PCO Reveals Why He Decided Not To Sign With AEW

Current IMPACT Wrestling star PCO has explained the thought process behind his decision not to sign with AEW in 2019. 

Though he spoke with some of the company's would-be EVPs, PCO chose to stick with Ring of Honor instead. 

Speaking with Nick Hausman of Wrestling Inc., he said: 

"When AEW started, I was so confused because I was talking to Marty [Scurll] on one side, which was ROH, and I was talking with Cody and The Bucks on the other side, but thinking in my mind that they were all together, they were all going to do AEW together, or they're all going to stay in ROH or whatever. So I was talking to both sides before I knew that, okay, now I've got to pick one side. Just weird. I remember texting with Cody and saying, 'Hey, Marty just texted me two days ago. I just told them everything'. So it's like, okay. So they weren't talking to each other. So I was not aware of that, because I knew they were such great friends. So I never in my mind thought that maybe Marty was not going to follow, was not going to go to AEW.

"And then when I had to pick side for me, ROH was the one, because I went with kind of security, so to speak, because I didn't know Tony, I didn't know how much time he would be willing to invest. I didn't have a TV deal back then. They had a few pay-per-views lined out. All In was the first one they did. Then they had the Double or Nothing coming up for Vegas. And then they could offer a money deal and things like that, but you didn't know how long it was going to last. And then you look on the other side, ROH was there for 20 years. So you're like, okay. So at that time, at that point, which was 2018, 2019, I had to make the best decision for myself. And I thought that going with ROH, because Sinclair was behind that, because they had 216 TV stations, and they were talking about going live, and, I mean, competing live show every week".

PCO wrestled for Ring of Honor until October 2021. 

Tony Khan completed the purchase of the company this past March, officially ending Sinclair Broadcast Group's 11-year ownership.

PCO is currently signed to IMPACT until October. In the same interview with Hausman, he indicated that a future WWE return in some form could be possible now that Paul 'Triple H' Levesque is in charge of creative.