One of professional wrestling’s most controversial, unorthodox and unique personalities “The Bad Boy” Joey Janela signed with AEW in January 2019 as one of the company’s first signees, when the promotion was still starting out. He would then make his AEW debut at their inaugural PPV Event known as Double or Nothing on May 25, 2019, where he competed in the Casino Battle Royale during the Buy-In Pre-Show.
Janela spoke with Fightful Select this past January and revealed that his AEW contract will expire in May of this year and that he enjoys working with them and would like to continue working for them. He also mentioned during an interview on the “Rasslin’ podcast” that he doesn’t know if his AEW contract will be renewed, but he hopes that it will. Joey Janela then had an interesting interview with Denise Salcedo as he revealed that he was no longer interested in signing with AEW once his contract expired, which was yesterday, May 1st.
Joey Janela also said that he wishes there was less radio silence on AEW’s end with him as they could have just spoke to him, but he appreciates them and the experience he had and he will take everything he learned there and bring it with him for the rest of his career. A number of AEW talents have their contracts coming up soon and there will definitely be several other departures, but Janela is the one name who is officially done with the company as of today since his deal just recently expired.
The departure of Janela from AEW is not surprising and was definitely expected as he hasn’t been used on AEW TV in months and as Janela stated during his interviews, the promotion had gone “radio silent” with him and he was not interested in signing a new deal. A report from PWInsider.com noted that Joey Janela had backstage heat on him due to him injuring Eddie Kingston because it changed weeks worth of television plans and it was also believed that several other talents were hurt as well, while working with Janela, but Janela noted that he and Eddie Kingston have zero heat over what transpired and that he never hurt anyone, including AEW World Champion “Hangman” Adam Page.
You can check out Joey Janela’s tweet below:
