As noted, Kazarian made a surprise appearance at last night’s Impact Wrestling Hard To Kill pay-per-view and announced that he has signed a long-term contract with the company. His promo indicated that he is done with AEW, and that he may have left the company on not-so-great terms.
In an update, a new report from PWInsider notes how word from backstage at the pay-per-view was that Kazarian “pretty much told the truth about what happened” when he talked about deciding to remain complacent and go back to AEW to be with “people he thought were his friends” or to push himself.
It was noted that after Kazarian’s 30-minute match with Impact World Champion Josh Alexander at Over Drive this past November, Kazarian asked for his AEW release and it was granted. This was said to be a completely amicable situation based around Kazarian wanting to push himself harder as he’s getting close to the latter point of his career and that in Impact, he’d had a chance to be more in the mix than he’d likely be able to get the chance to do in AEW as the company has a much larger roster.
Kazarian reportedly “did business the right way” and would be welcomed back into the AEW locker room at any time, but moving forward he is with Impact.
For what it’s worth, Kazarian remains on the official AEW website roster as of this writing, but that should change soon.
Kazarian worked one Impact match in 2021, but returned in May 2022, while under contract to AEW, and ended up working 10 matches for the company, including at Bound For Glory in October when he captured the X-Division Title from Mike Bailey. Kazarian then exercised Option C and vacated the X-Division Title for a shot at Impact World Champion Josh Alexander, but came up short. His last Impact match was a DQ win over Steve Maclin on the December 1 episode. Kazarian’s last AEW match was a loss to Konosuke Takeshita on the December 26 edition of Elevation, taped on December 21. Before that, his last AEW match was a win over Zack Clayton on the November 15 Dark episode, which was taped back on October 28.
Kazarian started with AEW in 2019 at the time of launch. It was reported in January 2022 that he signed a new contract.
