6 AEW stars who had tryouts with WWE

#4 Brian Cage had a WWE tryout in 2008

Brian Cage, a current AEW star, had a WWE tryout in June 2008.

WWE signed Cage to a developmental contract during his tryout, where he reported to their developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling. When Cage first started in FCW, he used the name Brian Cage but eventually changed it to Kris Logan. The name change was to pay homage to the late wrestler Chris Kanyon, with Logan partly due to Brian's resemblance to the Marvel Comics character Wolverine.

On July 23, 2009, Logan and Justin Gabriel defeated The Dude Busters (Caylen Croft and Trent Barreta) to become FCW Florida Tag Team Champions. However, they lost the title that same night against The Rotundos (Bo Rotundo aka Bo Dallas, and Duke Rotundo aka Bray Wyatt).

Later, Cage came up with a new character, Night Claw. This character was seen in a few matches and was supposed to be used till the time WWE legend Hurricane was still active in WWE. However, this didn't happen as the former FTW World Champion was released from his contract in September 2009.

#3 Ricky Starks had a WWE tryout in 2017

Ricky Starks, a member of Team Taz and the current FTW World Champion, had an unsuccessful WWE tryout in 2017. He was approached by WWE offering him a contract after making his AEW debut on June 17, 2020, but Starks decided to stay with Tony Khan's promotion.

In an interview on the Chris Van Vliet Show last year, the young AEW star said this on his 2017 WWE tryout:

"I don't think I was close at all and I'll never understand why. I love wrestling. I've never played any sports, I never did anything, I only watched wrestling. And I have immersed myself and become obsessed with it and I love it to death. So when I did the tryout in 2017 and I was told and saw the reaction when I killed it in the promo class and I was keeping up with everybody when we were doing the workouts and even Matt Bloom was saying how good of a job I did, I realized that they didn't want a wrestler. They wanted someone who wasn't passionate about it that they could probably make into it. And I still don't get why and that was a time period where I kind of went crazy; I dyed my hair and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. So I don't know why that happened and I thought every time that I went to WWE I was like 'This is going to be it. This is how I get in' and it wasn't and that's fine. I'm ok with that."