Back in February, AEW Executive Vice President Cody Rhodes revealed during a teleconference that he had his eye on a guy named Chris Bey; however, a couple days later, Impact Wrestling confirmed that they signed the young talent to a long-term contract.
Prior to announcement, Bey had been working under Impact Wrestling since 2019, though he was mostly used as enhancement talent. While it seemed like the company beat AEW to the punch when it comes to signing the 24-year-old, Bey revealed that he signed a deal with Impact months before the reveal (Transcript courtesy of Fightful.com):
"I was just messing around when I did the thing with Cody, I tweeted him out the old picture I took with him the summer before. And then he responds to it, and it’s like ‘Okay, this is wild’...I would also be lying if I said that wasn’t the plan, anything that I put out there into the universe that’s the plan. When I put the picture up with him, I expected him to see it, I didn’t expect a response and I didn’t expect the things that came after that. I didn’t expect for him later that night to follow me on Twitter, and then every now and then to go back and forth with me on Twitter. But while all that was happening, to the public eye, they were all seeing me talk with Cody, I never talked with anybody at AEW.
During this time, Bey was already in deep talks with Impact and the new X-Division star confirms that he signed the deal before Rhodes made it known that he was interested in signing the Virginia native:
“While all that was happening on Twitter, me and Impact were having the conversations, they were talking about how they were gonna bring me on....I remember that morning, I’d sign that deal with IMPACT, if I am being honest, I had signed it two months before this. So two months before the announcement, I was already signed.
So the whole time while they had the sign Chris Bey hashtag and stuff, I was already signed. I was just riding the wave. I remember waking up and seeing people tweet that Cody was talking about me, I remember checking my phone and I had seen a lot posts about it cause it had happened maybe thirty minutes before I woke up… shortly after I see it, I find the clip and I listen to it and I remember thinking 'maybe if this conversation would have happened,' and then he {Cody} dm’d me and asks me to text him, so I shot him a text message and he asks me if I had signed anywhere and I told him I did, and he just congratulated me and told me we’d see each other down the line…. Right after that and maybe a couple hours later the news dropped...
So the internet took it and spun their narrative on it about me signing with IMPACT right under AEW’s nose and all sort of stuff. But the reality was IMPACT talked to me first, they gave me all the opportunities throughout the last year and a half and I have to bring my story full circle."