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Matt Rehwoldt, formerly known as Aiden English in WWE recently took to his YouTube channel to speak about a time he was nearly fired in WWE.
He started by speaking about how he was in a 6 man dark match after SmackDown and how they had planned to do a superkick party during the match.
“It was me, Rusev, and Baron Corbin versus The Usos and AJ Styles in a 6 man tag dark match, I went out there and had a blast and then in the conclusion The Usos, who have been known to throw several super kicks, we decided we were gonna do something fun where they started throwing a super kick party. They started throwing kick after kick after kick and we just all all keep feeding in and it’s just all non stop for five minutes, and then eventually I was gonna roll out and my partners were gonna sort of turn their back on me and just keep feeding me in. So the way we briefly talked about it was throw me in throw me in and eventually I tell everyone to stop and then I was gonna kick them and be like screw you turn around and I get kicked one more time and it’s over.”
Aiden then revealed that the plan they had made changed during the match without him knowing, which led to the referee being involved in the match.
“But as we go they kick kick everybody’s kicks pretty much in the match except the referee and so the audience start chanting referee referee. They roll me back one more time and there’s the referee kicks me and I go god. Everybody exploded, the crowd loved it and now I figured we were gonna go to the ending which was the big stop and kick and over. So I go back in one more time I tell everybody to stop but then everyone’s chanting ref and then AJ starts taking the referees shirt off, puts it on himself and it’s like kick his ass. I don’t know what’s going on I’m still thinking like are we gonna do the original finish, I guess not, but we’re gonna do something with the ref and then we start to line up and like everybody kick so triple kick on all of us. AJ jumps over and Rusev of course kicks out from the referee and the audience pop. End of SmackDown. End of a long weekend for us it was great, the audience loved it!”
He went on to say how once they got backstage, the producers were unhappy that they went off script, and threatened to release them.
“We get backstage and we get chewed and a new one. Vince McMahon wasn’t there. Triple H wasn’t there but the producers, the TR people for some reason I’m convinced because it was us and not some other major star, that’s not how you do it you buried yourselves out there, you buried the business. People are not gonna like this, and this was the SmackDown I believe before WrestleMania (34). We had to fly right down to New Orleans for WrestleMania and we get sat down and we get threatened with release, with gigantic fines, ten thousand, twenty thousand dollar thousand fines all this stuff. The referee is gonna get fired and everything even though you’re all telling him hey do it this is great, this is fun. The poor guy I think he got a fine. We got sat down at WrestleMania in the green room at the hotel. It was unbelievable for having some fun.”
After posting a link to the video on Twitter, Rehwoldt revealed John Cena ponied up the money for the talent who were fined.
Rusev and Aiden English weren’t fired at that time, however were both let go as part of a mass release during the pandemic a few years later
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