Former Ring of Honor World Champion Bandido could sign for WWE in the coming weeks, after receiving a contract off from the company this week. The 27 year old Mexican wrestler wrestled in his AEW debut last Wednesday, as he battle Chris Jericho in a losing effort for the ROH World Championship.
On the September 28, 2022 edition of AEW Dynamite, Chris Jericho vs Bandido ended when the Luchador tapped out to Jericho’s Lion Tamer finishing move, but it was Bandido that came out looking like the star in the match. He went all out and hit all of his signature move, including an incredibly impressive stalling suplex on Chris Jericho, where he held the former WWE Champion in the air for an astonishing 57 seconds.
His performance impressed everybody, including AEW President Tony Khan. He hugged Bandido on stage after the event and offered him an AEW contract then and there. While it was reported that he had agreed a deal to sign the Mexican to a full AEW contract, recent information has come to light to discredit that report. Bandido has not signed for AEW yet.
Bandido to AEW
Bandido spoke with Mas Lucha after his match with Chris Jericho and revealed that he has not agreed a deal with AEW and that he was still negotiating with the company for a potential contract. He revealed that Khan and Jericho pulled him aside after their match to try and convince him to sign a deal, with negotiations are still not completed to this day.
Tony Khan was alleged to have said that he “needed” Bandido to be All Elite and sign for the promotion. However, the Mexican is currently keeping his options open, revealing that he has been offered a contract by the WWE in the meantime.
The Bandido WWE contract offer is interesting, as WWE has not had good luck with Luchadors in WWE at all in their company. Apart from Rey Mysterio, who is a once-in-a-lifetime talent and one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, no masked Mexican wrestler has achieved anywhere near what they should have.
However, that was with Vince McMahon at the helm of the company. For some reason he never saw the value in the masked superstars and he even never treated Mysterio as he should be. He only had two world championship reigns, once with was booked horribly in 2006 and had him lose almost every match he had, and a second that didn’t even last as long as an episode of Monday Night Raw, in 2011.
Luckily for Bandido, there has bene a huge change in WWE recently. Vince McMahon has reitred and his son-in-law Triple H has taken over the reigns of the company as head of creative. Triple H has been a big fan of wrestlers like Rey Mysterio and Andrade in the past (he said that Rey Mysterio was a dream opponent of his) and he could be expected to push stars which may have been marginalised in the past by McMahon.
Triple H was the man who convinced Vince McMahon to sign Sin Cara, who was known as Mistico in Mexico. He was considered one of the biggest stars in Mexico at the time and was seen a huge coup by WWE. However, despite how high Triple H was on him, he never got the push by Vince that he could of, although some of that had to be attributed to his poor time inside the ring and backstage in the company.
Bandido does not suffer any issues like Sin Cara, as he has already become a star in the United States and speaks English, so there would be no language barrier inside the ring. We saw on AEW Dynamite that his style can work on national TV and he put on an incredible match with Jericho, showcasing his in-ring talent superbly.
He would be a big signing, but Bandido to WWE seems unlikely, according to the man himself. Later in that same interview, Bandido revealed he was likely to sign for AEW, meaning that he could just be using WWE’s interest in order to get a better contract for himself.
He would join a number of top Mexican stars in AEW, including Penta El Zero Miedo, Rey Fenix, Andrade and Rush, making AEW a top destination for Mexican talent. They have been treated better than WWE has traditionally treated those stars, with the exception of top, top talents like Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero.
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