Joey Janela has been with AEW since its inception, seeing a modicum of success. Overall, however, Janela hasn’t been featured prominently. His time with AEW is now coming to an end.
During an interview with Denise Salcedo, Janela confirmed he would not be re-signing with AEW.
“I said in a couple interviews with Sean {Sapp} in September that All Out weekend, I said ‘yes.’ Recently, in an interview with Barstool Sports I said ‘yes’. My contract is up on May 1st {2022}. And I am gonna have to say no now. I am not interested in signing with AEW. Re-signing with them. I was a little scared getting back into the independent wrestling world and making money. You take those things for granted, you’re getting a paycheck every two weeks. A pretty good paycheck. In your head you’re like ‘shit, when this is over, this is gonna disappear.’ But I was born a hustler in this business. I was scared to get back into that world but now I am no longer scared. Back in the day before AEW, I was going out to wrestle for basically nothing. I was just doing it because I love it, I would do 3-4 shows a week. I would rack up small pay days from the promoters, plus my merchandise and I’d be satisfied and I’d be making a lot of money. But now my price has gone significantly up so I didn’t know if the promoters were gonna welcome me back with open arms. But recently I’ve realized that the promoters know the situation, they realize what the situation is gonna be and they’ve been hitting me up big time. They say ‘we want you to come back here. We want you to wrestle some of the newer guys we have. We want you to wrestle some of the older guys. We want Joey Janela back,'”
While Joey’s time with AEW may be coming to an end, he has continued to thrive in GCW and other promotions. You can listen to his interview with Salcedo below.
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