Vince McMahon Made William Regal’s AEW Debut Possible

While he is an accomplished talent inside the ring, William Regal has arguably made a bigger impact on the professional wrestling industry in his years since retiring from active competition. Regal served as NXT General Manager for a number of years, with many praising him as the strongest on-screen authority figure that WWE has ever seen. Behind the scenes, Regal served as a talent scout as was credited with bringing in the likes of Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, and Claudio Castagnoli to WWE. When his WWE tenure ended, Regal leaped to AEW to form the Blackpool Combat Club, a faction that has collected numerous championships and has been a staple of Tony Khan’s promotion for nearly a year.

That AEW run began this past March at AEW Revolution, when Regal made a surprise debut at the end of Danielson’s match with Moxley. That AEW arrival came just two months after he was released from WWE, which is inside the standard 90-day no-compete clause. While many assumed Regal was under a 30-day grace period, as that is standard for NXT talent, that was not the case.

“I had a talent contract, as well as an employee contract,” Regal explained at ITR Live (h/t Fightful). “And it didn’t run out until the end of April because I played William Regal [on WWE TV].”

Regal revealed that then-WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon personally granted him an early exit from his talent contract to make his AEW Revolution debut possible.

“I started for AEW on the seventh of March. I didn’t call anybody else, I sent a message straight to the boss,” Regal continued. “‘Hey boss, I’ve got this thing with Bryan.’ He loves Bryan as well. ‘Absolutely, you go.’ [He] still paid me until the end of my talent contract. I was the only person who ever got paid by both companies at the same time.”

Regal finds himself in a similar contractual position today. With longtime friend and colleague Paul “Triple H” Levesque now running the WWE ship and son Charlie Dempsey kicking off his NXT career, Regal requested that AEW not renew his contract option at the end of the year, which AEW President Tony Khan agreed to. Come January 1st, Regal will be free to return to WWE in a backstage capacity, as he is not allowed to appear on-screen until 2024.