The Butcher And The Blade Depart AEW
The Butcher and The Blade are no longer with All Elite Wrestling, with both wrestlers becoming free agents after their contracts expired.
According to Fightful Select, the team’s deals recently lapsed and AEW opted not to offer either man an extension. The pair are now free to sign and work elsewhere.
The exit closes a run that began in November 2019, when the duo debuted alongside The Blade’s wife Allie, known in AEW as The Bunny, attacking Cody Rhodes before aligning with MJF and Wardlow.
Neither half of the team had been on AEW television in some time. The Blade hadn’t wrestled for the promotion since January 2024 after a spine injury that required back fusion surgery in September 2024. The Butcher last appeared on the February 22, 2025 episode of Collision, losing to Gabe Kidd, before disappearing from programming.
The timing is notable given where things stood just a couple of months ago. In a March interview with Youngstown Studio promoting his band Atomic Rule, The Butcher confirmed he was still under contract and said he was waiting on a call to return.
“It’s not like they check up on me every week going ‘How you doing dude?’ It’s just like ‘We’ll call you when we need you.’ And that is kind of like a head f**k,” he said at the time, while adding he was grateful to keep getting paid as The Blade recovered. That call never came, and the contracts ran out instead."
During their AEW tenure the team passed through several groups, including the alliance with MJF, a pairing with Kip Sabian, and Matt Hardy’s Hardy Family Office. They most recently teamed in April at Limitless Wrestling’s Bissell Brothers Bash, defeating former WWE ID talent Bryce Donovan and Vinny Scalice.
At 48 and 46 respectively, they don’t fit the developmental-prospect profile, but there are landing spots worth watching. There has been recent talk of WWE looking to add to its tag team division, which makes a run there at least possible.
TNA is the other obvious fit. Allie returned to that promotion in March, resurfacing in a supernatural Rosemary storyline that revived their old Demon Bunny pairing. With The Blade’s wife already back on TNA television, a reunion under the same roof isn’t hard to picture.
