Swerve Strickland Reveals The One Match That Earned Him Trust Of AEW Management

Swerve Strickland has revealed the one match he thinks earned him the respect of the AEW management and led to his current status in the company.

The former AEW Champion recently appeared on the No Contest Wrestling podcast. He discussed things such as growing up around the world as a military kid, Hangman Page burning down his childhood home and more.

During the talk, Strickland was asked if he can remember any specific moment that changed the course of his career like the Austin 3:16 promo did for Stone Cold Steve Austin. Swerve first said that he can think of many such moments, though the one he named was his match with Hiroshi Tanahashi:

“Through the office from talks I heard it was me and Tanahashi on a Collision. When Tanahashi was like…it was me and him. It was going right into Forbidden Door. Cause I didn’t do Forbidden Door the main show, on the second Forbidden Door.

We were going back and forth and he was about to hit High Fly Flow but he slips off. I run up and I start fighting him up boom boom boom and he knocks me off and he hits me High Fly Flow and wins.”

• AEW’s Swerve Strickland Makes DC Comics Debut in Batman #153

That Was The Moment: Swerve Strickland

The match in question took place during the June 24, 2023 episode of Collision, only a day before the 2023 Forbidden Door PPV. It was only the second episode of the Saturday night show and the match in question opened the night.

According to Swerve, being able to adjust on the fly when The Ace of NJPW couldn’t hit his finishing maneuver properly showed people in the back that he had what it takes to become a champion. The AEW star also claimed that the bout might have saved the working relationship of the two companies:

“That was the moment Tony was like ‘I can trust him in anything. I can trust him with anybody’ That might be what saved the New Japan relationship with AEW. It might have been because he became the president like very soon after that.

But he gets hurt, all that goes away. All of it. So there’s that. Then shortly after that I started wrestling a lot of the veterans. It was like me and RVD, me and Jeff Hardy, me and Billy Gunn, me and Sting. It was like Swerve can make it work. Swerve can do it. I was like ‘Bring it on.'”

After the Tanahashi match, Swerve shared the ring with the likes of CM Punk, Bryan Danielson and Sting. He would go on to win his first singles title in the company almost a year later at Dynasty.

• Swerve Strickland Reveals How Shawn Michaels Influenced His Current Success