There’s even more drama between Andrade and Sammy Guevara to report, this time resulting in the second backstage fight in AEW over the last 31 days.
According to both TMZ and Fightful Select, there was an altercation backstage on Wednesday prior to the tapings beginning in Washington, D.C. Both outlets report that after some arguing, Guevara pushed Andrade. TMZ’s reporting then notes that there were “punches” thrown, while Fightful Select notes that Andrade fired a punch at Guevara following the push, though its unknown at the moment whether the punch connected.
(Update: On Thursday morning, Fightful Select updated their reporting on the fight and noted that it is now believed that Andrade was the aggressor and Guevara even pushing Andrade is not a confirmed fact. On Wednesday night’s Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez noted that Guevara was trying to avoid fighting. One source indicated Guevara may have pushed Andrade after he was spun around by Andrade, but that wasn’t confirmed. They report that Andrade got two punches in before things were split up.)
As reported earlier on Wednesday, Andrade was removed from Wednesday night’s AEW Rampage tapings where he was supposed to work against Dark Order’s 10 in a career vs. mask match. 10 has been booked in a different match instead while Andrade was sent home. Guevara was allowed to stay at the tapings and was booked for the main event of Dynamite.
Both Fightful and TMZ are adamant that this story is not a work and that it was a very real altercation.
Following the fight, Andrade took to his social media and posted a graphic that reads “respect me and i’ll respect u.”
Guevara and Andrade have been going after each other on social media and in interviews over the last week. Numerous sources in AEW noted that if it was a work, it wouldn’t be a very good one to be doing as it paints the locker room in a bad light following the fight between Kenny Omega, Nick Jackson, Matt Jackson, CM Punk, and Ace Steel after AEW All Out last month.
Several at AEW have noted that the locker room has been more harmonious in recent weeks following some backstage meetings that involved Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, and Bryan Danielson speaking up about getting everyone on the same page. The current situation between Guevara and Andrade is seen as especially disrespectful to those three because of how they have tried to pull everyone together.
SEScoops will provide updates as this situation continues to develop.