Before he signed with AEW, Eddie Kingston was offered a contract by WWE. Bizarrely, WWE had no interest in Kingston as an active member of its roster. Instead, Kingston was offered a coaching role at the Performance Center in Orlando. Needless to say, he turned it down.
“I didn’t want to collect the paycheck I didn’t earn -- you know what I mean? Because I knew if I was there, if I was there, and I had that resentment of ‘I know I have ten more good years. I know I’m better than what, they’re not giving me a chance, let me go.'” Kingston said on the very first episode of Shane Strickland's SwerveCity Podcast. “If a football player or amateur wrestler walks in and the machine (WWE) is behind them all the way, and they want me to help him and teach him, I’m not going to. But if I do, if I do, I’m going to be a piece of s**t. Cause I’m going to be resentful of him.”
Basically, Eddie wasn't ready to quit wrestling full time because he was confident he still had some gas left in the tank -- a theory that has proven to be accurate thanks to his current AEW run.
“You guys are saying I’m done. You guys are saying I’m not good enough to be on your TV. That’s fine, but I’m not going to create stars for you” Kingston added.
As we reported in September of 2020, Eddie first revealed that WWE had shown an interest in his signature on an episode of Talk is Jericho. Kingston revealed that after wrestling Cody for the TNT title on Dynamite he received two calls. One from Christopher Daniels who offered him another AEW booking, which he accepted. The other was from “the competition.”
Kingston has fired shots at WWE a few times over the last year, which he says is all in the spirit of healthy competition. Kingston was given the job of sending the Daily's Place crowd home happy following the June 26 edition of Dynamite. After the show had gone off the air, Kingston entered the ring with a mic in his hand and praised his colleagues in the AEW locker room. In the same speech, Kingston criticized WWE and insinuated that its wrestlers are more concerned with money than with wrestling.
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