Four Talents Leave AEW

These four names have had their AEW exists confirmed.

by Andrew Pollard
Paige VanZant
AEW

While we already knew about three of them, four names have now had their AEW exit confirmed.

As picked up on by PWInsider, Arn Anderson, Mark Henry, Jake Hager, and Paige VanZant have all been removed from the official AEW roster page.

In the case of Anderson and Henry, they'd both announced their respective AEW exists ahead of time; Double A on his ARN podcast, the World's Strongest Man during one of his regular Busted Open Radio appearances. For Hager, it was reported last week that he and AEW had mutually decided to part ways once his existing AEW expired.

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Paige VanZant is somewhat of a strange one, as certain sources noted earlier in the year that she was no longer with AEW, yet the former MMA fighter was still listed as a member of the roster. Typically, AEW promptly removes a talent from its roster page once they've left the company.

For VanZant, she only made a handful of appearances for AEW, wrestled one match - teaming with Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky to defeat Tay Melo, Sammy Guevara, and Frankie Kazarian at Double or Nothing 2022 - and hasn't been seen on AEW programming for over two years.

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While previous reports suggest Paige VanZant no longer has any interest in becoming a wrestler, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for Arn Anderson, Mark Henry, and Jake Hager. Henry's previously stated how he wants to focus on TheMarkHenry.com for now, but that he's not done with the wrestling business. Given how he played a huge role in discovering talents like Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill, the WWE Hall of Famer would surely be a no-brainer pick-up for any promotion's scouting or development plans. Where Arn is concerned, Cody Rhodes recently made some interesting comments about how he feels he might need an on-screen manager, with that obviously a role the Enforcer filled nicely during Cody's time with AEW.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.