Interview: Swerve Strickland Is on The Hunt for The AEW World Title Going Into ‘Big Business’
The pace is picking up within the professional wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling these days, and folks around the New England region have the opportunity to experience it for themselves on March 13. That’s when the special edition of AEW Dynamite known as “Big Business” is going to be happening at the TD Garden on 100 Legends Way in Boston starting at 8pm. A ton of great matches will be taking place, including a colossal encounter for the AEW World Championship between the titleholder Samoa Joe and challenger Wardlow, who is part of the new super faction the Undisputed Kingdom. One man who is going to be waiting in the wings after that match concludes is Swerve Strickland. His following has been growing a ton over the past few months with his intriguing persona and way of competing in the ring being the reasons why.
We had a talk ahead of the upcoming evening about his title match at AEW’s most recent pay-per-view, his unique move set and once again making a claim to the World Championship.
At Revolution, you had a hell of a battle with “Hangman” Adam Page and Samoa Joe for Joe’s AEW World Championship that Joe ended up retaining. To reflect on the match, have you been thinking about what you could have done differently, are you using this experience as fuel for future title shot opportunities or is it a little bit of both?
A little bit of both. I’m always thinking of things that I could have done better, differently or improved upon. One of my biggest things I would say I took away from that match was I kept my eye on Hangman a bit too much. That’s honestly what cost me certain victory, but that’s also the man who I’ve defeated twice, so I chose to focus on the devil that I know rather than the devil that I don’t know, which was Samoa Joe. That’s what ended up costing me, taking my eye off the champion in the end.
For me, it’s always the fact that a loss always catapults me to go further than I had before. Not reaching goals is what inspires me to reach my goals in the end.
That’s a really good mindset to have. With “Hangman” Adam Page, you guys have developed quite the rivalry over the past few months. Do you figure that for your career, this is going to be something that’s going to be weaving in and out constantly where you’re always going to find yourself running into Adam going forward?
100%. I think I’ve gotten to that man in a way that no other wrestler, not only in AEW but in his entire career whether in New Japan or Ring of Honor, has before and it’s going to stick with him for the rest of his life. Even when he looks at his children, he’s going to see and feel my looming presence over them because of what I’ve done to him. He’s going to look at me completely different every time we’re in AEW, whenever we may cross paths or when we’re not. Just knowing that my existence is somewhere on the show in an important way and in an important form, it’s always going to eat at him and bother him.
It’s always something that we’re going to have together.
Yeah, I can see you and him locking up a ton of times over the next few years. Throughout your career, you’ve been praised for having a unique move set with the Swerve Stomp from the top rope, the House Call kick to the side of the face and the JML Driver being your signature maneuvers. Is there any sort of inspiration for your offensive approach to pro wrestling or is it more of a thing where you’ve been using your imagination to set yourself apart from other wrestlers?
To be honest, it’s the inspiration from other wrestlers that’s kind of helped me groom that. Coming up, I was on the road, and I was on mid-card to undercard matches underneath guys like Johnny Gargano, Drew Gulak, Ricochet, Sami Callihan and even Matt Riddle. These guys helped groom and place me in positions where I was like “Oh, ok. This is the new style”. I had never seen this before and it educated me and it taught me, so for a while I was borrowing these unique techniques, maneuvers and grapplings from them. Even Jonathan Gresham and Zack Sabre Jr., those guys are super unique in the way they are. I had adapted and worked with them and learned and molded myself to a point where I started taking the maneuvers and the movements while crafting my own imagination and making something new.
Then it had gotten to a point where I wasn’t even watching wrestling. I just needed to come up with something really new and organic that came from my imagination that didn’t have any influence from anybody else at all. That’s really where I’ve gotten a lot of my maneuvers, my movements and the way that I go from spot to spot to spot to move to move to move to placement to placement to placement. Then I started adding some of my old military combatives to make it feel more combatant, more brutal and a little bit more aggressive, as it should be. It just feels a little rough in certain areas and I like that aspect of me.
Over the past few months, fans all over have been supporting you more and more and cheering you everywhere you go, but it’s been happening in a peculiar way due to you not changing your persona or who you are as a wrestler. With this being said, what are your thoughts on the crowd reactions you’ve been getting lately?
I feel like they see something authentic and something new, unique and organic. It’s relative, I think it’s something that they can relate to and when people can relate to something, they begin to enjoy it. It’s not me changing up anything I usually do; I just feel like there’s an organic vibe to me because I truly just give myself a lot of who I am. There’s a lot of vulnerability to who I am and I kind of play it up a little bit more on camera and in the arenas. Not to mention the music and [Prince] Nana and their influences on that, it’s all a presentation and it’s all a team that comes together to create what Swerve is and what the Mogul Embassy is.
It’s a team, it’s not just me and all my ideas. Somebody has to understand the idea, and somebody has to present it in the world of pro wrestling for the world of television, production and presentation that mass amounts of people can understand. I need help with that, Nana needs help with that and AEW has been the best place to truly understand what Swerve is and what I’m all about while blowing it up in a bigger way. Like I said, it’s a team effort to make that thing go.
It’s cool to see that. How has it been working with Prince Nana as part of the Mogul Embassy? Would you say he’s your manager or is he more like your associate?
He feels like a confidant to me, that’s the best way to put it. I come to him for business advice and wrestling advice because the man has been in the business for over 20 years. For me to not come to him for advice, to see things from an honest perspective and to hear things from him that I may not like, I kind of need to know those things anyway. Those truths are probably not going to make me feel good, but I need to know these things and hear them to be the best performer that I can be, and he wants that from me. He’s honest, he’s not two-faced and he’s very straightforward with me. He’s also entertaining and funny, I’ve looked up to this man and I’ve watched his tapes for years from those old Ring of Honor days, I studied the entire product.
For me to be coming around these many years later, I would have never imagined working with this man. He’s said the same thing that never in a million years he’d thought he’d be working with me because not that he wouldn’t, he just didn’t see the stars aligning in that way. He’s always been a fan of my work and I’ve always been a student of the game when it came to him.
It’s great that you have this camaraderie. Do you ever find yourself having to keep from laughing when Nana does his dance while you’re trying to focus on a match?
Nah, I haven’t been in that position yet. There’s might have been one time during Rampage where I faced off against Matt Sydal. I was getting in the ring, and he might have flicked the rope by accident so I almost tripped. I looked at him saying “You almost made me trip into the ring, you know that right?” and he said, “I know, my bad.” When you watch it now, our conversation was off camera, but we were both laughing about it.
What are your thoughts going into “Big Business” this Wednesday? From last week, it looks like you still have your eyes on the AEW World Championship.
I haven’t been beaten by Samoa Joe; I just didn’t win [at Revolution], so I still have a major claim to be the number one contender. I feel like there’s a lot of people who feel like they do too, and that’s good for them, but I’m focused on one thing and one thing only. Now that I don’t have “Hangman” Page in my way at this moment anymore, I really feel like I’m wide open. I really do, so “Big Business” really feels like the perfect place to make a claim to the World Title once again.
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