Aiden English was among the Superstars released by WWE in their COVID-19 cost-cutting measures, and in a recent chat with Chris Van Vliet, the "Drama King" talked about the "darker" path he hoped to take his character in.
"That’s one of the things I wish I would have gotten more of an opportunity with and to be fair it’s something I wish I would have fought harder for," he explained. "I had ideas for sure about ways I wanted to take that character and stuff. I had established the ‘Drama King’ and everything but I wanted to make it a little bit more…everyone is always talking about being like ‘darker’ and ‘more serious’ and like I think that’s lazy, but I wanted to flesh it out and wanted to be a little bit more threatening."
He went on to elaborate on that point, by explaining that his hope to portray an unhinged version of his Aiden English persona. "I wanted it to be a little bit more maybe screwloose? Something that would have been more intriguing. But my big thing was I wanted to be a tortured artist. Someone who couldn’t stand the fact that his ultimate masterpiece wasn’t realised or whatever. It could never be realised and then driven mad by that kind of thing."
Ultimately, it sounds like his biggest regret was not taking those ideas to WWE management. "I had all these ideas for vignettes and I pushed them to some people. But as often happens you know it’s a constantly moving thing and it falls on deaf ears. or people who were too scared to pitch it themselves. So that’s what I wish I would have done. I wish people would have listened to me, but I also wish I would have taken a little bit more initiative to go to the top brass. So that’s one lesson that I took away from that."
Ultimately, it seems English is another Superstar overlooked by WWE, but he'll no doubt be able to make an impact on the independent scene (where it's likely he could cross paths with his old friend Rusev). For now, these released wrestlers remain under 90-day no-compete clauses, so it's too soon to say where they'll end up.
Do you wish we'd seen his "tortured artist" persona on RAW or SmackDown?