Aaron Solo has been making a name for himself in AEW in the last few years, but it would appear that the WWE was where he originally wanted to wrestle. His application for the WWE reality show, named Tough Enough, was recently discovered online.
The video, which is entitled “Aaron Solow WWE Tough Enough” (Solow being the spelling of his name before a slight alteration in AEW) and was his attempt at getting signed by the WWE and to compete on their hit reality TV show, which last aired in 2015.
In the video, he calls out the fact that he was engaged to WWE star Bayley, who at the time was one of the top wrestlers to ever wrestle for NXT. He filmed his clip outside of the WWE Performance Centre and claims he wants to get in “there” and train to be a WWE superstar.
Aaron Solo also noted how he was sick of just being called “Bayley’s Boyfriend” and is sick of people chanting “I’m a hugger” at him while wrestling on intendent wrestling shows. He wanted to prove to the WWE, to Bayley and to himself that he is “Tough Enough”, with this tape his chance at being cast in the show alongside other hopeful wrestlers.
The video is just shy of a minute and in it Aaron Solo says;
“My name is Aaron solo, currently residing in Orlando, Florida. This is the third time in six years I’ve relocated for wrestling and it’s all to get noticed by the people in there [Points to the WWE Performance Centre] and I feel like I have been noticed by the people in there but I’ve been noticed as “[WWE Superstar] Bayley’s boyfriend”.
I don’t wrestle every weekend and sacrifice my body just to have people yell out “I’m a Hugger”. That’s why I need to be on WWE tough enough I need to prove to everybody out there, and especially the people in there [Points to WWE Performance Centre again] that I’m more than just “Bayley’s Boyfriend”. I need to prove to them the Aaron’s solo is tough enough.”
Based on not just the content, but also the delivery, it is not hard to see why WWE passed on the young star. Despite his relationship with a WWE superstar, his delivery seemed wooden and his promo had little to no actual content in it. It was a pale imitation of a wrestling promo, but just goes to show how far he has come in the 7 years since the video has been posted. The video (below) has been viewed 31,000 times so far.
The video gained traction when it was posted to Reddit in 2015. It was posted to the “SquaredCircle” subreddit, one of the biggest wrestling boards online at the moment, bosting millions of subscribers and thousands of daily posts. It was shared by nonother than former roommate of Solo and current AEW star Ricky Starks, who posted it under the name “RickStarkman”. Starks also has a number of other posts on the platform, which you can read about here.
Not only did WWE not hire Aaron Solo after his video made the rounds online, but his relationship with Bayley would soon end too. Despite the pair living together in Florida (the pair shared an apartment while engaged with Ricky Starks), they broke up some time after 2017 and the ceased to live together.
In an interview with Alex McCarthy of talkSPORT, Ricky Starks confirmed that he and Bayley are still best friends and confirmed they used to live together, alongside her former partner Aaron Solow.
“She’s my best friend. Me and Aaron Solow [Bayley’s former fiancé] used to be a tag team and we used to live together back in 2017 or something like that. I met her in 2014 and we were just all mutual friends.”
“We’ve definitely trained together, travelled together, she’s a great person. She’s helped me out with advice about life, the wrestling business and she’s been there through it all for me. Especially after the tryout I had with WWE and I didn’t get anything from them. I love her, she’s awesome. She’s one of my closest friends.”
While it was a huge disappointment for Aaron Solo to be rejected by WWE, it seems that it all worked out for the best. He is currently working regularly for AEW and is part of the faction known as “The Factory”, alongside QT Marshall, Nick Comoroto, Anthony Ogogo and Cole Karter.
