Jack Evans fired from AAA

Jack Evans and AAA

Jack Evans was fired from AAA for his comments to SoloWrestling (translation here), the same website reported today. I’ve been told the same separately. As usual, AAA hasn’t acknowledged the situation publicly and Jack’s stayed away from saying more. In the past, Jack’s been fired from AAA and later hired back. I don’t know that’s going to happen here, I’m hoping it’ll be happening, and it seems like a thing that ought to eventually happen given the lack of bodies in AAA at the moment. AAA’s historically been better than average at letting go of grudges and hiring people back when it made business sense for them to do it, so I hope my rare bit of optimism is warranted.

If you missed it, Jack’s long interview with Spain based Solowrestling about a month essentially got summarized down to “La Parka is bad at the techinical aspects of wrestling (but he gets himself over, so Jack realized there were more than moves to wrestling)” and “AAA hasn’t been as good since Konnan left.” It is the position of this author that both those statements are 100% accurate, and statements most people would agree with, but AAA viewed those comments as harsh criticism. AAA’s taken so many hits in the last couple years that there’s a strong “you’re with us or you’re against us” bunker mentality (which sometimes peeks thru on social media) and Jack’s mouth put him in the against us category. He acknowledged he was going to get in trouble for what he was saying while he was saying it, and that’s where you’ve got to just not say it. I agree with what Jack said, but wish he didn’t cost himself his job over it.

There’s more at stake than wanting to see a certain guy in a certain promotion. Jack’s got a wife, Jack’s got a kid, but I’m not sure if Jack has legal status to stay in Mexico if he’s not working in AAA. He theoretically could try to get in CMLL, but AAA likely holds his work visa and could make it impossible for Jack to work anywhere else. This could be an issue. I hope it’s not.

There’s some ripple effects from AAA letting go of Jack. Back around the start of Lucha Underground Season 2, AAA warned it’s luchadors that they would not be able to work for LU if they no longer worked for AAA. It was an attempt to keep people from walking out of AAA to work on US indies (where AAA would no longer get a cut of their pay.) That didn’t seem to work. Flamita definitely hasn’t been back in LU since he left AAA, but both Sexy Star and Rey Fenix have left AAA, and Sexy Star wasn’t taken off Lucha Underground tapings. (Rey Fenix also was part of the Paley Center Lucha Underground panel – with Dorian praising him! – but I believe he might have technically not quit AAA at that point though both sides knew it was coming.) Jack’s been fired by AAA, but he’s still part of the Lucha Underground live events this week as far as we know. I’m not sure the wrestlers totally believed it, and there’s only one person where this matters a lot (Pentagon – and it already seems like he’s shifted AAA to third priority), but firing Jack from AAA exposes it as an empty threat.

The other bit is Jack & Angelico have generally been a package deal, so I’m not sure how much we’ll see if Angelico in AAA if this doesn’t get fixed. I don’t think Angelico is going to quit (nor would I put it on him to do so), but they’ve already been looking to do more Europe and US bookings in the last year, and this is only going to push them more that way. Angelico’s still on the Star Battle Show (tomorrow this week!) and the TV taping after, but he’s not on the rest of the tapings and maybe he’ll be around even less going forward. Angelico is good and over and AAA doesn’t have enough people who are both at the moment. They also just don’t have enough people in general, so every potential lose hurts more.

The best case for everyone is Jack gets hired back in December or January and everything goes back to normal.

(The one positive luck for AAA is they’ve had great timing in change the tag titles this year, even if it seemed a bad move at the time. Angelico & Jack were stripped of the titles in January, then both ended up hurt for months while AAA used it to set up the Apaches angle. Angelico & Jack got the tag titles back, only to lose it Drago & Aerostar – maybe just to raise that duo’s value or because Jack & Angelico were going to miss Heroes Inmortales – and now Jack wouldn’t be around to be champion anyway.)