As AEW prepares for Revolution, the company's first Pay-Per-View of the 2023 calendar year, and the launch of AEW: All Access, a new reality show set to replace Power Slap: Road to the Title immediately following Dynamite on TBS, Britt Baker has been doing the rounds to drum up interest for the show.
Joining Barstool Sports' Rasslin‘ show, Baker was asked one of the go-to questions every AEW star gets when afforded a chance to speak openly about the promotion: what is your take on the CM Punk-Elite Brawl Out after last year's All Out? Though Baker let it be known that she didn't appreciate how fans handled it, in doing so, she put over the Young Bucks as “the foundation” of AEW.
“Probably everybody involved was somehow wrongly characterized,” Baker said via Fightful. “We weren't there, I wasn't there, you weren't there. That will be that. What I can say is that AEW is still a special place, and maybe that was a little wrinkle in the fabric, but we ironed it out, and we're still a super strong company and family.”
“People don't realize, without the Bucks being here, there is no AEW. The first person Tony Khan called was Matt Jackson. Then he got Nick Jackson, he got Kenny and Hangman, and eventually Cody (Rhodes). If you can watch AEW today and say, ‘I love AEW, but I want the Young Bucks out of there,' you're completely losing the whole point. The Young Bucks are literally the foundation before anybody else came in, and Kenny, of course. It's sad to see a lot of people, and I'm a little biased because I feel us originals are a unified family. I always want what's best for business, but I think with all people involved, you have to take everyone's mental health and their emotions into play. I hope people take that into consideration before they jump to Twitter and jump to conclusions and have to vocalize their opinion on everything in the world. When you're just reading these rumors about you, that people swear are true, but they're not true, it breathes venom inside you where all you want to do is burn it all down. The best and hardest thing you can do is take the high road. Very rarely do you regret taking the high road. It sucks, there are a lot of times I don't want to do it and times where I haven't, but it's my advice for everybody in the business. Please, take the high road.”
While most fans – and, to be fair, non-fans – point to Cody Rhodes as the catalyst of AEW's launch, as he was the public mastermind behind All In and was positioned as the company's top babyface when Dynamite launched in the fall of 2019, the Young Bucks were the first indie team to really drum up an organic army of supporters via their merch business and Being the Elite and helped to prove that there could be a viable alternative to WWE on national TV in the states. Even if some fans want to imagine a world where they aren't members of the promotion any longer – see Cornette, Jim – in reality, it's hard to imagine a world where AEW exists, period, if The Bucks and Omega opt to stay in New Japan.
Britt Baker believes The Elite need their flowers in AEW.
Discussing the matter of AEW's biggest black eye further, Baker stressed that she believes that division is the easiest way to split up a team and that AEW should instead band together as a strong unit. Without The Elite's decision to go “all in” with Tony Khan on launching AEW, the wrestling world, as Baker surmises, would be a worse place, and as a result, the trio deserve their flowers.
“The whole division, in any aspect, I hate,” Baker said. “The divide makes teams, there is this side and that side. We're all on the same team. When you have teams within a team, it gets messy and muddy. I think everybody in this company is a huge benefit for AEW. I think everybody involved in that is still a huge benefit for AEW, and they all truly love professional wrestling, and there is a lot of passion involved there. Everybody in AEW can probably say that they hate what happened, they wish it hadn't happened or happened differently, but you can't take that back. You can't go back in time, so let's move forward and be smart about things. Don't just spit out every random, stupid lie, rumor that you've heard. Really be smart now and try to prevent this shit from happening again. I feel bad for everybody involved, and I'm happy professional wrestling has moved on from that.”
“I felt like, for a second, all eyes were on us for the wrong reasons. They say, ‘no press is bad press,' whatever that stupid phrase is, I hate it. I'm so proud at how resilient AEW is. We are still a young company, and we have growing pains. Compared to what other wrestling companies have grown through, some might say it's super minor, who cares. For us, we want to smooth sailing, and we want to be very resilient. I'm really happy and proud of this company I work for. I'm super thankful for (Chris) Jericho, Cody, (Jon) Moxley, Kenny, Matt, and Nick for starting this awesome thing. When we first started AEW, Kenny, Matt, and Nick wore shirts that said ‘Change the World,' I think sometimes people need to remember that. It was truly their goal, to change the world, to change professional wrestling, and make it exciting and give people something to really look forward to. Those guys have helped so many people in the world of professional wrestling, and we won't even hear a fraction of it, but they have really helped this sport in a way that a lot of people won't understand, and I'm very thankful for them, and I know a lot of this locker room is too.”
Would there be a viable national alternative to WWE if AEW didn't exist? Would Khan have been able to put together a strong enough roster to keep the company going four years into the future had he instead opted to build the company around, say, Rhodes, Nick Aldis, and a few more non-Bullet Club members? It's impossible to know, but fortunately, fans won't have to imagine that world, as AEW is going strong, and it probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
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