There has been no let up for Swerve Stickland after becoming the first black AEW World champion by defeating Samoa Joe at AEW Dynasty in April.
The champ successfully defended his title against Christian Cage at Double or Nothing last month with Floyd Mayweather Jr in attendance and is set to face Roderick Strong with the championship on the line Wednesday on Dynamite (8 p.m., TBS).
A victory over Strong means he moves on to face Will Ospreay in the main event of AEW/NJPW Forbidden Door on June 30 at UBS Arena (8 p.m., Bleacher Report/Triller).
To look at all that’s ahead of him, Strickland took time for some Q&A with The Post’s Joseph Staszewski
(Edited for clarity and length)
Q: You said during your promo on Collision that you and Will Ospreay need each other and complement each other. What did you mean by that?
A: This is his first main event on a pay-per-view. Everything that he’s been doing has been pushing the bar higher and higher and elevating every time he gets in the ring. There’s still things he needs to accomplish and has to accomplish. He needs to go through me to do that. There’s things that even though I’m AEW World champion and I’ve made history and main evented a pay-per-view on Dynasty, there are still things I’m looking to accomplish as well.
This is my first time on the Forbidden Door main show, now I’m main eventing my first time. It took me and Will to make the things that I want to accomplish happen. We complement each other. We’re still goal-driven to do better and to elevate our game and we kind of need each other to do that.
Q: Do you feel like the way you presented yourselves on TV can complement each other creatively? You have a little bit of a mean streak to you and Will is starting to go more the true babyface route.
A: One hundred percent. There is still so much more story to be told in the upcoming week. I don’t want to give up too much. I want you to continue to watch and look for certain things now. People know what that relationship is like between me and him.
Q: Are you guys catching each other at the right time? It feels like you’re both hitting the peak of your careers, obviously you’re a world champion now. It feels like this is the right time to have you cross paths
A: I did like the shock value of it. People didn’t see it coming. We kind of threw it out on them and I love that. I love that people couldn’t calculate this type of thing.
Q: The last two times you and Will wrestled was back in 2016. What do you remember about those matches and what do you remember about a young Will Ospreay?
A: He’s always had this God-given ability to show out and perform, but now he’s added that extra oomph to everything he does. There is so much force behind everything he does. All his hits, there is so much emphasis on the attack and his explosiveness has gone even further. I’ve never in my life seen anybody as explosive as he is, but also had the agility to match it as well. Having both combinations makes him deadly. He’s not a one-note performer.
Q: After the Forbidden Door match was made, the video of the two of you dancing to “Uptown Funk” during one of those 2016 matches started circulating again. What do you remember about how that came about and how do you look back on that with where you are now in your career?
A: That was just a time of wanting to have fun and we were making names for ourselves and we just wanted to have fun in the process of it. We still have our fun in different ways now in All Elite Wrestling and in this stage of our careers. We have our fun. It’s just in different ways, primarily we are looking to make legacies now. I feel like he’s matured so much he’s in legacy mode and at that time we were in have-fun mode. We weren’t trying to go viral. We were just trying to entertain a crowd in Germany.
Q: He’s starting to do Mercedes Mone’s dance. Do you think him and Prince Nana might have a dance-off?
A: There might be a good, likely chance. He’s (Ospreay) always been a dancing kind of dude if you’ve noticed. He’s always been very dancy.
Q: Why has it been important to you to be a champion who wrestles weekly on TV? Obviously, there are some who take the ilk that champions should be special, maybe they shouldn’t wrestle every week.
A: It’s just something to complain about with All Elite Wrestling in my opinion because nobody had the issue when Jon Moxley was doing that and wrestling on independent shows as the AEW World champion and he’s one of the greatest champions we’ve ever had. It’s just finding something to poke at. Me being an AEW World champion, I’m going to be one of the most polarizing ones because I have such a microscope over me on every little thing I do for many different reasons because of the history I made. I’m gonna get that scrutiny for it and AEW is gonna take some scrutiny for it.
Not only am I being AEW world champion, I’m also helping lead the locker room. I also want to bring up other talent as well. I go back to Jon Moxley. Look what he did for Wheeler Yuta, him main eventing a Rampage as AEW World champion. It helped make Wheeler Yuta in the Blackpool Combat Club. I want to make sure everyone’s moving in a certain direction where they need to go and that’s my responsibility in different ways and if people are gonna have an issue with certain things like that that’s not my problem.
Wrestling fans have been programmed to [not] see heel champions for long periods of time. I feel like this is just a culture shock and ‘no I think that’s the standard.’ I’m like ‘no, there are different ways of being a champion.’ Bret Hart did different things as champion than Hogan did.
Q: You’ve said Roderick Strong bullied and pushed around a young Swerve. What did you learn from those matches in NXT with Roderick?
A: Really how to defend yourself. I’ve watched Roderick Strong do that not just in NXT but he’s been doing that since his PWG days. He’s had a reputation for that kind of stuff. That’s what makes him last so long in his career having that type of mentality. It’s lost kind of in the wrestling world, those gatekeeper-type talents. But it makes you respect the business. It makes you take the craft very seriously. You need guys like a Roderick Strong around. That’s not a bad thing. It’s not a blemish on who he is or the type of professional he is. I’m not in that stage of my career to be bullied and beat around and smacked around anymore.’
Q: What did it mean for you to have Floyd Mayweather Jr. say he was ‘in’ after seeing your match at Double or Nothing? And is there a chance we see more interaction between the two of you?
A: To me it means influence. That’s the kind of influence I have. Floyd Mayweather is not someone you just bring out and just get him out the house. He’s not someone who does something for nothing or easily. He came out to show love because he heard All Elite Wrestling had a black world champion and he wanted to see it for himself and that means something. That goes to show you what I’m doing means something. That’s the far and the reach of that. What come of that we will see. You will just like I will. Just know that’s impact on having not only on wrestling but the world.
Q: Do you have a dream scenario with Floyd?
A: I would love for him to walk me out to a fight. I would love to walk him out to a fight. That would be a true dream.
Q: Why has it been important for you to take some of your storytelling away from the ring and the arena — the attack on Nick Wayne, invading Hangman’s home and fighting Christian in the parking lot? Does this help set your stories a part?
A: It takes the fact that you’re not safe anywhere with me. People take advantage of the fact that they can just run away and once they leave that they’re safe. I never wanted that feeling that anyone in my opposition is ever safe just because they’re not in a wrestling ring. I think that’s what creates a real danger about me. Oh you can run, but you’ll never stop running.
Q: There has been some reports about the creative process getting a little hectic lately in AEW. What’s been your experience with the creative process recently?
A: It’s give and take. Not everything that I came up with worked, not everything that I’ve come up with has been cleared. Ultimately, it’s about what your boss wants and what he’s looking for. It’s also about gaining trust. You got to know what’s best for the company and what’s best for the person. Myself, Tony Khan and the rest of management tries to balance that out.
