Since its launch in 2019, AEW has taken pride in giving wrestlers the freedom to shape their own personas, a stark contrast to WWE's more controlled, top-down creative system. While AEW President Tony Khan handles the match bookings, talent are largely left to steer their own character direction. During a recent appearance on Busted Open Radio, Bully Ray weighed in on both the positives and negatives of that approach.

"One of the great things about AEW is the hands-off approach to talent. One of the awful things about AEW is the hands-off [approach] with talent," Bully said. "How do I know this? Because me and Tommy came from a company where Paul [Heyman] was hands-off unless he had to put his hands on. 'Go be you.'"

Bully drew a comparison to ECW, the promotion where he and Tommy Dreamer made their name, and which heavily influenced Tony Khan’s vision for AEW. The idea of letting talent simply "go be you" is something that works wonders for some performers, though it can leave others lost without creative structure.

One example Bully brought up was Blake Monroe, formerly Mariah May in AEW. Since moving to WWE NXT, Bully feels Monroe has not stood out the same way she did previously, largely because of tighter creative restrictions.

"They are creating her the way they want to create her, despite the fact that what she had created worked," Bully stated. "They hired Mariah May. Mariah May did such a phenomenal job in AEW that they went, 'Her. We need her. We want her.' Then they got her. You could change her name. I do not give a s**t about the name change, but let her be Mariah May."

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