On the June 16 episode of AEW Rampage, referee Aubrey Edwards made her in-ring debut, teaming with Mark Briscoe & Papa Briscoe to battle Jay Lethal, Jeff Jarrett, & Karen Jarrett.
Speaking to Battle & Eli on the Battleground podcast, Aubrey reflected on her debut and noted that she will be retiring undefeated after the bout. Edwards captured the win for her team, making Karen Jarrett tap out.
“With wrestling, it’s really important to have storytelling and long-term payoffs. It’s one thing to say, ‘we’re going to hit a referee with a guitar, and she’s going to go down.’ That’s cool in the moment, but where does that go? When you have the traditional heels and babyfaces, if the heels don’t get their comeuppance and the babyfaces don’t end up on top at the end, then you’re really upsetting your fans. Why are they getting invested then? This is traditional storytelling. We have three acts, it’s as old as Shakespeare. From the moment of Double or Nothing when the guitar shot happened, that’s when we started talking, ‘what is the next logical step for this?’ They asked if I was willing to wrestle and I said, ‘I can’t even lock up correctly.’ I’m a dancer. 22 years of ballet didn’t teach me to do a headlock takeover. Those don’t translate. Still physical but a very different form of entertainment. It just came down to, how could we play this up and have fun with it? It was really cool to get opportunities. I got to choke Karen out in a promo. I had a live promo on Rampage, which was insane. It ended up coming down to the match, which was great. It felt really cool. It felt cool, the way we structured everything. I went over with the figure four because that’s also Jay Lethal’s move. So there’s a little bit of meta-ness that long-term fans appreciate because they get it in the moment. It was cool. I’m glad it’s over. I’m retiring undefeated. Not being able to walk for two days without pain. I never want to do that again,”
Aubrey Edwards
Edwards will continue to be one of the staple referees of AEW programming despite her retirement from competing.
H/T to Fightful
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