Former WWE NXT Star Says AEW Matches Were Watched Backstage

Former WWE NXT Superstar Killian Dain (aka Big Damo), who was released back on June 25, recently spoke with Riji Dasgupta of Sportskeeda and discussed the so-called war between NXT and AEW, noting that the wrestlers do not buy into the so-called hostility between the two companies.

Dain did reveal that the NXT locker room watched AEW programming to check out various matches as many of the wrestlers are friends.

"Like, so, I think people would love [for] me to say it was this rivalry or whatever else, but the truth is, you know when we were going head-to-head if they had a particularly good match, we'd wanted to watch; we'd watch! You know what I mean? We'd be backstage in the locker room; we'll be like, 'Oh, such and such, let's see that.' A lot of [them] are our friends, [as is] with a lot of the guys on the roster," Dain said.

Dain commented on how he's worked with many of the AEW wrestlers, and there's no one in NXT who was hoping AEW would fail.

"So yeah, sure, there is a rivalry so far as we wanted to do the best we could, we wanted to put on the best matches, and we felt that we had an incredible roster at NXT," Dain said. "There is not one person there, who has gone, 'F them' or anything like that because I shared locker rooms with maybe at least 50 percent of that roster. In fact, I'm probably underselling that; I'd say I've been at shows with about 75 percent of that roster; some of the guys I even trained with or people who have [been] trained by myself, you know, are on that roster."

The former SAnitY member also noted that the competition has boosted the motivation of the roster. He said the wrestlers knew the rivalry was great for the business, and recalled again how NXT wrestlers would watch AEW Dynamite matches at times.

"So for us, there was a professional rivalry so far as, nobody wants to lose or anything like that, but at the same time, we knew it was great for the industry," he said. "We knew it was exactly what it was as us growing up watching, when it was WWF and WCW, maybe on a smaller scale, but for a lot of us, in the NXT locker room, it was a good way; an added motivation is probably the best way to put it.

"Listen, there's no denying, if there is a really cool match, and we're not doing something on the show that day, we'd be watching, you know what I mean because there were some crackers at the time."