Swerve Strickland talks AEW's boundary-pushing mentality ahead of UBS Arena showcase
Swerve Strickland will be in action when AEW visits UBS Arena. Credit: All Elite Wrestling
All Elite Wrestling world heavyweight champion Shane "Swerve" Strickland believes fans will be in for the unexpected when AEW comes to UBS Arena on June 30 for its “Forbidden Door” pay per view event.
But it will be difficult to top the kind “unexpected” moment fans witnessed at AEW’s last pay per view event, when one wrestler attacked another with a flame thrower.
“It’s one of those things where, you kind of have to be here to really understand and see what AEW is all about. You can’t really predict something like that,” Strickland said in an interview, looking back on the viral moment when Darby Allen set Jack Perry’s legs aflame at last month’s "Double or Nothing" event. “There’s something that happens at every pay per view that wouldn’t be in your Bingo card.”
While the choreographed stunt created a lot of buzz for AEW, it also drew some criticism because of its seemingly high risk. Although Strickland wasn’t involved in the match, he defended his company’s decision to air the controversial scene.
“As long as it’s professional and it’s being handled the right way, I don’t see an issue with it,” who noted that “a lot of risk was taken” during pro wrestling’s late 90s boon period, known as the “Attitude Era.”
“They would push the boundaries. I feel like it’s a different climate right now about safety and pushing boundaries on television in the world today. A lot of people are a little more cautious about things. I feel like, at AEW, we’re always going to get the reaction first, and then the emotional tie-in later . . . They’re going to react and say what’s on their mind, ‘Yada, yada, yada’ online. And the later on they’ll be like, ‘You know what? I did have fun. I didn't expect that.’ And as long as I felt like if we provide something that they just don't expect, I feel like we're always going to be in a great position in wrestling world.”
Fans will have expectations — high ones — when Strickland defends his world title against international wrestling sensation Will Ospreay in the main event of Forbidden Door. Although many wrestling fans see Ospreay as the future face of AEW, Strickland says he sees the “Aerial Assassin” as a “little brother.”
“I've been wrestling him since he was about 19, 18-years-old when he was in the UK. I knew he was going to be something special before he even came to the States. I knew he had so much talent then . . . Now being here and on All Elite Wrestling in the United States, nationally televised product, it's only going to get even more scary for like a lot of the roster in the upcoming years. But I'm here to show them that there's still a lot to learn.”
Strickland has done a lot of learning for himself since being released from WWE’s developmental system in 2021 and signing with AEW the following year.
“From my time in NXT, I don't feel like I had enough time to really flourish and showcase who I truly could have become. So AEW gave me the time, gave me the resources, gave me the opportunity, gave me the TV time, gave me the opponents, gave me the story, gave me the matches—all to improve in a very short time.”
Strickland found early success in AEW in a tag team with Keith Lee. After the team broke up, fans have waited for two former partners to do battle. The match, once scheduled to take place at Nassau Coliseum in December, has been postponed numerous times.
Asked if the match may still come together, Strickland replied “that's a question that's above my head.
“I've always been available and ready,” said Strickland. “I'm not going to work towards it. I'm going to keep doing and push them forward doing bigger things. And we'll see what comes on. We'll see how things align.”
What’s already certain is that Strickland has made history as AEW’s first black world heavyweight champion—a distinction for which he feels “blessed and fortunate.”
Even Plainview native and former AEW world champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman, who has few kind words to say about anyone, called Strickland an “incredible” representative for minority communities.
“If you think about it, pro wrestling has been around for a very long time. And for a very long time, you never saw a person of color be the world champion, Five years of our company being around, and Shane Strickland was able to accomplish that,” Friedman, better known as MJF, said in a Newsday interview last week. “That’s incredible. He’s still a punk. But that’s still incredible.”
Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.