Indie Wrestling Legends Call Out AEW, Tony Khan Over New Gimmick
Coming out of Saturday's AEW Dark tapings at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, one of the more notable spoilers involved something that aired on Tuesday's edition of the YouTube show: Angelico aligning with Chaos Project (Luther and Angelico's Spanish announcing team colleague Serpentico) to form the Spanish Announce Project, or SAP for short. For longtime hardcore fans, the name immediately rang a bell, as it bears a strong resemblance to the name that was used in ROH, NWA-TNA (now Impact Wrestling), and numerous independent promotions by the group consisting of Joel Maximo, Jose Maximo, and The Amazing Red (later replaced by Will Maximo): The Spanish Announce Team, better known as the SAT.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the inventors of the Spanish Fly had their ire raised by Saturday's news, and have, since it broke, been angrily tweeting about it on their Twitter account, which appears to be run by Joel Maximo.
"Bro like BRO , YA CANT BE SERIOUS ABOUT JUST TAKING EVERYTHING FROM US THE S.A.T , MOVES , GEAR , STYLE AND NOW NAME?" begins the first tweet, which went up on Saturday night. "SPANISH ANNOUNCE PROJECT? COME ON @AEW we out here grinding if ya want SAT just Call we will answer that Call, but No Infringement or we will have some word's." The onslaught has continued ever since.
Maximos: 'Fans are not blind!'
On Tuesday night, the account tweeted "The fans are mad, @AEW they are not blind or stupid," citing a screenshot showing two Facebook comments. That was quickly followed by another Facebook screenshot tweet. "Hope ya listening, @AEW, we are not ones to just take this Slap!!" wrote the Maximos. "Fans are not blind! #thesat #thefathersofthestyleoftoday Is not a gimmick, its FACTS." "The Fathers of the Style of Today" is the nickname that the Maximos have been using of late in their comeback run in promotions like GCW and ETU.
It continued on Wednesday, with the Maximo account giving Tony Khan a Thursday deadline and quote tweeting the visible New York area fan best-known as "Mittens," who referred to the new AEW group's name as "bulls***." "This will go on for ever [sic] if we don't get our dues @AEW," reads the Maximos' quote tweet. "[W]e are a very different monster, and taking from us with out a permission or concent [sic] @TonyKhan is giving us [a] greenlight on all the foolishness the SAT can produce along side our City our People." Further tweets tagged AEW and Tony Khan in a quote tweet of a fan complaint, expressed that "pretenders are so foolish."
It appears that the only other wrestler to chime in so far is former Impact star Shawn Hernandez. who quote tweeted the "permission or concent" tweet with a GIF of film director Spike Lee saying "do the right thing."