Two former WWE stars who left in 2023 comment on surprise AEW debut, "great" talks with Tony Khan

Former WWE stars Zack Gibson and James Drake recently commented on their AEW debut and revealed they had a great conversation with Tony Khan.

The duo are known as The Grizzled Young Veterans and recently departed from WWE, after spending almost five years with the promotion. They were the inaugural NXT UK Tag Team Champions but had an underwhelming run on NXT after they were repackaged as The Dyad in Joe Gacy's Schism faction. Gibson and Drake left the WWE in 2023 and debuted for TNA at the Hard to Kill PPV.

The GYV recently called out AEW's The Acclaimed on X, claiming that they were an embarrassment to the tag team division. A match between the two teams was quickly announced for Collision, where The Acclaimed managed to defeat Zack Gibson and James Drake on their debut.

Speaking on the Cultaholic podcast, James Drake had nothing but praise for the Jacksonville-based promotion and appreciated the company for celebrating wrestling.

“One of the things with deciding to leave WWE, it’s just not leave and go, well, we will see what happens. It’s always actually pushing forward, we want to be everywhere. We made it work with TNA, now we did AEW. It’s pretty much that we want to make sure when you think of us, you don’t think of us as a former so and so, you think of us as our own entity and our own brand and look at the decorated career that we’ll have. We had a great time there, great conversations with Tony. The one thing that I love about that place is that it celebrates wrestling. First and foremost, it celebrates wrestling. If you can go, you will get your roses. That’s literally something that me and Zack have really prided ourselves on for a very long time." H/T:[Fightful]

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GYV's Zack Gibson went on to praise the AEW Tag Team division

Zack Gibson and James Drake had a great showing in their AEW debut on last week's Collision.

Speaking on the Cultaholic podcast, Zack Gibson spoke about how the AEW tag division is stacked with talent. He also noted how the promotion gives tag teams time to shine and make a name for themselves. Gibson went on to praise The Acclaimed and called them great opponents.

“Obviously when we came out, we said we wanted to be everywhere, we wanted to work with all of the best talents that are out there. You can’t go on record saying that and not end up at least trying to do work with the AEW tag division because that division is stacked. There are rumors of other people coming in, but look at the actual division right now. Acclaimed, FTR, Young Bucks, the list just goes on and on and it’s just top tier tag team wrestling that is given time to shine and show out and do proper tag team wrestling on TV with some real purpose. It’s an exciting place to get our foot in the door. We were both buzzing to be there. The Acclaimed, great opponents for us.” H/T:[Fightful]

The GYV had a great conversation with All Elite CEO Tony Khan, which may be a hint at more appearances for the duo in the future. It will be interesting to see if they sign a contract with the company.