William Regal Was Going To Hire Wheeler Yuta And Daniel Garcia For WWE
William Regal was ready to hire two AEW standouts for WWE.
Daniel Garcia and Wheeler Yuta have become big parts of AEW TV in 2022 with Garcia linking up with the Jericho Appreciation Society and Yuta joining the Blackpool Combat Club. Both men built reputations for themselves on the independent scene before being signed by AEW.
Regal, who served as Director of Talent Development and Head of Global Recruiting in WWE before being released in January, took notice of both men.
“They got themselves noticed on COVID. I was going to hire them last year in WWE. I had them and was ready to [sign them], but then a change in philosophy happened. I was going to hire both of them then, I wanted to hire them,” Regal told Alex McCarthy of TalkSPORT. “I’m so happy that whatever he [Yuta] has done, he’s doing an incredible job and now we’re all focused on giving him everything we’ve got so he can get there a lot quicker than we got there. He’s getting good so quick because we can all tell him over the past 20 years what not to do.”
Fightful Select published the following report regarding WWE passing on Yuta on August 11, 2021:
Fightful had noted recently that there was a WWE tryout name that didn’t receive an offer that turned several heads within the Performance Center and WWE, and raised some flags that the hiriing process had changed. It actually ended up being Wheeler YUTA, who is now regularly featured on AEW programming after his May 2021 WWE tryout. Fightful spoke with several NXT talent who confirmed having a discussion — even with those of influence in NXT at the time — about YUTA, and him being a perfect fit for what NXT traditionally had been. One NXT talent pointed out that Yuta is six feet tall, 24 years old, could already work, and had recent television experience and checked almost all of the boxes NXT had been looking for recently. Three individual NXT talents said that WWE not signing him was a “shock,” with two noting that they could tell a major shift was coming when a guy like that didn’t get picked up, despite clear AEW and ROH interest. The same WWE official we spoke with this past weekend noted that was a head-turner for them as well.
WWE would shift its focus to more athletes from various backgrounds in September with rebranding NXT to NXT 2.0.
Yuta is currently competing in the Best of the Super Juniors tournament in Japan while Garcia was part of the Anarchy in the Arena bout at AEW Double or Nothing. If you missed anything from AEW Double or Nothing, check out Fightful’s full report on the show by clicking here.
