If you were in the Dallas-Forth Worth Metroplex during AEW’s All In week, you very likely ran into Swerve Strickland. If you were in attendance at the pay-per-view, you saw him team with Will Ospreay to take down the Young Bucks, and later, help his irreversible rival Hangman Adam Page secure the AEW World Championship. That same night, he celebrated the show’s success with the rest of the AEW roster at Texas Live!, Globelife Stadium’s outside concert venue. If you attended Starrcast, the meet-and-greet/ merchandise convention coinciding with the event, you saw him hustle through room after room with his entourage in tow, doing his best to stop and greet fans in line between obligations. And if you found yourself in Dallas’ Deep Ellum nightlife district, you likely heard Strickland and partner-in-rhyme Monteasy running through their catalog at the RBC concert venue.
He’s everywhere, doing everything, and even with another huge match ahead of him Sunday night at AEW Forbidden Door 2025, that’s exactly the way he likes it. “It’s turning one part of the brain off to turn the other one on,” Strickland tells Uncrowned. “So I’m using all the energy and all the bandwidth that I have to focus on just that one selective activity. Wrestling, I’ve been doing it 16 years now, so that’s second nature. I can turn that switch on and off. Music is still very new, especially performing music.
“Whether the crowds are big or small, it’s something that I want to be able to just have that same muscle memory like I do wrestling. Wrestling, I could show up to any event, an hour prep time, and still go 15, 20 minutes on live television. That’s just a testament to how long I’ve been doing it — at the high level, I’ve been doing it for so long. I want to match that same type of confidence and energy and effort and dedication into my music as well, to be able to just pull up and just perform.”
That confidence and energy propelled Strickland to the very top of AEW in quick fashion. In just over two years after signing in March 2022, he won the AEW World Championship and became the promotion’s first Black men’s World Champion. En route to that landmark, Strickland developed a cunning yet cool, unorthodox but unwavering persona unique to pro wrestling at the time. He leaned into the “mogul” aspects of music production and promotion, championing aesthetics like fashion, art and his relationships with power players while also putting on some of the very best matches and brutal beatdowns the company had seen to date.
Part of that success is the ability to freestyle a bit in AEW. In Strickland’s eyes, stories are drawn up in the promotion, but you’re given the opportunity to color outside the lines to create something the canvas might not have seen coming. “We’re not a publicly traded company,” he says. “We don’t have the big stock market people support and all that stuff. But we don’t have that to stop us either. Our disadvantages become our advantages to create.
“There’s gifts and curses to that. There’s advantages, disadvantages. There are some times that can land us in hot water, but we can also pull ourselves out. It benefits us because we get to reap the benefits of it rather than our benefits go to a higher power … and that’s the beautiful thing. That’s why I’m saying we’re the outliers. We get to move between the spaces in such a unique way that there’s nobody saying we can’t do it.”
The less static nature of AEW also contributes to longtime WWE acts like Ricochet and Mercedes Moné finding themselves creatively matching their all-time in ring abilities. “We can ask for forgiveness before permission a little bit more [in AEW],” Strickland says. “I feel like that’s what ultimately, maybe Mercedes was like, ‘This is unique, this is different, I got to adjust to that,’ when she first came in. Now, at this point now where she’s actually like, ‘Oh, I’m all in. I love it. I get it now. I get it, I understand it, I feel it.’ Now it’s like, ‘No, this is where I need to be. This is where I want to be.’ And Ricochet, same, was like, ‘Oh man, this is a little adjustment period. It’s like putting on a new pair of pants, but backward. I’m not used to that.’
“I’ve been like, ‘No, try it this way. Once you settle in and you let it take form with you, you become one with the company.’ Because I’m a completely different [wrestler since exiting WWE in 2021] because I settled and let myself take shape and form with the company. The company becomes one with you. Now some people still don’t believe I was in WWE. That’s a good thing,” he continues.
“Now people feel like I’m an original. I’m like, ‘No, I’m not. But I’m just molded to what AEW was and is and what we can continue to create it to be.’ There’s still so much more growth and room to shape and mold and truly define the little pieces and parts to make it what can potentially be even more. It’s still at an infancy stage, and we’ve done so much. We’ve made such an impact.”
Over the years, we’ve seen talents ascend to the very top only to become stagnant, or worse yet, lose their momentum once their role shifts. Strickland lost the world title to Bryan Danielson at All In 2024, but for him, that was simply the next step in his progression as one of AEW’s top acts. “I learned [how to navigate this time] from Shawn Michaels, actually,” he says. “He’s like, ‘How am I still able to pull different strings of emotion without championships,’ without being propped up by, you’re the champion or fighting for the title? Take that away. How can Swerve Strickland pull an emotion? How do I affect the show?”
Today, Strickland’s fingerprints are all over AEW programming. Ricochet, who feuded with Strickland early into the former’s tenure, and is now the frontman of a trio composed of past Mogul Embassy members Bishop Kaun and Toa Liona, The Gates of Agony. Nick Wayne, whose first AEW match came against Strickland, has found the edge he’s looked for since Strickland and AR Fox ransacked his home. And of course, it helps to have one of the most enduring feuds in recent wrestling memory with Hangman Page. Friends, foes, families, fires and so much more fueled the rivalry between the two top-end talents, with Strickland reaching the mountaintop only for Page to strike two decisive blows, both in helping Danielson dethrone Strickland, and then defeating Strickland in a “lights out” steel cage match.
With no title in play, the two former world champions paid off their long-running rivalry with one of the most extreme matches in modern wrestling history. They then rewarded fans who followed along every week, with Strickland eventually coming to Page’s aid at the same event where Page ruined Strickland’s biggest accomplishment a year prior. “[The ending to AEW All In 2025 featured the] chain I used to hang Hangman and beat him — now that’s symbolism of we’re linked together and then passing it on as a positive, opposed to being a negative two years prior,” he says. “So I always wanted to make sure, how do I have a lasting effect on the show?”
Early on, AEW championed its “Four Pillars,” a group of young talents whose stories, styles and ability to stand out represented what the new promotion was all about. While they’ve had varying levels of success due to controversies, injuries and outside obligations, in Strickland’s mind, there’s a new quartet that’s pushing the locker room and one another to be great: “Ospreay, Hangman, myself, MJF included. We are the definitions of this era and generation. We take pride in that work.”
Pillars, by definition, evenly transfer weight down into the foundation, but the men at the top of AEW are more like a sprint relay — while their roles have crossover, its the different things they bring to the race that gets them across the finish line. Page is the first leg — he’s been AEW’s central protagonist from the beginning. Will Ospreay is the guy you want on the straightaway — very few people match up with what he can do once the action starts. MJF, one of those initial pillars, runs that last curve with the last handoff — there’s no situation where he’s uncomfortable. Vignette, match, promo, public appearance — he’s capable of doing anything, especially the lowest things at the highest level.
But Strickland? He’s the anchor — and he wants to be the anchor.
Being “the guy” is everyone’s dream, but Strickland has both publicly and privately stressed wanting to get everyone in the fold across that finish line.
According to Strickland, the motivation behind Jon Moxley’s title reign was as much for the talent as it was for the fans. “‘[Moxley’s claims of,] ‘We’re seeing the guys get lazy. I’m seeing the locker room be like this, yada, yada, yada. Who’s going to step up and challenge and take this from us?’ That was both on-screen and a bit of a challenge for not just our locker room, but for our generation. I feel like we’re putting it to the test and we’re pushing it every single day, every single week, every single opportunity, because now is a chance to win. Something I always tell to the guys and girls that are going out for their match, I whisper in the ear — I give them a pat, motivation, but like, ‘Tonight is a chance to win new fans. Tonight is another chance to win a new fan. Go out there and win a new fan for you.’”
It’s not just lip service, as Strickland already sees some of the talents who will be ready to carry that baton in the future, not just for what they mean to AEW, but what they can ultimately be for their respective countries. “One, Bandido, Ring of Honor World Champion,” he says. “Two, Kyle Fletcher, TNT champ. And three, shout out to [Konosuke] Takeshita for winning the G1 climax right now. These are all the guys that are in the spots right now, already being prepared for that for the next 10 years, 15 possibly. These are the guys. And once again, all cross-cultural, which is the beauty of it. Haven’t even reached their prime years yet, but all cross-cultural crossovers, all marketable, all look like supreme athletes.”
Forbidden Door, AEW’s annual international turf war between itself and the top talents out of Japan, looks to be another chance for Strickland to earn more than just new fans, but a new title as well. While many of the “good guys” stood tall at the end of AEW All In 2025, Kenny Omega lost his match to forever foe Kazuchika Odaka, where Okada combined the Continental and International Championships to become the inaugural AEW Unified Champion. Okada is one of the most decorated and highly-rated wrestlers to ever walk the planet, and while facing him for a championship literally created in his image may intimidate some, for Strickland, it’s just another chance to make history.
“You know why I feel like I’m a peer of his? Because last year, I main-evented this same event,” he says. “There you go. The year before, I was on a kickoff show, I was on the pre-show. That’s a testament to my work and perseverance as a performer, as a professional. And Okada sees that, he understands that.
“We have a lot of responsibility on our shoulders because I do fall into his era — his era of dominance and greatness of what he’s done in Japan. My era of what I’ve done in America, making history, being [AEW’s] first Black world champion, the main event, Wembley Stadium. … We both hold a lot of responsibility. Therefore, it’s all on us. He understands that, he sees that and he respects that. That’s why this also, [the] very new Unified Championship, we’ve got to define that early.”