WWE's Take On Jack Perry Re-Signing With AEW (WWE News)
Did the market leader have an eye on the former Jungle Boy before he elected to re-sign with AEW?
CM Punk and Jack Perry bringing their security camera scuffles to Raw and SmackDown wasn't ever really a proposition, according to WrestleVotes on Fightful Select.
Perry's pro wrestling future had been the subject of some scuttlebutt over the past few weeks following several updates that suggested he was yet to re-sign with All Elite Wrestling, even after all deadlines had seemingly passed. He'd wrestled for the company as recently as 24th June, working Zack Sabre Jr on Dynamite, but the contest was appearing more and more like a swan-song until the 8th July, when a segment on the flagship confirmed that he had indeed re-inked with the challenger brand.
Was Perry the subject of a bidding war during that time? WWE say no, so say the above source. Per the WrestleVotes report, "on the WWE front, there were little to no discussions about the possibility of pursuing Perry in the case that he entered free agency...Sources indicate that there was never much of an appetite to bring Perry into the company. The prevailing feeling was that he didn't fit in WWE's current landscape and was never viewed as a realistic target".
It's hard to assess what specifically classifies as "fitting into WWE's current landscape", though as an extremely familiar face to anybody who's watched both American majors over the past few years, Perry's jump itself - the move sold as a big deal when made by the likes of Jade Cargill, Ethan Page, Ricky Saints and most notably Cody Rhodes - may have grabbed the biggest of all possible headlines. Based on every time a wrestler has referenced it in a promo to crickets on live television, his prior issues with Punk may have needed more fleshing out if they were to be monetised.
As is, the former AEW TNT and Tag Team Champion said during a taped promo on Wednesday that his next goal post-new deal was to become AEW World Champion - a belt that, perhaps not coincidentally, just happened to change hands on that very same episode.