Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
Daniel Garcia’s contract with All Elite Wrestling is coming up, meaning there are a lot of avenues he could explore. Will he re-sign with AEW? If so, how will the company use him going forward? Could he be the newest member of the Blackpool Combat Club (or whatever they want to call themselves) who replaces Wheeler Yuta as the young pupil? Will he leave and go elsewhere? If so, is it as simple as heading to WWE and likely being put on the NXT brand?
My question for you today is “Would you rather Garcia stay in AEW, join Jon Moxley, or do something else? Or would you rather him go to WWE, or do something else entirely?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
My favorite option at this point would be to see him go to WWE. I’ve seen him face enough of the roster in AEW to know that most of what I’d be seeing going forward would be reruns, so I want to see him flourish elsewhere and have a whole new set of wrestlers to work with. Frankly, I think he’d be a fantastic fit for NXT, too, and that he might be one of the talents who will fit in better there than in AEW.
At this point in his career, I don’t have a lot of faith that Tony Khan is going to really, truly build him up to winning titles and being a main-event talent. If he would have at least one any singles titles beyond a short stint with the Pure Championship, then I would have more faith in that, but it just doesn’t seem like that is TK’s priority. And that’s okay, in the grand scheme, if he doesn’t think that Garcia is someone he wants to invest in, but I enjoy Garcia enough to want to see him succeed beyond the level he’s been at in AEW.
If he does decide to re-sign with the company, though, rather than to leave AEW and head to WWE, then I would absolutely rather see him join the BCC than to continue doing the lone wolf thing.
A rematch with MJF doesn’t strike me as the game-changing incident that will set him off as the next big thing. If he loses, it reiterates that he’s on the level below MJF, definitively. A win doesn’t put him on the same level, either, as MJF essentially started out in the company already at the peak of what Garcia’s been able to achieve, and only ascended to higher spots on the totem pole since then.
Granted, Garcia doesn’t have to equal or top MJF to be successful. Look at how someone like Batista never reached “the guy” status in the same way Hulk Hogan did, but no one bats an eye at him being a legend. There’s room for more than one person in the upper-echelon. But I do think if Garcia is going to stick around, I’d rather see him develop more of that edge that he used to have and be the star pupil of the rowdiest group of hell raisers on the roster than to find himself once again in a Learning Tree type spot, or tagging with someone in an “I don’t know what else to do with you, so Wrestler X and Wrestler Y should just be partners for a bit” sense, or to continue being a perennial guy who can have a good match that he will ultimately lose.
Something has to be done to explain the Wheeler Yuta reluctance to attack Bryan Danielson, and if BCC is going to need a new third person to round out their trios tag titles, if it isn’t going to be Moxley himself, I think Garcia would be the next best option, provided he does re-sign. If he doesn’t, then I’m looking at them possibly just bringing someone else into the company, as there aren’t any others who stand out to me as potential options.
The worst case scenario for Garcia, to me, would be to re-sign with AEW and be stuck in exactly the same (or worse) position with no movement whatsoever. We’ve seen it happen numerous times in all companies, so it’s not outside of the realm of possibility to be promised the world, re-sign, and it all was b.s. But I’m hoping we see Garcia holding the NXT North American Championship or something by summer 2025, if not by the end of this year.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!