10 Wrestlers AEW Let Slip Through Their Fingers
7. Cain Velasquez
As one of the longest-reigning and most dominant UFC Heavyweight champions of all-time, Cain Velasquez was expected to be highly sought once he officially transitioned into wrestling in 2019.
His stock skyrocketed after he impressed the masses with a myriad of moves in his AAA debut last March. Despite that being his only in-ring appearance for the company (and it being a six-man tag team match), rumors ran rampant in the fall that both WWE and AEW were aggressively trying to sign him and secure his star power.
Instead of becoming the AEW equivalent to Brock Lesnar and being brought in for Dynamite's debut (which was heavily rumored), Velasquez instead chose to make the jump to WWE and feud with his foe from nearly a decade earlier. WWE scored major mainstream attention from his arrival on SmackDown's Fox premiere, but it was all downhill from there for him.
He hasn't been seen since losing to Lesnar in a matter of minutes at Crown Jewel, though one can only assume he would have been booked a lot better had he wound up in AEW.
No offense to Jake Hager, but why did AEW settle for a mildly successful MMA fighter when they could have had the real deal in Velasquez?