Report: The Elite Went 'Back-And-Forth' Between Staying With AEW & Jumping Ship To WWE

The Elite re-signing with All Elite Wrestling wasn't exactly a foregone conclusion. 

It was announced this week that Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, and Hangman Page had all signed new multi-year deals with AEW that will keep them with the promotion they helped found back in January 2019. The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega will also remain executive vice presidents. 

The faction's AEW deals were set to expire around the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 and the promotion wanted to begin contract talks at the start of this year. It has been reported over the past several months that WWE would have been interested in signing all of The Elite if they became available, but Vince McMahon's company weren't able to officially offer the stable any deals. 

Speaking about The Elite re-signing with AEW on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer reported the four men made a pact to stick together and the majority vote would determine their fate. Instead of them all immediately deciding to stick with AEW, though, The Elite went 'back-and-forth' between staying with AEW and jumping ship to WWE, with votes changing until it was decided to re-up with AEW. 

"The four guys had made a pact that they were going to stick together, whether it was going to be in WWE or AEW. They basically had made an agreement that it was going to be majority rules and it had gone back and forth... There was not going to be a split-up and that was the thing. Views changed. People who think that it was like, 'Oh they were never going to go' or anything like that, there were discussions, there were votes that changed, there were things that happened since this pact was made and I think this pact was made some time back," Meltzer said.

Having re-signed with AEW, The Elite look set to expand their presence on AEW programming, with Kenny Omega teasing the faction could even pop up on AEW Collision. 

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