Lexis King is making a name for himself in NXT.
The 31-year-old is moving up the ladder as the second-generation star is now the Heritage Cup Champion. Overall, since King’s debut in NXT, his stock has greatly increased. Though his run hasn’t been perfect, King is starting to find his voice within the promotion.
But before King made his debut in NXT, he was in AEW. King had a lengthy stint with the promotion, but you wouldn’t know that if you only watched AEW Dynamite. His final two years saw him mainly delegated to AEW Dark and Elevation status, and when King did wrestle on Dynamite, it was only to serve as enhancement talent.
Speaking on the No-Contest Wrestling podcast, The NXT explains why he knew it was time to leave his former employer.
“I think things started to look a little grim when they sort of removed Julia [Hart] from [the Varsity Blonds]. I thought she was a very imperative part of it, but at the same time, I was confident in mine and Griff’s abilities, so I thought, why don’t we change course a little bit and get away from the generic babyface and transition into a little bit more of a rock ‘n’ roll, sort of [frick]boy kind of group, where we’re sexy guys, so then we were going to do The Blonds or whatever.
There was a tag team that we wrestled, and they trademarked the name ‘Varsity’ and stole it from us, so we were no longer the Varsity Blonds, we were just The Blonds. Then it just kind of seemed like they were running out of ideas for us, and then it started to…the writing was on the wall. I think also Griff got hurt at that time, and so I was going a lot more singles on Dark and sort of starting to find myself again. The beauty of AEW too was that when you weren’t being used, you had access to go do the indies and to experiment and try new things.
So I took very full advantage of that, and I tried to stay booked. Even if I wasn’t booked on TV, I had something going on on the weekends and stuff, so I was always traveling, staying busy, and that’s where I started to find myself, and again, it might have been a little too little, too late. AEW is very much a sink-or-swim environment, so by the time I found myself, it might have been a little too late.
My contract had come up. It wasn’t like I was released prior to it being done with. But it was a little out of the blue, just because I was doing a lot of the, we had started doing house show loops, and I had been performing well. I was in the road with the team, and the time, a lot of the bigger stars weren’t willing to do those shows, so I thought that I was showing a lot of willingness to work and to be for the company, and I did put the company first. I was very much a huge fan of AEW while I was there, and I still am a huge fan, and I wish them all the best. We have to remember, if it wasn’t for AEW giving myself that stage, giving Ricky [Saints] and Ethan [Page] that stage, we might be where we are now.
King would go on and acknowledge the advantages of working with guys like Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley. As mentioned above, he’s not bitter over how his AEW run went, and he feels that it was a necessary step in his young career. It helped him grow as a performer and the NXT star is very appreciative because of that.