Sean Waltman arguably helped set the tone for the Monday Night War when he leaped from the World Wrestling Federation to World Championship Wrestling as the sixth member of the New World Order. The former 1-2-3 Kid has been credited by former WCW President Eric Bischoff for bringing the cool factor to the group, helping them blow up the way he did. Once he jumped back to WWE in 1998, joining Degeneration-X and being christened X-Pac, it was only a few years later that WCW shuttered its doors, and was acquired by Vince McMahon.
Former DX stablemate, Billy Gunn, got fans buzzing over the weekend when in an interview with Sportskeeda he commented on the possibility of reuniting with Waltman in AEW.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to get Tony to get me away from The Acclaimed right now,” he said, laughing. “It would be great. I think we’ve tried to get Sean in here a couple of times, and things just didn’t work out but I think, if the time’s right, I think he would be a great asset because he still has, you know, huge popularity and everybody knows him and he’s such a good guy. He would not only help the younger talent, but be a good, good representative for our company, and it’d be amazing if we could get him here.”
Haus of Wrestling asked around about the comments and learned that AEW has reached out to Waltman about working with the promotion, possibly doing something with Gunn. While we could not get specific details about the pitch made to Waltman, we were told that he did not want to come in for a one-off. With that said, Waltman is in the process of getting back into ring shape and those close to him told us they would not be surprised if he showed up in AEW.
If Waltman does make the leap to AEW there are multiple talents that have been inspired by his ring work and would welcome the chance to share the ring with him. Two notable examples are returning AEW star CM Punk and Darby Allin who at All Out 2021 included a variety of Easter eggs in their bout paying homage to Waltman’s famous match against Bret “Hitman” Hart, something the two-time Hall of Famer publicly thanked them for.