Willie Mack will not be appearing in any forthcoming GCW events, including the December 14 Highest in Room 3 match against Sidney Akeem (Scrypts). The company informed Fightful on Monday that Mack had been removed from the events.
According to the report, “The company is under the impression this still stems from Effy’s comments as AEW has no shows scheduled next week.” Fightful reported that ‘many’ AEW employees complained the promotion did not pull Mack.
This comes after Ricky Starks was removed from GCW events by AEW following statements Effy made about AEW running the Hammerstein Ballroom a month before GCW’s return to the venue, as well as criticizing Tony Khan’s father, Shad Khan.
While appearing on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer mentioned that there are two sides to the story. GCW believes that AEW removed him from the shows due to the Effy statements. AEW claims they did not pull him, but once Mack inquired, it is possible that he felt compelled not to go.
Meltzer stated, “So Willie Mack was going to wrestle Saturday in Los Angeles for GCW. I’ve got both sides of the story, and you can decide which side is the accurate side. Everyone’s going to pick if they like AEW or hate AEW, they’ll pick the one. So, this is the GCW side of it. Willie Mack called them up, you know, for Saturday. It’s a late deal and said that he was pulled from the show by AEW over the Effy situation. So Brett Lauderdale, really upset, calls up Sonjay Dutt at AEW and goes, ‘Is this true?’ and Sonjay says it’s ‘Absolutely not true.’ Okay, so he calls up Willie Mack and Willie Mack says that, well, ‘I wasn’t pulled. I was specifically not pulled. But Christopher Daniels made it clear that I shouldn’t go.’ From the AEW standpoint, they are saying that nothing like that happened and that Willie Mack called them and asked if it would be a problem to go. And they said, you can go, but maybe he took it the wrong way. AEW was very, very clear. Sonjay told Brett the same thing. You know, they’re not pulling Willie Mack from the show. Whatever reason….Willie Mack, you know, it was funny, because nobody even knew Willie Mack was under contract to aw until like today. I mean, I didn’t know. He’s been on AEW shows and everything. He’s been on a lot of the West Coast shows and things. But he’s never, he’s almost never on AEW television, but he is under contract there, and he’s not wrestling Saturday, and you know, it’s like, yeah, there’s two different sides of the story. And ultimately, it was Willie Mack’s choice. Was he pressured? Or do you just do it on his own? I don’t know. I don’t know, you know, like because AEW was adamant that they did not pressure him and that he certainly was not told that he could not go. So that situation, but on the show, and you know, people will take that one, whichever way they want to take it.”
