What's the status of Wardlow?

Where in the world was Wardlow?

At one point, it would've been easier to find the AEW wrestler if he was wearing the trademark stripped Waldo hat before he returned to television just three weeks ago.

The impressive athlete was with All Elite Wrestling from day one, as vignettes for his arrival aired during the first pay-per-view. He seemed to check all the boxes for a potential major league pro wrestler. He had size, speed, and agility. He had the in-ring athleticism to be able to work the emerging All Elite style, but had a look that made him stand out from the majority of the rest of the roster that initially consisted of mostly cruiser weight wrestlers in 2019. Wardlow had more mainstream marketing potential than some of the independent names that originally joined the company at the launch, but weren't re-signed after those deals expired. Credit for the effort from someone like Marko Stunt, but it goes without saying that Wardlow would be more noticeable to the casual fan.

For whatever reason, the combination of timing, injuries, and mismanagement has kept Wardlow in the same place now as he was seven years ago, a guy that looks to have main event potential. The problem is, after those seven years, and more importantly the continuous stop and then start pushes, the window to sell Wardlow as a credible main event star might be closed for him in the organization. The audience can only be sold the same narrative so many times when it falls through that they aren't going to buy the concept again.

Don't get me wrong, I wrote a few years ago that the best thing Wardlow can do is get away from All Elite to try to make the most of his career in the WWE. He has some similarities to Bron Breakker in terms of raw talent, but has been completely mismanaged in terms of his development as a character and in-ring opportunities. Wardlow is much more naturally gifted as far as his aptitude for sports entertainment than Bill Goldberg was back in the day, but with the way that Tony Khan missed the boat on Wardlow, it's reminiscent, to a lesser degree, of the way that Goldberg wasn't developed beyond the basic squash match in WCW. It goes without saying that the biggest difference is that at least the former Atlanta Falcon had a meteoric, albeit brief run on top, whereas Wardlow can't get passed the mid-card.

As we know, Wardlow was the body guard for Maxwell Jacobs Friedman for the first few years of his time in the company, with the notion that it was a way to build up an eventual baby face turn to move him up the ladder. As we also know, when there were rumors that MJF threatened to walk out of the company after he missed a scheduled autograph signing before the Double or Nothing pay-per-view in 2022 due to contractual disagreements, the focus completely shifted to what was going on behind the scenes rather than what happened in the ring, which was a trend for a few years in the organization. As a result, Wardlow won the match by using a series of power bombs and looked  strong in the process, but he was a complete afterthought. The narrative of that chapter of Wardlow's career was if MJF had quit the company, not his progress up the card.

By 2023, Wardlow had won the TNT championship on a few occasions and had even been managed by Arn Anderson for a brief period of time. The issue was that the reigns with the TNT title were short and disjointed. The random title switches at the time did nothing to provide any solid direction for him, but rather appeared to put a ceiling on his possible trajectory in AEW. His momentum more or less completely halted when he was off of television for a few months, and Arn left the company after his contract expired. I said it at the time, and I'll say it again here, it says something about the lack of direction and leadership in the promotion when someone like Arn Anderson would rather stay home than collect a paycheck from a wrestling company, particularly because he's essentially a lifer of the business.

It didn't do Wardlow any favors when he was revealed as one of the henchmen in the failed devil mask reveal since it was considered one of the more underwhelming angles in the history of the company. Furthermore, it was another example of him running in place in terms of his position in the promotion since he was a member of a faction again, the same way he was a few years earlier with MJF's short-lived Pinnacle group.

Outside less than half a dozen matches at the beginning of 2024, we've barely seen Wardlow in All Elite Wrestling in the past three years. It was said that he suffered a knee injury in 2024, but it wasn't disclosed if it was serious or not. When he reemerged the following year, he was back for one surprise appearence when he attacked Swerve Strickland at the Forbidden Door pay-per-view and torn his pectoral muscle in the process. There was some speculation that he suffered the injury when he was filming a season of American Gladiators that was released earlier this year on Amazon Prime. If that was the case, why did Tony Khan allow one of his contracted talents to work on that show, but didn't bring him back to AEW television when the knee injury healed up?

Regardless of how it happened, the torn pec kept him on the shelf for another year until a video was shown during the All Out pay-per-view to indicate his return and then he had his comeback match during the Pac tribute episode of Dynamite as a part of the Don Callis family.

How ironic is it that Wardlow finds himself in another faction, the same role that he had years ago?

At this point, the argument could be made that maybe Wardlow is too injury prone to truly invest major stock into as a big time player, but that wasn't the case when he was allowed to flounder years ago so either way, there's a case to be made that All Elite missed the boat on him. As I said before, I'm not sure if the All Elite audience would be receptive to another potential push for him, but it also still seems like a waste of his talent if he's just another wrestler in the Callis stable. Who knows, maybe Wardlow is paid very well so he's content with his position in the industry? If that's the case, good for him, the entire point of the business is to make as much money as possible, but again, his current status must be considered underwhelming compared to the expectations many had for him early in his AEW career.

Considering that he was brought back to television, that suggests that Wardlow still has a decent amount of time left on his All Elite contract. If he didn't, Tony would've let him stay home and collect the paycheck until he re-signed or the deal expired. At 38, Wardlow still has several years of his theoretical prime left, but given the track record, there's no indication that he's going to be given an opportunity to be a bigger star in AEW so he should probably at least consider a jump to WWE if a contract is offered in the future.