Tony Khan had plans to sign another basketball player to AEW.
Tony Khan believes in finding ways to connect with the casual audience when presenting his wrestling program. So far, signings such as Satnam Singh, Paige VanZant, and Jade Cargill have all been attempts to find stars outside of the wrestling bubble. Jade, in particular, has connected very well and is a regular part of AEW programming as one of the stars of the promotion’s women’s division.
Now, Canadian basketball player Liam McMorrow has shared that he and Tony Khan reached a verbal agreement for him to join AEW. McMorrow shared how that deal came to be during an appearance on “Vegas Bad Boyz of Podcasting.”
AEW, it felt like everyone I had a conversation with was very, very friendly. The only one who wasn’t was Billy Gunn but I think he was just having a bad day or he didn’t know why I was there. His sons were both there, his sons were both cool. Everyone was f*cking cool, from the owner on the way down… And that might have something to do with how I got in there. People know [Diamond] Dallas [Page], everyone loves Dallas but that doesn’t mean that you have to be nice to me. But maybe that’s just the culture over there.
Liam, who stands at over 7 ft tall, first made the connection during COVID but unfortunately for the Canadian player, work visa issues halted his debut.
Now, he says that he and Tony Khan are looking at ways 2 accelerate him during the company.
“So now we’re looking at different ways to do it. So we applied for everything. Everything’s still in the works but it’s just like, I asked immigration lawyers, I asked them a few days ago because they give you these stupid times as the government. They do the things crazy but it’s like, from one to 14 months is our regular processing times for these types of visas. You can’t even ask us anything about them until it comes outside of these processing times so I’m like, oh wow. It’ll happen sometime in the next year and two months and I kind of got at peace with that. I’m like, you know what? Maybe it’s time I need. So in that first three months, I’m f*cking working harder than I’ve ever worked out. I’m not doing any cardio. I get up to 307 and I’m looking like a f*cking monster. I could send you guys pictures. It’s retarded how I blew up… I’m talking to immigration lawyers. I’m like, ‘How long do you think it’s gonna be?’ ‘There’s no telling, there’s no telling.’ So October 25th was month 14. I’m like, okay, it’s gotta come before this kid’s birthday. Nope, and then now we can ask them so I ask immigration, he goes, ‘Send them a hand-written letter.’ I send it on the 26th so trust me, we’re on the same page but I hit him the other day and he still hasn’t got back to me. So I’m like, do we just wait again? Is there nothing I can do? It’s just so brutal. I don’t understand… This is gonna sound a little f*cked up. I could see if I came from a Russia or somewhere, you know? I’m Canadian bro. How hard can this f*cking thing be?… I don’t get it man. So there’s been times where I’ve lost the motivation for it. People see me in the gym, ‘Do you hoop?’ ‘Nah’ and for a while, I was saying, ‘I wrestle. I signed with so, so and so’ and then it’s like, but you kind of stop telling people that when you’re just waiting and you don’t know when it’s gonna happen.”
(H/T: Andrew Thompson of POST Wrestling)
We will continue to monitor and report any and all updates on Liam McMorrow potentially joining AEW.
