Aubrey Edwards Discusses Her Various Roles In AEW, Including AEW Games
On Thursday night, AEW's Renee Paquette published the latest episode of her podcast, "The Sessions," with this edition featuring an interview with AEW referee Aubrey Edwards. One of the topics discussed was how Edwards' duties at AEW go beyond being a referee, with the most well-known being her role in AEW Games, stemming from her background in mobile games development pre-AEW. On "The Sessions," Edwards got into the weeds about what her job entails.
"I do wear a lot of hats," Edwards told Paquette. "My official title is I am Senior Project Manager, and I know that sounds very singular, but I obviously have a lot of projects I manage." Specifically, that includes gaming projects, AEW Heels, and "whatever else may come up," like her role co-hosting the "AEW Unrestricted" podcast. "Someone got ahold of my resume at one point and went, 'Wait, she worked on games for like 10 years? Yeah! OK!' So I'm working in AEW Games, which is our sort of games umbrella, and I'm working on a number of games for them right now that I can't talk about yet."
As for AEW Heels, she described it as a community for female fans to avoid the pitfalls that often come with being a woman around pro wrestling discussion online. "[They] can come together and share in their love of wrestling, but also create these friendships that, kind of, are difficult to form in wrestling, because you don't have a lot of other women that you can enjoy this thing with," she explained. "And there's so much gatekeeping with, [for example], 'Oh, you're a wrestling fan? Who won the main event [in] 1985 [of] whatever pay-per-view, and if you don't prove it, then you suddenly feel like you don't belong, and that's how a lot of women fall out of it."
Edwards: 'I'm a workaholic'
Edwards continued by laying out how her project management goes beyond consumer-facing projects such as games and AEW Heels, extending to "random projects" that, for example, directly involve the company's legal team. "My real boring example that sounds super impressive is recently, Chris Peck, who does a lot of legal stuff for AEW, he's been building our digital privacy policy, which has to be GDPR compliant, so we have to account for certain rules in the UK that factor in 12 year-olds and how much information we're potentially saving," she explained. "And I have experience in this stuff because I've released products in other countries, and you have all these regulations you have to follow. So I kind of just do ... whatever!"
Prompted by Paquette, Edwards added that she has two contracts: one as talent and the other as a member of the office. (Paquette added, laughing, that she has the same contractual situation but that Edwards does a lot more.) "I'm a workaholic and I've kind of come to terms with that phrase," Edwards said. "I like being busy! I like doing things. And I've always been a type of person that I want to help the companies that employ me. And especially being part of AEW since the beginning, my big thing was I wanted to do whatever I can to help this company be successful. Because this is a pretty dope job and I want to have it forever if I can."
Asked to elaborate on the situation regarding issues with the ESRB content rating for the "Fight Forever" console video game delaying its release, Edwards noted that she does not work on that game, but said that the rating for a game can cause a ripple effect on other aspects of its release.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "The Sessions" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.