Ricochet showed up during the Casino Gauntlet Match at AEW All In in his promotional debut, which stipulated that the winner could cash in for a World Title match at any time. Christian Cage won that bout.
His arrival was after he departed from WWE in June and signed a multi-year deal with AEW. He had been written off in an angle on Monday Night Raw by being attacked by Bron Breakker, with many thinking WWE left it open-ended.
Speaking on The Masked Man Show, Ricochet also thought that’s why they did the angle. Here are the highlights:
On if he knew he would be leaving after the angle: “Yeah, I think I went into it, and I think, even later, me and Triple H had a little talk, and he was like, ‘Any time, whatever,’ because I just hadn’t re-signed, and it was kind of my last time there before the time ran up. I think they knew I just wasn’t gonna do it. So I think they were just trying to give me a good out that made me…something that is open-ended. I think they wanted to leave it that way, but I think they knew it wasn’t going to happen.”
On who is to blame for his WWE run issues: “You can place the blame anywhere, but I just blame myself….that’s the only person I can blame because that’s all you can do. I didn’t do something, I don’t know what it was. For me, again, frustrating is maybe not the word, because again my last couple of years I met my future wife there, I made mad connections, the locker room was always awesome. As far as creatively, yeah, there would have been more I’d like to do. Just again, mostly for the fans that want to see me do stuff, not even for me. But it’s more frustrating for me to see the fans want me to go out there and actually do something of some substance. I was out there a lot, I was on television a lot, I was used a lot. The quality of what I was doing specifically wasn’t there. There was a lot of quantity of Ricochet, but the quality of what he was getting just wasn’t what I wanted and that’s okay. That’s just how it falls. And again, I can only blame myself. I can only, I can’t blame anybody else. I just can’t. So, it wasn’t really frustrating ’cause I had a lot of good times there still. Yeah, but was there more I wanted to do? Absolutely. But man, I just, I can’t say it was frustrating because I still had a good time.”
