When news broke that former two-time New Japan Pro Wrestling Strong Openweight Tag Team Champions Aussie Open had signed with AEW, it turned more than a few heads around the professional wrestling world.

Sure, Kyle Fletcher and Mark Davis had wrestled in the promotion in the past, working alongside Will Ospreay around Forbidden Door I, but the duo were two of the most important members of the “Commonwealth Kingpin's” United Empire faction, providing support and title wins of their own alongside Great-O-Khan, TJP,  Jeff Cobb, Francesco Akira, Gideon Grey, Dan Moloney, and Aaron Henare. Why did the faction opt against signing with New Japan and instead go to AEW?

Well, as it turns out, the answer was simple: After committing to work for New Japan Pro Wrestling over an offer from WWE to join NXT, the mishandling of Davis' knee injury earlier this year led to a contract with Tony Khan's company, as the duo noted on Talk Is Jericho with Chris Jericho.

“We hit a point and hit a threshold where, we put the time in, we waited and committed to New Japan, we had offers from WWE to do NXT and NXT UK, that we refused, because we wanted to commit to doing New Japan, and it was a difficult struggle. In May, Dontaku tour, we were the IWGP Tag Team Champions, we were the New Japan Strong Tag Team Champions, and it's the last day of the tour we're wrestling TMDK, and the night before, House of Torture stole our titles, and we run to the ring to get them back. I duck a clothesline, kick them in the crotch, I roll out, and my knee just felt off. ‘My knee is done.' We did this tag match, six-man tag, eight to ten minutes, and it doesn't feel good. I had issues with it post-ACL tear, post return to wrestling, I had it checked, I know my meniscus is torn and is causing me issues. I'm fairly confident that's what it is. I talk to the trainer at New Japan, ‘My knee isn't okay. I can't straighten, I can't bend it, it's locking, I'm in pain, I'm pretty sure it's my meniscus.' He looked at it, worked it over, ‘it's your IT band. It's your hip. You have a tight hip. Maybe tomorrow it's okay.' He gave me a compression bandage and some heat patches. ‘It's okay tomorrow,'” Mark Davis told Chris Jericho via Fightful.

“Tomorrow included a 17 hour travel day to America, on a flight I couldn't upgrade. It was a very frustrating 48 hour period, and upon coming to America, there was a Ring of Honor taping we were supposed to be involved in. We got there and I was like, ‘I don't think I can wrestle, I need to get my knee looked at.' The trainers looked at it, ‘It's you're meniscus.' ‘That's what I thought it was.' It's a thing I expected to happen, it was a frustrating point in time because we were tag champions. I was in Orlando, I passed Tony [Tony Khan] in the hallway, ‘Come and talk to me.' He sorted it. He got my knee fixed. He didn't have to.”

This assistance in getting Davis surgery, in addition to AEW's pre-existing relationship with New Japan, ultimately convinced the duo to become #AllElite, but did they ever actually consider taking WWE up on their offer? Fortunately, Jericho asked that question too, and the answer was fascinating for more reasons than one.

It sounds like WWE didn't fight AEW hard to sign Aussie Open.

So, with one of the best tag teams in professional wrestling available to sign wherever they'd like, how close did WWE come to locking the duo up on long-term contracts in NXT when AEW was interested?

Well, according to Aussie Open, the answer is somewhat surprising.

“The first time we spoke to them was 2019. It was when we were just gearing up for World Tag League,” Mark Fletcher noted. “It was for a NXT UK deal. We were like, ‘We want to do this New Japan thing, maybe we can revisit it after that.' That's how it was left. The injury happens, COVID happens, the next time we spoke to them was this year when we talked to New Japan, they were saying ‘wait' and we put feelers out everywhere, and we had a little bit of a conversation. It didn't get too deep, but there was interest there. The best situation was for us here. The talks didn't get super deep.”

Is it surprising that WWE showed very little interest in signing Aussie Open? Sure; despite being a relatively young tag team in terms of career longevity, the duo already have two five-star matches and counting from Dave Meltzer on their resume. Then again, considering how WWE books tag teams, maybe the idea of adding another group just didn't make sense to the NXT roster if they weren't going to push the division particularly hard. Their loss, however, is the rest of professional wrestling's gain, as AEW has already put the duo on the All In card and could be in store for even more.