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A major star recently made his AEW debut. However, Jim Cornette is furious over how his debut went.
Josh Alexander made a name for himself in TNA Wrestling initially as a tag team wrestler. After breaking out from his tag team with Ethan Page, Alexander was able to establish himself as a top singles star in the company. He even won the Impact World Championship twice. However, earlier this year, he left TNA.
After weeks of speculation regarding his future, Josh Alexander made his AEW debut on the 16th March episode of Dynamite by participating in the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Quarter Final against Hangman Adam Page, but ultimately lost.
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During a recent edition of The Experience podcast, Jim Cornette criticized Alexander's AEW debut since he failed to stand out in the match.
"This was Alexander's chance to go out and get over. He's just doing moves. We've never seen him, never heard him speak. The match needed to stand out and he needed to be established as a threat at the start of the match so that then Page would have something to struggle out from underneath and then maybe blow a longer comeback at the end to make up for that."
Cornette also expressed that he was upset with AEW for booking Alexander to lose his debut match in the company. He also questioned how Alexander kicked out of a tombstone piledriver despite having a bad neck, but he was unable to kick out of a small package.
"But then you're still beating Alexander, which is insanity in his first appearance on television if you've signed him long term to establish him immediately as a loser. And then in the phony department, since they were kind enough to tell us that he's got a bad neck, Alexander kicked out of a tombstone pile driver. Guy with a bad neck. But he couldn't kick out of the small package. That's what Page beat him with. One, two, three. So he couldn't beat the guy with a bad neck with a tombstone piledriver. Then he, 'I'll just small package you.' Boom. What is wrong with these people?"
Jim Cornette believes Kazuchika Okada signed with AEW because he couldn't hang in WWE
Kazuchika Okada is arguably one of the greatest Japanese wrestlers in the world. After a stellar run in New Japan Pro Wrestling for several years, he opted to leave the promotion in 2024. There were rumors of him going to WWE, but he chose to sign with AEW instead. He won the Continental Championship almost immediately after arriving in the promotion, but his overall run has been underwhelming.
Speaking on his Drive-Thru podcast, Jim Cornette said that Okada couldn't hang in WWE right now, so he chose more money and a lighter schedule instead.
"I still believe that because there's no way that you can convince me that Okada could hang in WWE right now in this moment and would be any kind of success with any of the performances that he has put on so far. But he chose the money and the soft schedule because this way he can lay around and be even worse than he probably can be if he tried." [From 4:53 - 5:34]
It will be interesting to see whether Josh Alexander will be able to become a top star in AEW as well.
