Impact signs a guy Cody had his eye on, but AEW has a plan

During their latest episode last night (Feb. 18), Impact announced the signing of Chris Bey.

Bey wrestled for Impact at their Las Vegas tapings earlier this month. Prior to that, the 24 year old from Virginia had mostly worked with GCW and Bar Wrestling. Joey Ryan owns the latter promotion, and was a likely bridge between Bey and Impact.

While he should be a good addition to the X-Division, we honestly probably wouldn’t be writing about this if Bey’s name hadn’t come up on Cody Rhodes media call earlier in the day yesterday. When asked about diversifying the company’s roster, the AEW Executive Vice-President specifically mention Bey as someone he was scouting. It was actually the second time Rhodes has expressed an interest in “CB”...

Time to move on to “other folks”, I guess.

Regarding, Cody also revealed some information about AEW’s talent development plan on the call. Matt & Nick Jackson of The Young Bucks scout the independents, while he & Taz plan to visit the NCAA Wrestling Championships in Minneapolis next month and possibly the upcoming Feb. 23 - Mar. 2 NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.

As to where/how AEW will coach prospects and signees up, Rhodes revealed he’s purchased a stake in a wrestling school in Norcross, Georgia. He didn’t name the school, instead just saying they’ve been calling it “The Nightmare Factory”, but based on the pictures of him, DDP, Billy Gunn, Glacier, and QT Marshall on their website, it looks like it’s The One Fall Power Factory.

The school is not officially affiliated with AEW, but Cody said that’s where contracted talent like Sadie Gibbs and Anthony Ogogo will be training.

So there you go. Impact scooped up a hot prospect in Chris Bey, but AEW’s building a system to find and coach the wrestlers who are still out there.