6 AEW stars who had tryouts with WWE

#2 Eddie Kingston had a WWE tryout in 2016

Eddie Kingston, a current AEW star, had a tryout with WWE in 2016 as a group of 40 pro-wrestlers were invited to the WWE Performance Center. Unfortunately for Kingston, he was not selected for a WWE contract.

In a recent interview with Renee Paquette on her Oral Sessions podcast, Kingston knew he was not going to be selected for WWE in the tryout and had this to say:

"This was at the PC, Jimmy Jacobs hooked me up with it. He was just like, Hey, you want a tryout? I was like, Yes, sure. Let’s go. To me, that tryout was really more for the Mae Young Classic, because there was the biggest class they had for females. So I was like, Alright, I get it. This was for females. I’m just gonna go in and have fun. And that’s the way I looked at it."

Kingston has formed quite the tag team with Jon Moxley in AEW and was seen in action on the latest episode of AEW Dynamite when they, along with Darby Allin, beat the team of Bear Country and Anthony Greene.

#1 MJF had a WWE tryout in 2015

Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF) is one of the biggest stars in AEW today. The leader of The Pinnacle applied to participate in WWE's reality show Tough Enough in 2015 but was not selected. In 2019, shortly before MJF was about to sign with AEW, WWE offered him a contract but this time he refused.

In an interview with Inside The Ropes, MJF explained why he chose AEW over WWE:

"Deep down, I wanted to be part of something new and something fresh and something where I’d be able to control everything going on with me, because I knew if I went to the other place, and this isn’t me [disrespecting] the other place, it’s just a fact, they would try to change me, and there is nothing to change."

MJF was last seen in a showdown with Darby Allin in the latest episode of AEW Dynamite.