Jake Hager — who is now retired from the ring — feels jaded with pro wrestling following the way his AEW run ended.
The 43-year-old Hager recently confirmed that he’s stepped away from wrestling and is now focused on a trucking company he’s running in Florida, along with being a father to his two children. He rose to notoriety in WWE as Jack Swagger before later coming to AEW for a nearly five-year stint that ended in a mutual departure last year when his contract expired.
Appearing on a new episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Hager discussed feeling jaded after his time with AEW.
“Absolutely,” he responded when asked if there was a moment where he stopped loving wrestling. “I’m very jaded from my exit at AEW. Like, I’m very proud of the stuff I did there, but at the same time, I find myself questioning right now. I wish I would have just stayed in MMA at some point.”
Hager competed in four MMA fights for Bellator from 2019-2020, with two of them overlapping with his AEW career.
Being part of the Inner Circle and Jericho Appreciation Society in AEW was one of Hager’s favorite things he’s ever done in wrestling. Hager had so much fun doing that, but he felt disrespected when he was only offered an 18-month contract after his first AEW deal. Though he re-signed, Hager knew the writing was on the wall and felt like Tony Khan didn’t want him in AEW.
“The negotiation process was very one-way,” Hager said. “And I could tell that — well, anyways, I always find a way to say this every day, so I think everyone should too: say, ‘F*ck Tony Khan.’ I could tell that he didn’t want me there. He offered me like a year and a half. I was like, bro, I just did Stadium Stampede twice. Don’t act like Stadium Stampede didn’t put AEW on the map. I was in the debut episode, I was the big spoiler. And you offer me 18 months after all that? So it was that and the way that he started running the business that it really — like he wasn’t a professional.”
Hager claimed that after “all of the [CM] Punk sh*t” went down there was a meeting that was just between the wrestlers. Veterans like Sting, Paul Wight, Chris Jericho, Bryan Danielson, and Jon Moxley were talking through the situation, but then Khan came into the room.
“Lo and behold, who comes into the room storming in — daddy’s little billionaire. And he’s like yelling at us, because I think it was Dax [Harwood] and Cash Wheeler didn’t want to come in, they didn’t like the storylines, so they refused to come to TV that day.
“And he was like, ‘Listen, I’ll put you in a six-man, six minutes before the show and you’re going to do it.’ And we’re all just like all feeling disrespected,” Hager said. “And I still to this day wish I would have stood up and said, you know, a lot of things, but, like, you just told Sting that you’re going to put him in a six-man and six minutes, but then you’re going to honor him for his retirement. We were all, we became his little playthings.”
Hager said Khan was good with starting storylines but could never follow through with them.
“You couldn’t tell him anything. He couldn’t take criticism,” Hager said. “He was f*cking up and we were all just having to deal with it. You know, like we all had blood, sweat, and tears put into that company. We were all there at the beginning. Like, we all had our careers behind us that helped build that company. And then we all had to just sit side-by-side and couldn’t do anything because he wanted to run it the way he wanted to run it.”
Hager said AEW did pay him well while he was with the promotion. When he left the company, his shoulder was banged up, he had just gotten divorced, and he had to sell the house he had lived in for 13 years. Hager is happy to be on the other side of that now and is blessed to have such great kids and great parents.
When it comes to wrestling, Hager feels like he accomplished the things he really cared about and is grateful to have done it.
The full episode of Insight can be watched below:
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