Ilja Dragunov Says AEW Deal Came Together 'Quite Quickly' After WWE Contract Expiration

Ilja Dragunov has opened up about his decision to leave WWE for AEW and revealed how swiftly everything fell into place.

Dragunov's move to AEW came after a few hiccups with his visa process, and he has revealed to "TMZ's Inside The Ring" that he and AEW quickly agreed on a deal, as the two parties were on the same page about many things.

"I don't think that you can find, like, necessarily a point in time where you can say which side, how, and how it came together. I can say it came together quite quickly after my contract expired. That's something that happened in very much of a fragment of a time," he said. 

Dragunov stated that he felt respected by AEW from quite early on and that he had questioned whether WWE was the right place for him even before his departure. He added that while he enjoyed his time in WWE, his gut instinct told him that his future lay elsewhere.

"I felt the respect from the other side [AEW] pretty quickly. I was asking myself if I am at the right place [in WWE] for quite a while already, which doesn't say necessarily anything bad about the years that I spent, the seven years that I spent with the company. But I just was — I mean, I'm so emotionally driven in what I'm doing. I'm always listening to my gut feeling. And what I always try to be is not a hypocrite. So, when I feel like something is not going in the direction that I wanted anymore, it doesn't feel like a place where I want to stick anymore," he added. 

He decided that there were more opportunities outside of WWE, like AEW, that he wanted to pursue, and he took the chance to leave, ultimately debuting at WrestleDream.