Swerve Strickland On Will Ospreay, Forbidden Door, Pushing Boundaries

Swerve Strickland Talks Forbidden Door, Knee Injury, And Pushing Storyline Boundaries In AEW

Rob Wolkenbrod: You’re about two years removed from your first world title reign. Looking back, what defined it and the momentum leading up to it?

Swerve Strickland: It was just a slew of right place, right time, right opponents, right event. It was a wave of good momentum, and it was what helped us out. I was a fresh face entering the main event scene because, even prior to me being in AEW, a lot of new fans didn’t really see me in that light except on the independents. So it was a new, fresh face.

It was a wave of support and everything. It was just me carving through a lot of the roster and mixing it up with so many different talents, like the Jeff Hardys and the RVDs coming in, Billy Gunn, Orange Cassidy and Darby. I was literally working hard through the roster to a point where people were like, “Alright, we want to see this guy elevate.”

It was all these perfect matchups at the right time with the right momentum. I took my body seriously. I took everything a lot more seriously. My look, everything just went like that, and I just caught a good wave. I rode it all the way to the Dynasty pay-per-view with Samoa Joe.

Wolkenbrod: Do you feel like you had an inflection point at that time where you really made that true connection with the fans who maybe didn’t know you from the independent scene or your work in WWE, but maybe they really connected with you then through AEW?

Strickland: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, man, it was always about arriving in AEW. It was a fresh slate. I didn’t want to carry anything over from NXT or WWE or even the independents. Everything was a fresh slate.

I made little Easter eggs throughout the run that were throwbacks to previous things, but it wasn’t solely based off the whole thing. Everything you were going to get was new because I always go into the mindset that I’m gaining a new fan every episode. I’m gaining a new fan that’s never seen me before every pay-per-view, every match and every promo.

My mentality was always winning over somebody new that had never seen me or was just hearing about me, and they were watching for the first time to see what all the hype was about, or if there was any hype at all.

That was always the mindset, and still to this day. My face-off with Will Ospreay is just like, “Let me get new fans. Let me gain people that just started watching now, who are on the fence about buying Forbidden Door. Let me sell them, bring them in and win them over.”

Wolkenbrod: You’d been wrestling through that meniscus injury since 2019. What finally convinced you that it was time to address it, and did stepping away from the ring for several months help you reflect on where your career was at?

Strickland: It was nagging pain that, at the time, I was just like, “No, I don’t have to deal with this pain anymore. I don’t have to fight through something that’s irritating me and bothering me.”

Even in the ring, it wasn’t as bad. It was always post-match. Post-match was limping through airports or having to ice it for so long when I arrived home and stuff. It was like, I’m in this stage of my life and career where I can actually take care of these things.

I’m in a position after the world championship and after All In Texas where it was like, “No, I’m in a good spot. Let me take care of that so I can come back better and come back 100 percent.”

Also, you want to know what’s going on with that. You kind of want to take those sneak peeks into your body to understand it more. Now I’m at the age, 36 going on 37 this year, where I’ve got to know what’s going on in my body to preserve it, keep it going, make it look as good as I can, perform as good as I can and feel as good as I can. You want to be here as long as you can on this Earth.

That was a good time to take a look and scan everything that’s going on so you don’t miss anything and don’t have any mishaps. You don’t want to be surprised with, “Oh, we found this in you,” and have that take you away from the ring even longer and totally derail your career.

We’ve seen it happen to a lot of greats time and time again, and I’m in a great position to be granted the opportunity to be able to do that.

Wolkenbrod: Has it made you adjust how you operate in the ring?

Strickland: Absolutely not. They looked at it and saw there was a little bit of arthritis developing. So I’m on the medication, the peptides, and everything to make sure there’s no pain. Not just to mask the pain, but remove the pain and actually improve things, grow the necessary ligaments, get the joint back to where it should be, make it stronger and develop brand-new cells. It was a lot of great research that I wasn’t aware of. Now that I know more about it, it got me back to performing at a top level again.

Wolkenbrod: Speaking of performing at that level, those Kenny Omega matches you had earlier this year, what did it mean to share the ring with him not once, but twice? And did that help validate anything for you personally in your career?

Strickland: It was all the validation I needed. Kenny is not just one of the top guys in AEW. He’s one of the top benchmarks in pro wrestling, period. You want to match skill for skill. You want people to see it. I always say people seeing it changes their perception of a lot of things. It’s all about seeing is believing in the wrestling industry. I truly believe that.

When you have both of these guys on the roster at the same time, and you know they’re healthy and there’s no issues between them, you’ve got to put them together. You don’t want to miss out on those matchups.

So I was like, “We’ve got to get to that.” He was very excited and very motivated. A motivated Kenny Omega is a dangerous Kenny Omega in the industry, man.

Wolkenbrod: You’ve talked a lot about power lately. Is power something you’ve always been drawn to in storytelling, and is there a power storyline from wrestling’s past, or another form of entertainment, that particularly resonates with you?

Strickland: The crazy thing about power is that it can be defined many different ways, depending on the character, the opponent, whatever.

Some people, if we’ve gone way back to the WWF Attitude Era days, power was The Corporation. Then power is an authority figure. Power is a position at the top, whether it’s the position at the top of the locker room or the position at the top of the company, or whoever can hold the pen, coordinate things and manipulate things. Then there’s the power struggle.

Then there are overviews of power, like The Young Bucks and things like that. The position of power is having everybody have to come through you, in a sense.

In my way and my sense, now it’s like I can push the things out that have stopped me from attaining the world championship for so many years. I can literally form my own fence and guard it. I can manipulate power for myself, and not just to push people around and tell them what to do. No, this is the preventative block. You have to go through these things in order to get to Swerve.

That’s what the power dynamic is all about because I’ve seen it done in AEW through other roles. That’s what I need in order to get back to the world championship.

Wolkenbrod: When you mentioned all these different power storylines, is your goal always to try to differentiate from those past ones from wrestling, or do you feel like you’re able to take little pieces and bits and work them into your own way?

Strickland: I’m constantly navigating between pieces every time. The house is always changing shape and form, so you have to change with it. You have to adjust as things progress.

The door used to be there. Now it’s not there. Now it’s small windows, and we’ve got to find a different way.

That’s just how life works. That’s how entertainment works. That’s how our industry works, and that’s how the AEW product works. I think fans do like the curveballs every once in a while, with pivoting and re-navigating things.

Wolkenbrod: When people talk about the defining rivalries of this AEW era, your story with Adam Page is forever going to be part of that conversation. I saw in a previous interview that you spoke about pushing boundaries through that rivalry. Do you think there’s a limit to how far you can push storytelling in wrestling, or do you feel like that ceiling hasn’t been reached yet?

Strickland: I feel like the fans are always going to demand more and demand something new and unique, so therefore the ceiling hasn’t been reached yet.

I remember several years ago, almost a decade ago now, the storytelling with the Hardy Compound and the things Jeff Hardy was doing in TNA with the Broken Universe, with Matt and all that stuff. That was a ceiling that nobody was ever breaking through before. Then Bray Wyatt came along and broke another ceiling.

As long as you have a connection with the fan base, the ceiling is always going to be broken because they’re always willing to go on a ride.

With me and Hangman, it was like, let’s find a way to break our own ceiling in AEW and get people talking about it throughout the wrestling world. It was compelling stuff. The fans were jarred at first, but then it shaped the new characters of what we became and the different men we became out of that.

Now they’re attached to us even stronger because of the things in the past. We always have that lore behind us. Every time we’re on screen, either by ourselves or together, there’s always that lore behind us.

Wolkenbrod: When you’re in the moment telling those stories, like with Hangman, do you envision in your mind how your character could look a year or two from now? Do you feel this action you’re doing now is going to last with the fans forever, or do you have a different mindset with that?

Strickland: I land on something and I stick with that. I always think about, “Okay, what’s the most out of this I can get?”

At the same time, if you switch up so many times, you’ll lose the fan base. You don’t want to leave them behind. I always want people to think, “Okay, this is familiar. They know this is the Swerve look now.” That Swerve look is defining this era of Swerve.

If you look at all the iterations of me throughout AEW, I went through stages, and everybody knows what I was going through at those stages.

This gear was because it was this moment. He goes to this gear now because this is where he faced this guy. This was the era when he was in a tag team. This gear is when he faced Ricochet. Those are defining era moments. So now I’m in a defining era moment with what I’m looking like now.

Wolkenbrod: Forbidden Door has evolved quite a bit since it began. Where do you think the AEW-NJPW relationship stands today compared to those early years?

Strickland: I think it’s in an interesting place right now because I think New Japan is in an interesting place. They’re still trying to find their new stars, their talents that take them into the next generation.

AEW is in a place where all of our stars are trying to rise to the top. Kevin Knight has found his own. Kyle Fletcher is finding his own. Bandido is stepping into his own. Now you’ve got Takeshita finally besting Okada. That was a former New Japan legend over there. All these guys are stepping into their own. It’s like all these guys have to be showcased now in certain ways.

It’s almost like New Japan hasn’t found all of the guys who are stepping into their own yet, but you are getting the Callum Newmans and the Yota Tsujis. There are guys over there, but now it’s like, can their guys match the amount of guys that we have stepping up? That’s the challenge right now. It’s the new wave of talent matching up.

I would say the same thing about the women with Stardom as well. It’s all about matching up that wave of talent that’s rising up. You want to meet them at the same time, not when one side is rising higher than the other.

Wolkenbrod: People still resurface the old dance-off between you and Ospreay, and now you’re on this collision course again. The last time you faced each other, at Forbidden Door 2024, you were at very similar stages of your careers. When you look back at both of those moments, what stands out to you about how your paths have changed, or stayed the same, since then?

Strickland: Being the best has always been the staple between each other. We know how great of a talent Will Ospreay is, but I’m just that one guy he can’t beat. He’s hard to get past.

That’s the beauty of matchups in every sport. Even in the NBA, there’s that one team that gives a great team problems. There’s that one matchup. One boxer could go on a 10-fight win streak, but there’s that one guy. I’m that one guy when it comes to Will Ospreay.

He’s overcome every obstacle that AEW has thrown at him except me, and I happen to be one of his best friends. It’s not a war between us, but we’re different men. We’ve gone through different things. We parted ways. He’s gotten older. He has a family now. He’s grown as a man. This is the first time he’s had to overcome a detriment to his body. Now he has to fight through the knees, the Death Riders and so many more challenges, not only in the ring but in life as well.

I had to go through all these things in life, too. I had to mature to the next level of myself. We’re both at different stages as men, and now we’re coming back a year later. This is our first interaction on screen after a whole year, after all the things we’ve gone through with our bodies and everything like that. My first surgery ever. His first surgery ever.

It changes you. It does do things to you mentally. We’re kind of repaired men. I always go to the fact of who we are as men before we get to who we are as competitors. That’s what you’re seeing. You’re seeing a lot of held-in contempt for one another.

It’s like, “Where the hell were you? I was holding onto this for a year. What are you doing? Why are you hanging out with these guys?”

This is a year of holding that in and not communicating with one another.

“You call me your brother, but you didn’t do this.”

Now you have all that looming over a world title match and the possibility of main eventing Wembley Stadium hovering above us. It’s going to mess with you, especially as top competitors. That’s what the matchup and the promo were. It was just getting this off our chests as people, and then it got to the competitors. That’s why we feel as fired up as we are and why we’re so passionate about what we’re fighting for.

Wolkenbrod: When you think back on headlining Wembley Stadium with Bryan Danielson, what lessons from that experience have stayed with you?

Strickland: That was a match where I honestly had never been more comfortable. I’ve never been more comfortable in a ring to that point.

That’s where I was Neo in The Matrix. In that moment, I had full control and full awareness. Everything was just lighting up. All my senses were firing. That’s where I was like, “Okay, this is reaching the next level of in-ring performing.”

I can’t do that without Bryan Danielson. The fact that I’ve been there with Bryan Danielson never solidified me more in my own mind. It was one of those moments where you feel like you’re capable of reaching that level. Then it became, “Okay, I know now. I know.”

I can’t reach that level without Bryan Danielson. The pressure he put on me, the performer he is, the professional he is and the human being he is, I don’t reach that next level without his help. That’s where I was like, “I can do anything. I can fly. I know that I can.”

I can do these things because I was put in that position and that situation, and Tony Khan put the faith and belief in both of us to be there and do it.

Wolkenbrod: Everyone is talking about why the road to All In is Will Ospreay’s story. Why is it actually Swerve Strickland’s story?

Strickland: Mainly because of what I just spoke on. I wasn’t really looked at as, “Oh, this is the star that’s going to take us into the next generation.” I had to carve my way up and take it.

That was the story of me getting to the world championship in the first place. I had to take those opportunities, and I had to fight the guys they were favoring over me. This is another one of those opportunities. They’re favoring Will Ospreay over me because it’s like, “This is his destiny. This is his fate.”

I’ve seen that time and time again. Like I said, I’ve been the one who disrupts plans throughout my career. I’m the one you don’t see coming. But this time, you see me coming. I’m right here, and I’m unavoidable at this point.

I’m someone that Ospreay takes very seriously and also holds very close to his heart as a friend. I came up with Will, and I helped him up in a lot of ways. He did the same for me throughout more than 10 years on this wrestling journey.

But this is more my story. It’s about leading this pack again and doing it in the unique way that I always do, with the unique company and people that AEW is. Once again, it’s my quest for power. That’s always been my story, no matter who was in the way of it.

Honestly, it’s also the sacrifice of asking what’s more important: my friendship, my connection with people, or the success of it.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.