AEW’s commentary booth was without Excalibur this week. The masked former luchador’s absence was addressed on Wrestling Observer Radio. According to comments from Dave Meltzer, it’s possible Excalibur missed the show due to a controversial wrestling angle he participated in a long time ago. The angle involved using the N-word in reference to a Black wrestler.

Before addressing Excalibur’s absence, Dave Meltzer noted he had not heard any concrete reasons as to why the announcer missed the show. He did offer speculation as to a possible reason, however.

“There was an angle, I’m not sure if it was in 2003 or 2005. It was a long, long time ago,” Meltzer said.

“In that angle, Human Tornado, who was kind of being pushed as a top babyface and he would often ask for guys to do heavily-racial promos on him and he asked them to use the word. From what I was told, Kevin Steen was very reluctant and Human Tornado convinced Kevin Steen.”

“I don’t know if Excalibur and Disco Machine were reluctant or not. The person who was there said he doesn’t know what they were. But they all knew after they did it, and this is again like 15-17 years ago, they all knew after they did it that they f***ed up big time.”

“I have no idea what the story is as far as is he gone? Is he off for a couple of weeks? I know he took the trip to Florida for the show and was not used. And that’s all I really know.”

A user on Twitter posted this Tweet featuring comments made by Excalibur:

It seems like AEW attempts to be woke but how do they feel about Excalibur saying the N word at PWG in the wake of the #BlackLivesMatter movement?

— TJPedo (@TJPedo) July 29, 2020