Last week, former WWE superstar Jake Hager shocked the wrestling community by making his debut within AEW.
The former WWE World Heavyweight Champion previously teased joining the promotion on
Ariel Helwani’s MMA show back in May; however, Hager was never confirmed as a new member of the AEW roster until now. Hager once again spoke to the
ESPN reporter and revealed that it was Chris Jericho that swayed him to join the all-new promotion (transcript courtesy of fightful.com):
"It's been an amazing process since I left (WWE) and came out on my own and invested in myself and got to choose the people I wanted to work with. This was a no brainer. This is the best thing that could have happened. It was all teased and a little bit of fun and then this summer, the greatest wrestler in the world, Chris Jericho, started recruited me heavily to come to AEW. When Jericho comes calling, you don't say no," he said.
Hager is also a fighter in Bellator MMA, as the 37-year-old is currently on an undefeated streak; With Hager now apart of AEW, this does bring into question his future in Bellator; however, the AEW star ensures that he’ll be able to do both for the foreseeable future:
"Bellator has been great. They were very excited to work with AEW and have me continue fighting for them. We had a game plan going ahead of this and we're ahead of schedule in camp. We definitely maneuvered some stipulations we had in the contract. But they've been great. Right now, with where AEW is at, we're gonna be just fine before we go out there on October 25."
Hager is scheduled to fight Anthony Garrett at Bellator 231 on Oct. 25. At the moment, Hager doesn’t have any matches in AEW; however, it's possible that his first opponent could be Adam “Hangman” Page based off the confrontation between the two stars on AEW Dynamite.