After launching as a clear alternative to WWE, where some of the top stars in the business could tell their own stories instead of being trapped in Vince McMahon's world, AEW has slowly but surely lost that reputation, with big stars like Penta, Malakai Black, Miro, and Ricky Starks either asking for their releases or returning to the company to work under WWE Hall of Famer Triple H.

For performers who aren't being pushed to the moon, this makes sense, but what about the younger guys who aren't being used or developed? Well, Brock Anderson broke that process down on K & S WrestleFest, breaking down his initial run in Tony Khan's company.

“About two years in, probably. Hindsight’s 20/20. It was a brand-new company. They’d only done a handful of TVs before COVID. Then they went into COVID. So in one sense, it was the best place for me to be because it wasn’t like I could be out on the indies; they weren’t running. So, at least, I was there. When I was there, Cody was there. We were at Jacksonville, at Daly’s Place. During the TV days, they would have all the young guys out there, and some of the boys [would be] watching, and they’d be like, ‘That was good, this was bad.’ In that respect, it was good,” Anderson explained via Fightful.

“Like I said, it was a newish company, and we were in the middle of a global pandemic. We didn’t know if we were going to develop a training center or any of that; it was early. You’re just like, okay, we’ll keep doing this and see what happens, [we’ll] see how they bring us along. Once we got out of the pandemic, we were rocking and rolling, it was just TVs, and that school never came. After doing those five-minute Universal matches, you can’t really get better doing that. It’s too short of a time; you don’t learn how to wrestle.”

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So why did Anderson opt to leave AEW? Well, after being offered a new deal, he rejected it, as he wanted to learn in the ring, not in occasional squash matches.

“After about a year and a half, I was like this is…it’s great, I loved everybody there, I appreciate the opportunity, Tony [Khan] and everybody. It’s just, where I was, I needed to be somewhere where I could actually get repetitions and learn the business,” Anderson noted. “They sent me another, they wanted to redo the current deal I was on, but it was not enough, so I was like maybe we just don’t do this and we go our separate ways. I think it was the best decision I’ve made. If I just stayed there and worked the five, six times a year that I was guaranteed, I would never have the mentor I have sitting to my left [CW Anderson] and all the knowledge I’ve soaked up in that short amount of time.”

In AEW, Anderson wrestled 38 matches over from June of 2021 through August of 2023. Since August of 2023, he's wrestled 22 matches, so hey, if it's working for him, why not keep it going?