Roderick Strong recently shocked the AEW world by signing with the company last month. According to his former Undisputed Era friend Bobby Fish, he couldn’t be happier.
Speaking to Nick Hausman for Inside The Ropes, Fish said that he’s happy to see his “boys” at work, and called Strong and Adam Cole people who have always been his close friends.
“I will just say this, I’m just happy to see my boys at work,” said Fish. “These are and have always been legitimate, close friends of mine. I think that’s why the Undisputed Era worked the way that it did in NXT because there was no fabrication to it.”
Fish went on to talk about how the group of he, Strong, Cole, and Kyle O’Reilly — who made up the group The Undisputed Era in NXT and are now all signed to All Elite Wrestling — were all very real friends, and that’s part of what made their group dynamic work. In the end, Fish said, he’s glad to be back with his best friends.
“We were four guys who, you know, were tight,” Fish said. “What you saw play out on screen was four dudes who had each other’s back and that was marketable. It was real. I’m just happy to see two of my best friends back at work with jobs and able to support their families. This is real-life stuff. We do it in this fictional world of pro wrestling, but there’s real people here with real lives, real kids, real homes, real dogs, real bills.”
“I think there’s always a conversation that can be had with a lot of places. I’d like to think I have maintained good rapport, have friends, generally, in every place that I’ve worked. They are and they will probably always be the big dog when it comes to pro wrestling. They have their pick of what they want, and what they want at times is very specific.
“So, if they see something that they want to create, or that they can use, they’re gonna go after it and get it and for some reason,” Fish explained. “If that ends up being me that, you know, happy to have a conversation with people and see if something makes sense. But they’re — WWE is a machine man, and you don’t always know, and what you think you know, you probably don’t know 100% who’s in charge.”
If you use this transcript, credit Nick Hausman and Inside The Ropes and link back to this post.