Swerve Strickland recently reflected on his first AEW World Championship feud and revealed that one of his on-screen rivals also became a mentor behind the scenes.
Back in 2024, Strickland captured the AEW World Championship after defeating Samoa Joe at Dynasty. Following the title win, his first major feud as champion came against Christian Cage. The rivalry led to a world title match at AEW Double or Nothing, where Strickland successfully retained the championship.
Although the two were rivals on television, Strickland recently shared that Christian Cage helped guide him behind the scenes during that important period of his career.
Swerve Strickland says Christian Cage helped mentor him during AEW feud
Speaking with TMZ Inside the Ring, Swerve Strickland explained how much he learned while working with Cage. He said, “Oh, very much so. Oh yeah, absolutely. First off, when that was coming about, one of the people that reached out to me that was like, ‘Oh man, you’re in good hands, you’re going to learn so much,’ was Xavier Woods. He was like, ‘Trust me, he’s like so smart about a lot of things. He’s a scientist with it. So you’re in great hands, and you’re going to learn a lot from that.’ And he was right.”
He credited Cage for helping him stay focused while building the rivalry. “And it’s a lot of things because you’re so like this is your first feud as champion. So you want to make sure everything’s perfect. You want to make sure, like and then you second guess. He was so good at taking you out of the second-guessing portion of it.”
“And he was just like, ‘No, we got this. We got this and we don’t have a lot of time, but we’re going to make it impactful and make it meaningful.’ And he did that. He did that. As a veteran and it was this actually made so much sense to the Swerve character. I’m going up against a veteran as my first championship title defense, it makes sense.” [H/T: 411mania]
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