An All Elite Wrestling (AEW) star is not returning to the company. According to Fightful, Jake Atlas is not expected back in AEW after suffering an injury during his first week with the company. This also comes on the heels of Atlas being arrested for domestic violence in May.
According to Fightful, Atlas was not a full-time competitor with AEW as he was on a per-appearance deal, despite having his own graphic. But once Atlas suffered the injury, the deal was paused and Atlas was no longer with the company officially. Atlas made his AEW debut in December after being released from his WWE contract in August.
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During his time in WWE, Atlas, 27, competed in NXT and made his debut in 2019. In an interview with Instinct Culture by Denise Salcedo, Atlas talked about how he wanted to work for AEW after being released by WWE. “I am obviously interested in going to AEW,” Atlas said, per Wrestling Inc.
“I have not talked to Tony Khan personally. Jungle Boy is one of my best friends. I feel like for the past two years we’ve kind of had to hide our friendship a little bit because we worked for rival companies. I love him to death. I think that our story is unique and I think our story is great. I actually went incognito to watch Jungle Boy wrestle Chris Jericho when I was working with WWE. It was in Jacksonville, so I took the drive up. He’s like a brother to me and I am excited to see what can happen in the future.”
In that same interview, Atlas talked about representing the LGBTO+ community. “As the person who is openly gay and coming into this brand with that behind him, I could have done more for myself, to speak up and kind of join the conversation and lead them to creating something that could have been more for the brand,” Atlas said. “I was too late after I realized that I could and should have done that. I was too afraid, I was too shy, I was too closed off early on and I wanted to just do everything right that I didn’t think to speak up and say, ‘well, let’s actually talk about it. Let’s have a conversation about this so that we can help so many people and kind of just bring a new perspective to the brand.’”
