In a recent interview with Big Gold Belt Media, AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland spoke about his sneaker collaboration with Reebok, making it clear that the credit for the project goes to AEW’s team.

“Dude that that was that wasn’t me at all. That was just an AEW thing like, I really feel like over the last year, All Elite Wrestling, the marketing department, the social team like everything has just stepped up so much tenfold not just not just in the ring, not just the product you see on TV, not just like the stories and the people, like the talent. I feel like everybody behind the scenes from top to bottom, like the camera work, the production, like everybody stepped up so much.

Like the last collab was the Young Bucks, they had the pumps and everything. They were like, okay, how do we take it up another notch? They were like, we’re gonna use Swerve. We’re gonna use you and we’re gonna link with AI (Allen Iverson). The answers was already like a thing. They actually let me pick one.”

Strickland emphasized how much AEW’s marketing and production have grown in the last year, and how the collaboration was a reflection of the company’s creative efforts rather than his own initiative.