During a recent appearance on Francine’s “Eyes Up Here” podcast, Nic Nemeth (Dolph Ziggler in WWE) revealed that he had talks with AEW following his WWE release but chose to work the independent scene instead. Nemeth has appeared at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom and on TNA Impact since his WWE exit. He said,

“I talked to Tony a long time ago and he was like, ‘Just so you know, you can do anything you want while you work here.’ He wants everyone to have a good time and doing the best possible thing. That’s awesome, and a lot of people did think I was going to AEW, and I love a bunch of people in AEW, I love AEW, Tony’s freaking great.”

He continued, “I was just weighing my options and figuring out, I didn’t have a plan. I’ve got this thing in my head. I wanna go and make a name for myself on the independents. Just to see if I can go outside of this New York bubble … I wanna’ see if I can hang, or be better, or the best everywhere around the world … I just got out of a long term relationship, I’m not looking to get engaged, or engaged to be engaged.“