6 Promising Wrestling Talents RUINED By Backstage Politics

When AEW launched, it did so with an unprecedented and unique opportunity: fans were able to follow the mainstream careers of virtual unknowns from day one. 

This held enormous potential. In English football, fans chant “He’s one of our own” at local, academy-produced players. This was roughly the wrestling equivalent: the chance to watch a talent develop and become the best version of themselves, and feeling a weird sense of both pride and the vindication of spotting that talent early. 

Jungle Boy was ideal for this. An exciting worker with a wholesome quality and sympathetic backstory, while the gimmick predated the promotion, his ring name alone was perfect for this arc: he was going to headline AEW one day as a man. Nobody wanted to acknowledge, however, that this process is always preceded by awkward adolescence. 

He got very over initially, The rough outline was stencilled in perfectly. World Tag Team title wins. Tony Khan’s investment in his ‘Tarzan Boy’ theme, a strong cue that your support was going to be worth it. A storyline association with Christian Cage that was always going to mutate into his breakthrough blood feud. Though this was delayed, which didn’t help, Jungle Boy avenging Cage’s despicable psychological torture at Revolution 2023 was fantastic. This was meant to be Perry’s first step into the main event. It might have been his career peak. 

Perry could not shake his PWG sensibilities throughout his feud with fellow ‘Four Pillars’ MJF, Sammy Guevara, and Darby Allin. A heel turn, usually such a reliable means of reheating a cold wrestler, did not work. Perry seemed to learn nothing from his storyline mentor Cage, nor real-life mentors the Young Bucks, about how to work as an undersized heel: Perry too often tried to control his opponents rather than scarper and stooge. All of which is to state that Perry might not have made it to the main event, even if he did not engage in a career-defining shoot feud with CM Punk - but he was inextricably associated with the man forever after August 2023. 

Overshadowing the inaugural All In: London, Perry blasted HOOK against a car windshield and said “That’s real glass: go cry me a river”. Punk confronted and attempted to choke out Perry backstage in response. This was because Punk - who might have responded disproportionately through his hatred of the Bucks - had admonished Perry for his pitch to use real glass in a heat angle with HOOK on Collision. 

Did Jack Perry do anything that was enormously wrong? Did Jack Perry threaten to tarnish the pure wrestling sanctity of Collision with the idea - which was not remotely dissimilar to the type of thing Punk’s mate Darby Allin is almost defined by? 

Perry’s conduct at Wembley Stadium, while totally unprofessional, could be rationalised and forgiven. It was his first reported transgression. Also, he was hardly the first AEW wrestler to crack a real jibe on TV. Hangan Page beat him to it by a full year; Punk himself weeks before All In had buried Page in an off-air Collision segment that Punk knew full well was going to get captured on a smart phone. 

Perry was suspended, and when he returned in the spring of 2024, he did so under the guise of the ‘Scapegoat’. This was an attempt to capitalise on his notoriety, but he was resented in a counterproductive way. AEW was haunted by Punk; Perry’s character was a weekly reminder that things had gone to sh*t, and that escapism was impossible. 

By late 2025, Perry had turned babyface and reverted to his old persona. He was in far better form, and the highlight of the awesome Mile High Madness 10-man tag on the February 25 Dynamite - but it wasn’t the same. It always feels like Perry should have grown up by now. 

He’ll always be the guy who said that thing on that show, fairly or otherwise.