Anthony Ogogo admits that he turned down more money from the WWE, and instead signed for All Elite Wrestling in 2019.
The former Olympian was forced to retire from boxing, owing to an eye injury that has seen him have a huge number of surgeries trying to fix it.
After retirement, he signed to AEW as a wrestler, being one of the first big British signings the company made, after PAC.
He started learning to wrestling in his late 20s, which is usually quite late. However, he was convinced by DDP to train as a pro-wrestler, something which has paid out in spades for Ogogo.
He went on to train at The Nightmare Factory, being taught by AEW stars like Dustin Rhodes and QT Marshall.
However, the Englishman has revealed that he turned down signing for WWE at the beginning of his career, despite Triple H offering his agent more money than AEW did.
On Insight with Chris Van Vilet, Anthoyn Ogogo spoke about the offer, revealing that it came at a time when he was feeling suicidal, following the end of his boxing career.
“To a degree. They [WWE] never actually got to a point where they offered me money. But they did speak to my agent and they were talking numbers and the numbers were better than the AEW numbers.
I was going to be the first developmental talent that they [AEW] signed. Reading between the lines, I don’t think that they were that fussed about signing somebody from scratch, because we had no real school where we trained, we had to figure it out.
QT [Marshall] was going to train me but QT at the time was also Cody’s assistant, doing the behind the scenes stuff and being an on-screen talent, so he was also really busy.
I think they [AEW] actually offered me a contract because they were like ‘He might not accept this because it is not the best contract. But if he does accept it, then let’s see how much he wants it.’
That was quite an attractive offer, but meeting Cody and Tony and the vision, I wanted to be a part of that. Also when I retired from boxing I felt like my life had ended. I was extremely depressed, suicidal at points.”
He also revealed that he did not have the time to waste, being older tha most starting his career.
This is why Anthony Ogogo signed for AEW over WWE. He did not have the time to waste, sitting in the WWE Performance Center and waiting for a call-up to NXT.
Also I am a bit older and I have got no time to waste. I started at 31 and I am on it, I can’t dawdle for 4 years like an 18-year-old can. Lee Johnson is 24 years old, he has got all the time in the world, I haven’t. That is why I train so hard and study so much, time is against me.”
Anthony Ogogo is being advertised as being part of the upcoming All In 2 show.
The event is taking place at Wembley Stadium on August 27th, 2023. AEW are hoping to sell 90,000 tickets for the event, which would make it the biggest wrestling event in British wrestling history.
You can click below to read the match card for AEW All In 2, in Wembley Stadium in London, England.
