Jake Hager enjoyed the people inside the AEW locker room, but he wasn’t nearly as impressed with the politics surrounding them.
During a conversation on the Off the Rails podcast with Jasmine St. Claire, Hager was asked about the difference between the backstage cultures in WWE and AEW. The question specifically focused on AEW’s younger roster and the company’s more modern environment.
Hager acknowledged that AEW had a younger locker room where more things were accepted. He didn’t criticize the wrestlers themselves and made it clear that he generally enjoyed being around them. However, Hager also suggested that certain situations were treated as bigger or scarier than he believed they actually were.
“A lot of younger kids were in the AEW locker room, so it’s going to be the newer culture—everything is more accepted. Things are scarier that aren’t really scary. I really enjoyed the AEW locker room.”
His tone changed when discussing the company’s backstage politics. Hager said the political environment often left him wondering what AEW was doing. He then connected those problems to the people running the company.
“You could just tell the overall politics of AEW were kind of like, ‘What are we doing?’ You see the writing on the wall when you see who’s running it.”
Hager’s frustration wasn’t limited to backstage politics. Elsewhere in the conversation, he ripped AEW’s lack of organization and claimed Dynamite was sometimes still being put together only two hours before airtime. He said that wasn’t how the company operated when AEW first launched. According to Hager, talent originally knew what they would be doing several weeks in advance.
“When we first started AEW, we knew a month ahead of time. We knew four weeks of storylines ahead of time. Imagine how much better you can make your performance when you know what you’re doing.”
That advance planning eventually disappeared, according to Hager. He claimed there were Wednesdays when the wrestlers still had not received the show at 6:00 p.m., despite Dynamite going live at 8:00 p.m.
“Everything was last minute. There were so many times that it’d be six o’clock and we’re going live at eight on Wednesday for Dynamite, and the show hadn’t even been put out yet. It’s not even out at six o’clock. What are you doing all week that you don’t have a live television show written until six o’clock? That’s just inexcusable.”
Hager still has good things to say about several parts of his AEW run, including the locker room and his work with the Inner Circle. His problems appear to be aimed directly at the leadership, backstage politics and last-minute operation of the company.
Do you agree with Jake Hager’s criticism of AEW’s backstage structure, or do you think last-minute changes are simply part of wrestling television? Leave your feedback in the comments.
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