Pac & AEW’s ‘creative differences’ not said to be about losing to Adam Page

Over the weekend, Dave Meltzer broke the news that one of the marquee matches on All Elite Wrestling’s debut pay-per-view (PPV), May 25’s Double Or Nothing, was off. “Creative differences” had emerged between Pac and AEW, and the Dragon Gate champion would not be working his advertised bout with Hangman Page.

On the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer went in-depth on the situation when answering a fan question about Pac’s contract status with All Elite. Here are some highlights:

• Pac has a contract with AEW, but only a part-time deal which allowed him to continue to do Dragon Gate. PAC did not want to give up working for the Japanese company, who he’s loyal to since they were the first company to treat him like a star and get him international exposure.
• He’s still under contract despite this match falling apart, but “there are many different kinds of contracts that they do there [AEW].”
• “This was not about not doing a job for Adam Page. The reality is he was going to beat Page, but there was a way he was going to win which was going to set up a program with Kenny Omega.”
• While it wasn’t booked to happen until “months down the line”, Pac wasn’t going to beat Kenny, and that was who he didn’t want to lose to. AEW didn’t want to have Page lose at Double Or Nothing if it wasn’t going to lead to this bigger story later on.
• “Every other company would have done a DQ.” AEW couldn’t book a draw because it would screw up the timing of the PPV. “They want their wins and loses to mean something, and this would not allow that to happen”
• “They have a new story that gets where they want to go or that they’ve re-done, and I don’t know what it is, we’ll have to see on Saturday, and we’ll have to see later - see how it plays out.”
• Page and PAC were paid by AEW for the match in England.
• There’s no guarantee AEW will ever use PAC, but they might. As to whether they’ll use him soon, Meltzer says “not now”. Sounds like there are some hard feelings about how this went down, but the bridge isn’t burnt: “If they are able to book him where he wins some and loses some as... it will be with everyone, they’ll do that. If they are handicapped and he can never lose - they are not gonna do enough draws and DQ finishes to be able to book someone who will never lose unless it’s a guy they’re doing a never-lose streak with, and then that guy eventually has to lose, too.”

Dave also indicates that the All Elite team know they have to replace Pac/Page with something big, but doesn’t know what that is.

We’ll find out Saturday night, I guess. As Meltzer says, we’ll have to see how this plays out for AEW and Pac “down the line”.