AEW Locker Room Not In Disarray, New Leaders Emerge Following Recent Chaos

Chris Jericho, Bryan Danielson, and Jon Moxley have emerged as locker-room leaders in All Elite Wrestling following recent backstage chaos.

This is according to PWTorch's Wade Keller, who has effectively corroborated Jericho's prior claims that Danielson and Moxley had stepped up as AEW's "team captains" lately. The trio are understood to have led a backstage meeting following the mayhem of All Out 2022, where CM Punk and Ace Steel brawled with The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, creating a leadership void where once the suspended Elite once sat.

Said Keller (h/t WrestlingNews.co):-

"One thing that I am hearing from people I talk to in AEW, active wrestlers and otherwise, is that one good thing that came out of this Punk, Kenny, Bucks situation is that the leadership void or the leadership slots have been firmly filled by Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, and Bryan Danielson. None of the three is a perfect leader. But the three collectively are stabilizing to that locker room. And I'm not going to do a long thing about the shortcomings of each of them as leaders."

Controversy engulfed AEW following the Punk/Elite fight, which was sparked by Punk's confrontational comments at the post-All Out press scrum on 4 September, when AEW's EVPs, 'Hangman' Adam Page, and more came into his firing line.

Keller noted that while Danielson, Moxley, and Jericho might not be perfect leaders, AEW isn't in "disarray" at the moment, with the company's situation not as dire as headlines suggest:-

"Like I said, not one of them is the perfect leader for this moment in time in that locker room. But all three are good leaders. And collectively, they can help steer the ship. This locker room and AEW is not in disarray. And I've been reporting this too the last couple of months even before the Punk thing. I was told it's not as bad as the headlines make it seem."

Wade acknowledged, however, that specific issues between certain groups of people remain, referencing situations between Britt Baker and Thunder Rosa, Sammy Guevara and Andrade El Idolo, and more:-

"You have what's going on with Britt Baker's camp and Thunder Rosa's camp. You have Sammy Guevara being immature and a lightning rod for controversy and making bad decisions. People like Sammy, but they groan at Sammy's decision-making. You had Andrade doing what he did for whatever purposes he did it. Maybe he wanted to be part of Legado Del Fantasma and he was trying to play that card. Maybe not. Maybe he just got irritated by Sammy and needed to do what he did. But whatever that was, that was another incident, and then also the Sammy and Eddie Kingston thing, of course. And you had the MJF controversy. And then you had the Punk, Kenny, Bucks thing. The Thunder Rosa-Britt Baker thing is not solved. I don't know how the Sammy situation will be addressed going forward. But I think there's been two high profile situations with Sammy that its sort of like two strikes. So I think he's going to have to grow up and mature a little bit. And I think there's going to be some leadership steering him in that direction now."

El Idolo has not been seen in AEW since reportedly attacking Guevara in what some perceived as an attempt to get himself fired from the promotion a few weeks ago. Kingston has served a short suspension for a backstage confrontation with Sammy prior to this, while the All Out brawlers remain off television and suspended.