Former WWE Star Reportedly Joining AEW TV

By Liam Crowley

All Elite Wrestling has a recurring roster, but some of its talent have popped in in a revolving door capacity. Legendary tag teams like the Motor City Machine Guns made a one-off appearance at AEW All Out 2022. Rising independent stars such as Mance Warner stopped by for a singles contest on AEW TV. Wrestling royalty like Bret Hart showed up for a championship title segment and were never seen on AEW programming again. All those examples aside, occasionally AEW decides to ink these thought-to-be one-off talents to full-time contracts, as evident by the likes of Bandido and Komander.

Warning – The rest of this article contains spoilers from AEW Rampage.

This seems to be the case with the recently returned John Hennigan. The former John Morrison made his AEW debut in the inaugural Owen Hart Cup tournament, losing to Samoa Joe in the first round. Under the new ring name Johnny Elite, he went on to wrestle two more matches for AEW but was not brought in on a full-time basis. He made his first AEW appearance on this past Wednesday's taping of AEW Rampage, aligning himself with QTV in their feud against The Acclaimed.

As reported by PWInsider, Hennigan will be using the ring name "Johnny Television" moving forward. It's unclear if "television" will be spelled out or if he will simply go by "Johnny TV." This is a recurring theme in Hennigan's career, as he has altered his surname to fit whichever promotion or gimmick he is using at that time. He previously wrestled as "Johnny Impact" in Impact Wrestling, "Johnny Warrior" in Warrior Wrestling, and "Johnny Downunder" when competing in Australian promotions.

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It's worth noting that Hennigan's wife, Taya Valkyrie, recently signed with AEW. Hennigan and Valkyrie have worked together on the independent circuit before, both as teammates and as opponents. 

Hennigan's AEW return can be seen on AEW Rampage this Friday at 10 PM ET on TNT. That broadcast kicks off three straight days of AEW programming, culminating with AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door on Sunday.

AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door card:

  • IWGP United States Championship: Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay
  • Kazuchika Okada vs. Bryan Danielson
  • AEW World Championship: MJF vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi
  • IWGP World Heavyweight Championship: Sanada vs. "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry
  • AEW International Championship: Orange Cassidy vs. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Daniel Garcia
  • Owen Hart Cup: CM Punk vs. Satoshi Kojima
  • AEW Women's World Championship: Toni Storm vs. Willow Nightingale 
  • Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta), Konosuke Takeshita & Shota Umino vs. The Elite (Hangman Page & The Young Bucks), Eddie Kingston & Tomohiro Ishii
  • Sting, Darby Allin & TBA vs. Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara & Minoru Suzuki
  • Owen Hart Cup: Athena vs. Billie Starkz (Zero Hour)

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