Oh folks, gather ’round, because this is better than a rerun of your favorite ’80s wrestling drama! In a move that screams “homecoming king goes big,” Swerve Strickland, the newly minted AEW World Champion, returned to his roots, not to a castle, but to the charming, spit-and-sawdust halls of DEFY Wrestling in Washington.
Yes, right after strutting his stuff at AEW Dynasty—where he left competitors crying for their mommies in St. Louis—Swerve waltzed back into DEFY Wrestling like a rock star returning to his favorite dive bar. This grand shindig unfolded at the ever-so-historic Washington Hall in Seattle, where the locals almost tore the roof down with cheers. It’s like Elvis walked in, but instead of blue suede shoes, our king brought a shiny championship belt!
Waving that gold like it was Nana’s best silverware at Thanksgiving, Swerve couldn’t help but get a tad sentimental. “After me going all the way to St. Louis in the main event of [AEW Dynasty], and winning this AEW World Championship, there was only one other place I was going to go to come celebrate, and that was here in DEFY Wrestling,” he proclaimed. The crowd went nuts, people! It was like someone promised free beer for life.
But it gets better. Swerve, with the wisdom of a wrestling sage, tipped his hat to the promotion that saw him grow from a scrappy contender to a heavyweight champ. “There’s no other place like this in the world,” he said, and if that doesn’t pull at your heartstrings, check your pulse! Strickland reminisced about DEFY’s first-ever show back in the stone ages of 2017, where he and Cody Rhodes duked it out like gladiators.
Now, like Rhodes, Strickland’s gone from local hero to global phenomenon, proving that sometimes, you can take the boy out of the indie scene, but you can’t take the indie out of the boy. So, as he stands there, a king in his court, let’s tip our hats to Swerve Strickland—DEFY’s finest export and wrestling’s newest royalty!