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Bobby Fish hasn't been a member of AEW since August 31st, 2022, when his contract wasn't renewed by Tony Khan. Since then, he's worked some matches for Impact, tried his hand at boxing in a bizarre bout with commentary from Sammy Guevara, and just generally tried to keep busy with his podcast, The Undisputed Podcast, and other opportunities until his pals, Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly, were ready to wrestle for Khan once more.
After coming out of the gates hot, with reDRagon challenging for the AEW Tag Team Championships on multiple occasions, Fish saw his opportunities dry up when his pals went on the shelf, a matter made no less extreme by his comments about CM Punk in his post-run tell-alls. Speaking with Lars Frederiksen and Dennis Farrell of Fightful's The Wrestling Perspective podcast, Fish was asked if there were any missed opportunities during his AEW run that he wished would have been addressed, and needless to say, “The Infamous One” felt there was “plenty of money left on the table.”
“I feel like with AEW, especially with Adam and Kyle, once we were there and history that we had with let's say like the Bucks and you could even roll, like, the Briscoes, there was a lot of money on the table that I hoped we would visit, and things just didn't go that way,” Fish said.
Asked if he believes a reunion could be made when O'Reilly returns down the line, Fish sounded optimistic.
“I think in a lot of fans’ eyes, that’s the version of him(Kyle) and I, for lack of a better term reDRagon or Undisputed Era, whatever you want to call it, that people, there are people that enjoy that quite a bit,” Fish said. “I don’t have a crystal ball obviously and what I’ve learned in the business, especially in the last few years is, like, ‘man, anything is possible,’ you know? I mean, I didn’t expect necessarily my release from NXT, and then I didn’t necessarily expect the AEW thing to come about and even in the fashion that it did, it was really kind of neat the way Tony brought me in and that was different and kind of neat.”
“So, yeah, it was attached to, like, a tweet and uh Sammy Guevara had just won one of the titles there (The TNT Championshp) and I was not affiliated with the company at the moment and so I tweeted something and then that was kind of how it came to be and then I came in through what I believe they were calling The Forbidden Door and yeah, it was just kind of an outside-the-box sort of way to debut and I was down for that like, that was, anything different and the varying degrees of success that the Forbidden Door thing has been but it’s all subjective, so anytime that you’re gonna do something that’s different um, yeah, I’m up for at least trying it and that I thought was really cool or neat.”
After making such an interesting debut in AEW, it really is a shame that reDRagon and The Undisputed Elite never got to take part in a sort of “Elite Civil War” with Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks or against “The Hung Bucks” with Cole's main on-roster rival, “Hangman” Adam Page.
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Bobby Fish wished AEW ran their version of the Crockett Cup
Asked later in the podcast by Frederiksen about any other opportunities that he felt weren't fully seen through during his AEW run, Fish laid out his vision for a sort of Owen Hart Cup but for Tag Teams that could have helped to decide on the top in-ring duo in AEW without the restraints of the tag team belts. His response, though obviously unrealized, would have been incredible.
“As far as the vision, I really felt like there was room in that AEW run for a Crocket Cup-style Pay-Per-View and I think that team wrestling is so overlooked that I believe fans would have really enjoyed the difference, the juxtaposition, if you will, it would have been to have a tag team main event, a tag team tournament,” Fish said. “And I really think that we had such a variety of teams like the ones that you names and there’s more, there’s Trent (Beretta) and Rocky (Romero), Trent and Dustin (Chuck Taylor), whatever combination you want to put together with those guys, Butcher, and The Blade, yeah, I mean, the list goes on and on. I mean yeah, I really feel like that was money kind of left on the table and it’s unfortunate so, so I do feel like that, um, I would have liked to see that come through a little bit better than it did. But, you know, who knows, maybe another time.”
Now, as long-time AEW fans may recall, Dynamite technically started with a tag team tournament to decide on the inaugural AEW World Tag Team Championships. While many of AEW's top tag teams weren't in the company when that tournament was run – and the Young Bucks were famously defeated in the first round by the now barely utilized tag team of Private Party – and there hasn't been a meaningful way for teams to test the mettle ever since, the prospects of throwing all of those in-ring performers into a set of brackets to see who reigns supreme really is “money left on the table.” *sigh* oh well, as Fish said, maybe during his next run.
