AJ Francis is calling TNA home for the foreseeable future.
This past weekend, Sean Ross Sapp revealed that AJ Francis was backstage at World’s End talking to Tony Khan. Now the nature of the conversation was never revealed, though it would’ve been surprising if the former WWE star didn’t bring up coming over to AEW. It was reported a while back that the 34-year-old’s contract was set to expire in early January.
However, Sports Illustrated revealed that Francis has opted to re-sign with TNA Wrestling. The promotion did help rehabilitate his image as Francis’ name didn’t have much value when he was released from WWE again in 2023. The former NFL player stepped his game up and improved vastly while working for TNA.
Francis expressed gratitude towards the promotion taking a chance on him, which was a big reason why he re-signed with TNA, “TNA has taken care of me over the last year. A year ago, I wasn't the most sought after free agent. A year ago, people thought I wasn't going to wrestle anymore. A year ago, people thought that my wrestling career might be done. And a year ago, TNA took me in for their very first show, Hard To Kill in (Las) Vegas. That was the very first night that I interacted with Joe Hendry. One year later, Joe Hendry's the biggest star in wrestling. He can still send me a box of cigars for that whenever he wants," said Francis
He continued, "It's been a blessing with the fact that TNA has done so much for me in the last year. Obviously, this is a business. It's not called the wrestling friendship. It's called the wrestling business. I always wanted to go back to TNA. Even though over the past week, I've made it clear that I could go anywhere. There were feelers out for me potentially going over to AEW, maybe going back to NXT because I never really got a run in NXT, maybe go back to SmackDown. Obviously going to Netflix for Raw would have been cool too. But there was a lot of options out on the table for me. TNA just feels like the best place for me. TNA has always since the day that I got there changed people's perception of me. My last match in TNA was for the TNA World Title, an absolute banger of a match in the main event of Final Resolution against Nic Nemeth."
It’ll be fun to see where Francis goes next in TNA.