In a recent interview with Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone as part of the AEW Unrestricted podcast, All Elite Wrestling superstar Brian Cage opened up on his decision to sign for the company over staying put as originally being a member of the IMPACT Wrestling roster.

“First of all, I was more excited to come here than anywhere else, that wasn’t the be all and end all, but this is where I wanted to come. Second, I felt like for me to break through the barrier on the reach that I have had, this would help here. Most importantly, this place had the most amount of not only unique awesome matches I wanted, but so many are first-time ever’s and elsewhere, it would be a lot of repeats, but there are so many matches I wanted and that I never had. Artistically speaking, this would be the most fun place to go. 

It sounded like they were going to do something with me at the pay-per-view in February and then I got hurt, I tore my bicep the day before my last day under contract, I saw a couple of doctors. The complete tears usually don’t have much swelling or bruising, but a partial tear has extreme bruising. Because I had full range, two different doctors I saw said that I did not need surgery. Then, I got an MRI and it said that I had a complete tear and I needed surgery. I was so gutted, I’m thinking my contract would be rescinded and I would have to sit at home, then Tony Khan said, don’t worry about it, he said, I’ll get back to you and we will sort it out, then he said, we will still sign you, we want you to be part of the team, we have complete faith in you, do what you can, we will keep you under contract and as soon as you can debut, we will bring you on board.

I was actually supposed to be on the Double or Nothing pay-per-view last year in the Battle Royal, it was 90 minutes before bell time, even a lot of the people in the Battle Royal didn’t know, almost nothing gets kept a secret in wrestling any more. IMPACT got a whiff of it and they were even more mad, because I was the World Champion at the time and I wasn’t winning. They were mad because I was going to be in the pre-show Battle Royal and wasn’t winning as the World Champion.”

The interview is available in full at this link.