LONG CUBSFAN OPINION PIECE ON THE MATTER:
"AEW has signed people to contracts. Some people have preferred to leave their contracts early and tried various methods to force AEW to escape their contracts early. Fenix, always innovative, appears to be trying to get out of his AEW contract early by hinting at very negative treatment during his time in AEW while not explaining anything in detail.
Fenix’s tweets over the weekend were so vague that it was unclear if they were even about AEW. Wrestling reporter Dr. Chris Featherstone wrote a story clarifying them as AEW tweets and defending Fenix’s position. The story reads as if it came from people close to Fenix, though he credits it to “an AEW source.” Featherstone’s source says the story about the Lucha Brothers telling people they were going to WWE is ‘fake news,’ that Fenix’s claim of being mistreated by AEW is real, and the Lucha Brothers are going to talk about it once they’re free and clear to do so. The story doesn’t really advance the tweets or give them more context, but it is the first place to say Fenix is talking about AEW definitively. Fenix confirmed as much by replying to it and saying it was the most accurate version of his story so far. (That would make sense if it came from his people and not from people who work for AEW.) Fenix followed up with a post saying he couldn’t talk in more detail about it due to contractual issues, presumably went to sleep, woke up, and posted more about the thing he said he couldn’t contractually talk about. Featherstone mentions he was asked to wait to reveal his story until one of the Lucha Brothers started publicly talking about this. That seems to give away the game that this is all a plan, a targeted campaign to get attention for Fenix’s cause.
I believe Fenix honestly thinks there’s merit to what he’s saying, and he feels strongly about it. I also feel the timing of this is a planned campaign to rally support and force AEW to let him out of his contract early. I expect he’ll keep hinting at things until they offer him a release. People close to him will also talk off the record to friendly sources to advance his cause.
Burning a bridge here and paying a price later is risky. The Lucha Brothers and AAA have also burnt with each other multiple times and then gone back and worked with each other multiple times. AAA stopped Fenix and Penta from using those names in CMLL five months ago. Penta and AAA were back happily working together on Saturday. Fenix may believe going after AEW won’t ultimately matter in the same way; he may be thinking about nothing past his next contract, he may think he will ultimately be proven correct and risk no consequences, and there’s no price to be priced. Fenix is definitely not worried about any fallout from trying to burn everything down; he knows he’s risen from the ashes again, regardless.
The campaign has been very effective in getting people interested in what Fenix has to say and what he might say next. I’m not sure it’ll effectively reach Fenix’s goal of escaping his AEW deal. The problem for Fenix is people saying negative things about AEW on social media is no longer novel. It’s almost the norm. Fenix is doing it differently, has taken it to a different level, and will help fuel the people who build their monetization around anti-AEW content. There’s just so much of it that I can see AEW looking it as just another wave of bad publicity that they’ll have to endure, but it’s so common for them that they know they can just wait it out a couple of weeks and it’ll fade into the background. There is only so many times Fenix can hint at a story without giving it way to keep people’s interests. AEW might send him a legal letter to get him to calm down (though that might backfire to fuel this) and just otherwise wait it out. The earliest results point this direction: AEW had a press conference to promote the All In show this morning, Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp asked about Rey Fenix’s comments, and AEW said they wouldn’t comment and will never comment on medical issues. AEW will remain a punching bag in this story, but they’ve been a punching bag in 2024 so often that I’m unsure they still feel it. I hope this plan works out better than I sense for Fenix.
(It is still hard to give a wrestling company the benefit of the doubt because wrestling companies have historically taken advantage of wrestlers. It’s also hard to give a professional wrestler the benefit of the doubt because wrestlers lie all the time. Both Rey Fenix and Tony Khan have given wrestling fans great memories. Neither need to concern themselves with filling out an application for saint hood. This is a very weird, small niche blog oddly read by peculiar but important people – it’s possible people reading theses words who might consider Tony Khan and Rey Fenix their friends. Most of you are not friends with Rey Fenix or Tony Khan and don’t have to side with either. If Fenix was mistreated in his time in AEW, I hope he gets what’s owed to him and his freedom. Heck, even if AEW has treated Rey Fenix like a king for his whole time there, and Tony Khan is entirely in the right to hold him there, I would still prefer AEW let Fenix out of his contract right now. I want to see Rey Fenix wrestling rather than Rey Fenix tweeting or Rey Fenix sitting at home. I know the strategic reasons why AEW does not want to let people go early and why that probably won’t happen, but I don’t work for AEW, and I don’t have any reason to care about those reasons personally. I just want to see some cool flips. The people who read this blog are not children, you understand all these points already, I’m too poisoned by Twitter to think I need to re-explain them.)
I would be surprised if we find out more about these issues. Fenix says he can’t explain what’s going on due to contractual issues. He will eventually get out of his AEW deal and will be free to talk. He will also probably sign with WWE as soon as he’s free, and they may not want him to be talking about AEW or bad conditions for wrestlers at that point. Maybe he’ll be like CM Punk and go on an MMA podcast to air his grievances, but I’m not exactly betting on it. The tease of an explosive post-contract is another weapon in the arsenal – “I’ll sign an NDA if you grant me a release” is being thrown out there as an escape hatch – and part of this teasing that grenade, even if he’s never going to throw it.
My hunch is it is not a Fenix has started to post these tweets once Penta has become a free agency. I’ve thought WWE would wait to bring them in together, which meant Penta was the brother who would be out of work for months while Fenix was still getting paid by AEW. Penta saying goodbye and Fenix getting in his feelings on social media suggests it’s the other way: Penta is starting in WWE soon, Fenix is the brother who’s getting left behind, and he’d really like to fix that immediately. Penta would probably like Fenix with him too. Beyond the attraction of going to WWE, any wrestler signing a new contract at this point is probably getting a significant pay raise, and it wouldn’t be hard for Fenix to figure out how many hundreds of thousands of dollars he’s missing out on while stuck on a contract (that he willingly signed.)
I wrote so much about this story this morning, yet I feel Rey Fenix versus AEW is not really a story for this blog. Fenix is currently (not) wrestling for AEW. He will be wrestling for WWE as soon as he gets out of that contract. Fenix has wrestled one match in Mexico in the last two years, and he will probably not wrestle for a Mexican promotion again for many more years. Rey Fenix’s contract is not really a Lucha Libre story anymore, but people ask me about it because they need to see Fenix as a Lucha Libre guy still. This strategy is out of the Mexican wrestling playbook, but he’s not got much to do with Mexican wrestling now; it’s been talked about in passing this weekend in Mexican social media, I check, but it’s not near the obsession it has been among American-speaking fans."
