William Regal is reportedly on the verge of returning to WWE after being written off AEW television last week. Numerous reports about Regal’s AEW contract have popped up over the past week and some of them have different reasons for why he was able to get out of his deal less than a full year after joining the promotion, but all of them repeat the sentiment that he’s leaving the young promotion in order to work within WWE once again. A couple of reports also dropped this weekend about Regal not enjoying his relatively brief tenure in AEW, though nobody who worked within the company was making that claim on the record.ย
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But one of its wrestlers, Brian Pillman Jr., did shed some light on how much of the locker room was willing to listen to the former NXT General Manager. In response to comments on Twitter made by Wrestling Inc.’s Justin LaBar, Pillman wrote, “There are several of us, myself included, who spent multiple hours before TV working with Regal and learning from him. Should there have been more? Maybe, but he and (Bryan) Danielson always had a solid audience around the ring before TV.”
“I know you said ‘some’, I just didn’t want the narrative to be that he was just standing there preaching to the air. Some days there would be 10 guys out there soaking it in, some days it would just be me and Wheeler (Yuta) and Lee (Moriarty). I didn’t mind when his attention wasn’t spread as thin,” he later added.
Claudi Castagnoli, a member of the Regal’s Blackpool Combat Club, was asked about the news by Dallas Morning News on Monday. He responded, “We have to wait and see. You know, we’re still talking, I think we have to have a little group meeting to figure out what’s next, or if there’s a next. I’ll leave it at that.”
“I never stop learning from him. He’s the reason I got into WWE in the first place back in 2011, and he was one of the reasons why I really, you know, felt at home when I got to AEW because he was there,” he later added.
