AEW has been scrutinized for the high number of free agents they’ve signed over the past year. Some people have questioned if the AEW roster is too large, but Cash Wheeler of FTR says that’s nonsense.
FTR, the reigning Ring of Honor and AAA tag team champions, recently spoke with the Dallas Morning News and defended the growing number of performers on Tony Khan’s payroll.
According to Cash Wheeler, AEW is still in its infancy and should sign the most talented performers they can. Khan also just purchased Ring of Honor and now has two rosters to fill.
“When AEW started, they had to build from scratch,” said Wheeler. “And you don’t know who’s going to work on TV, who’s not going to work on TV, who the fans will accept and who they won’t.
“So, you’ve got to just sign everybody and hope after a couple years you’ve kind of got a better read on everything – what’s established, what isn’t.”
Wheeler added that you can’t plan for huge names to become free agents. If people like Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, Jeff Hardy and Samoa Joe become available, you sign them and have time to figure everything out.
“You can’t plan for things that are completely unexpected. So, some of these names that became available to him, he never could have foresaw that coming. None of us could. So, when it was available, he would be a terrible businessman to not pursue that because it’s going to make his company better. And it’s going to make his talent better because now they have another brain to pick.”
Wheeler added that AEW has a lot of young talent on the roster and they don’t need to be on television every single week. They should be working independent shows and developing their characters before they’re on national TV week after week.
There’s much more to this interview, which you can check out at DallasNews.com.