The leaps from AEW to WWE have been limited. The first big star to leave Tony Khan’s wrestling company for the land of sports-entertainment was Cody Rhodes, as the American Nightmare returned to his longtime employer in April 2022. Following Rhodes was Brian Pillman Jr., the first ex-AEW talent to report to WWE NXT. Jade Cargill, Shawn Spears, and Ethan Page would follow suit over the past year. While there have been only a handful of contracted talent to make the jump, dozens of wrestlers have competed in one-off AEW matches and subsequently signed with WWE after. Current NXT stars like Je’Von Evans and Nathan Frazer both had contests on AEW Dark before inking WWE developmental contracts.
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AEW’s Thunder Rosa Helped Thea Hail Land WWE Deal
Another star akin to Evans and Frazer is NXT’s Thea Hail. Prior to signing with WWE, Hail competed on AEW Dark as Nikita Knight. She battled future AEW Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa in a losing effort.
As it turns out, Rosa’s help to getting Hail exposure went beyond just wrestling her.
“I ended up landing a dark [non-televised] match for AEW after having a seminar with QT Marshall, and I wrestled Thunder Rosa, and she got me in contact with a recruiter from WWE,” Hail revealed in an interview with Pittsburgh City Paper.
Hail signed with WWE in 2022, being announced as one of the company’s latest batch of recruits that March. She began wrestling on television just weeks later, and by May 2022, Hail had joined fan-favorite stable Chase U.
“I quit gymnastics, I quit cheer. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, and I was just scrolling through Instagram, and I always follow[ed] WWE,” Hail said of her decision to begin pursuing pro wrestling in 2021. “I always thought it was amazing, but I never really thought it was a thing you could do. I saw this video of Rey Mysterio, and I just put my phone down, and went, ‘I’m doing that.’ [My dad] found me a training school in Pittsburgh called the Stronghold Training Center, and then that was combined with the Iron City Wrestling Academy, and I trained at both of those schools.”
Hail challenges NXT Women’s Champion Roxanne Perez for her title tonight at NXT The Great American Bash, which airs at 8 PM ET on USA Network.
