As noted before, the September 30th AEW Rampage show featured a backstage segment with Hangman Page, Dark Order, and Andrade El Idolo. During the segment, Andrade issued a match challenge to Dark Order’s 10 for the September 7th AEW Rampage show. This challenge involved Andrade putting his AEW career on the line in return for 10 putting his mask on the line for this match.
This match was later pulled from this past Friday’s Rampage show due to a backstage altercation incident between Andrade and Sammy Guevara prior to this past Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite show that resulted in Andrade being sent home as punishment.
Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that his sources stated that Andrade was the person who came up with the idea for this mask vs. career match. Those spoken to stated that while there had been rumors of Andrade trying to get fired in order to return to WWE, they believed it was Andrade’s way of trying to build up interest for this upcoming match.
Meltzer reported that both Andrade and AEW officials had agreed that this match needed to take place as soon as possible in order to fully take advantage of the social media talks over Andrade’s future in the company.
Andrade reportedly had informed AEW officials that he did not have any real intentions of wanting to leave the company and this match was solely meant to take advantage of those who believed in the recent rumors.
In regards to Andrade’s current contract status with AEW, one source spoken to reportedly stated that they believe his contract expires in June of 2023 while others spoken to stated that it does not expire until Summer of 2024.