Popular star issues emotional statement after making AEW debut

A popular star just made his AEW debut this week. Following this, he issued an emotional statement.

Speedball Mike Bailey made a name for himself in TNA Wrestling between 2021 and 2024. During this time, he won the X Division Championship three times and was one of their most popular stars. After a successful run in the company, Bailey left TNA last year.

Since then, there has been speculation about his future. Tony Khan recently confirmed that he had signed Speedball to a contract with his promotion.

This week on Dynamite, Bailey was revealed as the wildcard participant in the first round of the International Title Eliminator Tournament against The Beast Mortos. Mike Bailey began his All Elite Wrestling career by winning his first match for Tony Khan's promotion. Following this, he took to social media to express his gratitude towards the fans for all their support:

"My heart is so full. I still don't have the right words for how I feel. I will eventually, but for now, I'm just gonna say thank you. 🙏 What a perfect way to get started on #AEWDynamite! All your support is noted, tremendously appreciated, and will continue to keep me going. ❤️"

Check out his tweet here:

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Tony Khan was reportedly forced to make several changes to AEW Dynamite

This week's episode of Dynamite was expected to feature some of the fallout from what happened at Revolution 2025. While the show kicked off the tournament for the international championship, the rest of the show was mainly focused on promos. There is a good reason for this.

According to a recent report from Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful, this week's episode of Dynamite was very promo-heavy since a lot of the top talent featured at Revolution were not in the right physical state to execute the plans that All Elite Wrestling had originally intended for them:

“We kicked off with the Kenny Omega promo. This AEW Dynamite was a promo-heavy show for a lot of the top talent because, quite frankly, a lot of them were beat to dog s*** this week (...) I do know that some of this show changed kind of late because there were people who couldn’t quite do what AEW had originally anticipated. This happens here and there with AEW.” [H/T: Inside The Ropes]

It will be interesting to see if Speedball Mike Bailey will win this tournament and go on to become the next International Champion.