re starting to release a lot of people in NXT. They're letting go of people and the person that had hired me, there was rumours that they had gotten released so I texted them and I was like, 'Hey, is everything okay? Are we good?'. And they're like, 'Oh yeah, no problem. Contract's in the mail. We're sending it tomorrow' and then the next day, I got an email saying, 'Hey, due to new hiring guidelines, we're gonna have to stop your hiring process…'. Yes, it was (Canyon Ceman that I was talking to).
"I was not like, whatever (he laughed). I was freaking out. I was pretty panicked. Again, this is a big deal for someone like me. I had made some very serious steps to plan my move to Orlando. Uproot my whole life and then here we are again so it's like, well, let's see what we can do to fix this and so I got back in touch with everyone that I had spoken to and I ended up signing with TNA, with IMPACT.
"You made that decision not even two months ago (Bailey said about WWE wanting to bring him in). You haven't even brought me in yet. The only thing I wished is that they had at least gave me the visa and flew me down so I would have (at) least have something to show for it but not even me just sitting at home".
There’s no word on whether talks with WWE this time around went deep. This is a good get for AEW and hopefully Bailey will be given a chance to make an impact in front of a larger audience.