Jade Cargill has taken the wrestling world by storm on AEW with her undefeated streak and her TBS Championship run. But things could’ve turned out differently when she tried out for WWE before joining AEW.
Jade has made a life for herself outside of wrestling, so it gave her an interesting perspective when she tried out with the WWE in 2019 at the Performance Center and she talked about it on “Talk is Jericho”.
Family matters
It went well and they wanted her, but according to her, she was told the WWE was “you family now” when the contract they offered would’ve affected her homelife.
She said that the WWE had mixed feelings because of her outside ties and success and that she didn’t need wrestling, and to keep things respectful she didn’t mention who she talked to. Special thanks to Wrestlingnews.com for the following quotes.
“He said, ‘Also you have a child?’ I said, ‘Yeah, you know, I do’, and they were like, ‘Well, what are you going to do?’, because at that time my daughter was two. I was like, ‘Well, thankfully, because I have money, we can pay a tutor to help tutor my child being that we have to relocate to Orlando. I can have a 24-hour nanny, but they were really grilling me about it in which I was kind of cut off. I was like, ‘Well, my spouse can travel with me wherever we go. This could be easy for me. I thought about all the precautions to this, like, I’ve been warned about traveling, I get it.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I get what you’re saying, but this is your family now. I want you to know that.’ I was like, ‘I get it. I totally understand that, but I’ve thought about it, and I want it. I’ve been training for this, this is what I want.’ They’re like, ‘Alright, well, we’ll see.’”
They also reported wanted her to cut all ties to the other companies she was working with for little gain.
“They wanted me to cut everything, and these were relationships that I’ve had previously, before I even thought about wrestling that were like five years, six, seven year contracts, that I just couldn’t say goodbye because what if they choose to cut me? What am I going to do after? I would have to crawl back to these companies and ask, ‘Can I have that contract back?’ That’s not professional and that’s not okay.
“I literally made more money for my sponsorships and things that I did online than my contract they were giving me. I was like, ‘This doesn’t make sense, guys. Like, I have a kid, so unless you guys are going to compensate me, or give me some more money up here.’ and they did. They gave way more than a normal person and way more than my friends that were already signed for about a year or two, but it wasn’t enough.”
AEW is comfortable
As they talked, Jade explained that when the WWE sent the contract AEW came into being and it felt more relaxed and she could talk to Tony Kahn and she wasn’t looked at as another number.
“So they sent the contract, they wanted me to do it. AEW came about and I came here, I got the experience, and I felt calm. I remember you (Chris Jericho) and I had this conversation in the car. It made me feel at ease about the decision that I wanted to make.
“I didn’t have to relocate. I felt at home. I could call the owner of our company and talk to him and he knew my name. He knew my purpose. He knew that I wanted to do this, and that mattered to me. I wasn’t just a number. I wasn’t just this person, like who was this person? He knew exactly who I was, so that made me feel comfortable, and yes, the other company was pissed off that they sent me this 100 page contract, but I made the best decision for my family, and I made the best decision for myself.”
There have been plenty of rumors about the WWE looking at their talent as numbers on a spreadsheet, and the releases over the last couple of years for budget reasons puts some validation behind that claim, especially given the type of talent they’ve let go.
In the end, we’re glad Jade made a decision that was in her and her family’s best interest and she’s proven herself in the ring and helped lift AEW to new heights.
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