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Earlier this week, PWInsiderElite.com sat down with Speedball Mike Bailey to talk this weekend's WrestleDream PPV, which will be available on all PPV platforms, including HBO Max, Prime Video, YouTube and internationally on MyAEW.com:
Mike Johnson: Hey everybody, it's Mike Johnson in the audio section of PWInsiderElite.com. It is Monday, October 12th as we are recording this, which means this weekend is the 2026 edition of AEW WrestleDream, which is going to be taking place from the wonderful city of Orlando, Florida, featuring in the main event the first-ever Clockwork Carnage match for the AEW World Championship. Will Ospreay will be walking into the match with a number of challengers, several of whom will be determined this Wednesday on AEW Dynamite and Collision, including someone who just qualified over the weekend for the match, "Speedball" Mike Bailey, the pride of Fighting Canada. Sir, how are you?
Mike Bailey: I am doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having me.
Mike Johnson: So let's start out talking about this match. Very unique situation, very unique rules, different components to it. You've always been someone, and when we've talked in the past, I've always told you how impressed I am with your work ethic, working like a crazy long WrestleMania-type week, and you're also someone who's very creative in what you do in the ring. This might be a challenge for everybody, no matter how creative they are. What were your first thoughts when you found out AEW is doing this, and how are you approaching this madness that we're all going to witness in Orlando at WrestleDream?
Mike Bailey: First of all, thank you so much for those beautiful compliments. I know we've discussed this before, right? But anytime the question of preparation comes up in professional wrestling, I don't think professional wrestling is a discipline in which there's room for preparation. You can't need to prepare for an event or a match. In order to succeed in pro wrestling, you have to be immersed. You have to be ready all the time for absolutely anything, and this obviously is a brand new match. It's the first time anything like this is happening in All Elite Wrestling, and it is going to be a challenge for sure. I can strategize, I can think ahead; the best thing I can do is keep putting in the work like I've been doing for many, many years.
Mike Johnson: So let's talk about the uniqueness here. Two wrestlers are going to start at random. Every 3 minutes, another wrestler who will be randomly selected will enter. If there are eliminations during this time period, they're out of the match. Once the final wrestler gets to the ring, whoever is left—could be eight, could be two, could be seven, who knows—there will be a 15-minute time limit, there'll be a scoring period, and whoever has the most pinfalls or submissions during that scoring period at the end will be the AEW World Champion. That's a lot to take in. So how excited are you for this, knowing that you're someone who always endures a lot of challenges when you step into the ring and have performed in a lot of different unique environments?
Mike Bailey: I feel like this is exactly where I fit in the best as a professional wrestler. I'm used to doing those multi-man matches, and I've competed before in many, many Ultimate X matches in TNA. In independent wrestling, I would constantly do scramble matches. So, I've had a 20-year career of actively trying to do as many different styles and types of matches to prepare myself for this. I am not someone who has ever sought out quick victories in short matches. I want to wrestle for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and not only that, but I want to wrestle in the main event of AEW pay-per-views, and that's what I'll be doing for the first time at WrestleDream. So it is an extremely complex situation, but I hold myself at a high standard, and I don't expect this to be an easy match, I don't expect this to be a simple match. But I will absolutely do everything in my power to make this as spectacular of a victory for myself as possible.
Mike Johnson: You kind of touched upon something I was going to ask you. This will be your first official AEW pay-per-view main event. Obviously, you' حد a lot of big moments in singles matches and tag team matches, and even over the weekend, you had a big match on Collision. What does it mean to you to finally get the nod and kind of be knighted like, "All right, we're going to put you in the main event situation here"?
Mike Bailey: All Elite Wrestling is where the best wrestle, right? This is where the best pro wrestlers in the world are, and that's exactly where I see myself, and that's where I belong. And while this is not the peak yet, right? What I really want is to defend the AEW World Championship on a pay-per-view. The fact that I'll be getting a chance to capture it in the main event of WrestleDream is still exactly where I want to be as a professional wrestler. And I know that I've said this to you before, Mike, but my greatest accomplishment in professional wrestling and in life is year-over-year progress—getting better, continuing to improve. Even this deep into my career, I'm still making huge steps forward, and I think this is a huge step in my path in AEW.
Mike Johnson: Well, as you talk about making steps forward, someone you've wrestled a lot over the years, even prior to AEW, is Will Ospreay. And he's going to be one of the competitors in the ring. Presumably, you and he will cross paths again—you just teamed with him a couple of weeks ago. How do you think that rivalry between the two of you has progressed and evolved over the years? There's been a lot of interesting matches in RevPro and TNA and other places, but this will be the first time that you've had a chance to lock up with him as an opponent in AEW, to the best of my knowledge, unless I'm forgetting something.
Mike Bailey: Yeah, no, you're right, and it's an even more interesting situation because I am part of United Empire, which is a very complicated stable right now in pro wrestling. But I joined specifically because Will Ospreay is, to me, the best wrestler in the world. He is the AEW World Champion for a reason. His match with Kenny Omega at All In, which I remember watching and thinking, "Wow, we are currently writing professional wrestling history. This is one of the best matches I've ever seen", and Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega are probably the only two people in the world with the ability to do that at this very moment. But I like to think that I am in that same realm, and while I do look up to Will Ospreay, the reason I joined the stable is because I want to reach new heights. I want to challenge myself. I want to be right where he is. And so, of course, having seen his path and seen what he's done in pro wrestling for the last few years is hugely inspiring, and is something that I want to do, right? I want to be in the place, and I have great respect for him. However, another interesting wrinkle is I am not going to let history repeat itself, and I was in a similar type of match at Dynasty last year in Vancouver, where myself and Kevin Knight were in a Casino Gauntlet for the TNT Championship. I sort of approached this match as, "Okay, what I want is a member of Jet Set Speed to be TNT Champion", and we all know how that worked out. I was then promptly betrayed by Kevin Knight, and I'm not going to let that happen again. As much as I look up to Will Ospreay as a wrestler and as a leader in the United Empire, I will not let feelings get in the way, and I will do everything in my power to win the AEW World Championship.
Mike Johnson: As we are recording this, the only other person who has qualified, as you and Will Ospreay have, is Samoa Joe. You did have a chance to wrestle him earlier this year on Dynamite—always a hell of an antagonist and hell of a talent. Thoughts on getting the chance to lock up with him again in this match?
Mike Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. Samoa Joe is someone that I've watched ever since I decided I wanted to be a professional wrestler, ever since I started seeking out wrestling other than what was on TV. And he always brought that hard-hitting style that was very, very different from what was presented to mainstream audiences back then, and he's carried that to All Elite Wrestling. And he is definitely one of the greats—another former X Division Champion. So of course, I know that he's another one who definitely has been in all kinds of situations throughout his very long and storied career. So he definitely will have a place in this match. And he's probably, aside from myself, between the three of us, probably the favorite to win right now. But I've been in worse positions.
Mike Johnson: So there's a number of other talents who are going to be challenging for or vying, I should say, for the opportunity to qualify this Wednesday in Cleveland when AEW airs Dynamite and Collision on TBS and HBO Max. Is there anyone you're kind of hoping qualifies because you haven't had a chance to step in the ring with them, and you'd like to have that opportunity to lock up? Because every wrestler's got that private checklist of people that they think, "I could create something special here," or "I want to better myself by working against them". Is there anyone you're kind of hoping ends up in the ring in Orlando this weekend with you?
Mike Bailey: Certainly there's two, right? There's one match that I'm particularly looking forward to watching in Cleveland, and that is Josh Alexander versus Adam Copeland. Of course, Cope, who is a Canadian pro wrestling legend, who recently had a fantastic main event for Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling against Steve Maclin—absolutely amazing. And he is, again, speaking of storied careers, I think no one has done more in pro wrestling that has a chance to enter this match than Adam Copeland. And of course, I have never shared the ring with him, so that would be incredible. But his opponent, Josh Alexander, I think is a complete dark horse to win the whole thing. Josh Alexander is also a former World Champion and another amazing Canadian wrestler, someone I've been in the ring with for literally hours by now, including the hour-long match that we had before. But I think that is a match to watch, and I think Josh Alexander, if I wasn't so certain that I would get in his way, would have a great shot at winning the AEW World Championship at WrestleDream.
Mike Johnson: So one of the things I always like to talk about wrestlers with is this unique life experience that is just working around this industry. I've been able to travel a lot and do unique things because I'm lucky enough to write about this stuff. Those of you who compete in the ring get all these amazing life experiences that on a regular basis, probably to the point I don't think the average civilian truly appreciates the time, the travel, the investment that everyone puts in emotionally and physically. What's the life experience been like for you since coming to AEW, and how has that maybe changed how you approach pro wrestling given you always had this high quotient work rate to begin with?
Mike Bailey: It hasn't really affected the way I approach pro wrestling so much as reinforced it. And that's been constant throughout my career. I feel like probably about 10 years into my career, which is a long time ago comparatively, I sort of had a very, very thorough realization that professional wrestling was context dependent, and that there was no one way to do professional wrestling. There was no one correct approach to professional wrestling, and there was no one path to success in professional wrestling. But what you really needed to succeed was to be able to analyze the factors that make pro wrestlers successful within the environment in which you're performing. And that is not only the cultural context in which pro wrestling happens, because that's different everywhere, but also the modality in which it's performed, how it's filmed, how it airs, how often you wrestle, how different promotions are from one another, and how different rosters of wrestlers are from each other. So All Elite Wrestling is a completely different animal than anything I've ever done before. It is by far the biggest pro wrestling company I've ever worked for. It's the biggest pro wrestling company in the world, in my opinion.
And that comes with a lot of huge challenges, and of course there's been a lot of adaptations in that regard. But I think that my philosophy when it comes to professional wrestling has stayed the same and has only become reinforced over the years.
Mike Johnson: Wanted to ask you about the experience of going over to France to promote AEW—Grand Slam France, obviously—and then competing there against Lee Moriarty on Collision over the weekend, given your French-Canadian heritage. What'd you think of the experience, and what did it mean to you?
Mike Bailey: It was absolutely amazing because I am not French! I am not from France! However, just because I share a language with these people, they can relate to me, and that feels fantastic because this is certainly not a uniquely French problem, right? This is just the issue of pro wrestling historically being presented so homogeneously in America, is that if you speak English as a second language, if your first language is commonly in pro wrestling French, or Spanish, or Japanese, you are regarded as lesser. You are not a promo guy, you're not a main event guy, you can't be a top guy because English isn't your first language, because you have an accent, because you don't sound American. And I know that that's something that a lot of aspiring pro wrestlers can certainly relate to. It's something that a lot of pro wrestlers have had to deal with, like, "Do I try to just sound American, or do I sound the way I actually do when I speak English, or do I change that?" And it's something that a lot of fans from around the world, I know, have felt that frustration throughout the years of seeing the guy from their country who represents them, that they can relate to, go up to a certain level in pro wrestling and then be subsequently blocked just because of how they speak, which is completely wrong. And I'm glad that I can represent the French language, and I'm glad that that's appreciated even by the French audience. That of course is the most important thing to me, and that's something I'm very proud of in my wrestling career.
Mike Johnson: Well, I think it's a credit to AEW that they let everybody have their authentic voices, and that attempt of homogenizing everyone doesn't happen in AEW the way it happens in other companies. So I think that's actually a positive to AEW in general. Would you agree?
Mike Bailey: Yeah, you're absolutely correct. I did a full day of media in France, which you can watch on my latest vlog, which was absolutely fantastic to get to have those conversations and talk with some of the people in France who cover pro wrestling. But the fact that AEW lets people remain who they are and embraces the history of pro wrestling and doesn't try to rewrite it and ignore everything else that's happened is absolutely fantastic. I think a great match that we saw on Collision was Michael Oku versus Andrade, and I'm very glad that Michael Oku got to perform and have such a big match on that Collision, because Michael Oku is someone who—again, he's not French, but he's wrestled in France a lot. He's wrestled most of his career in England; he's traveled all over Europe. There was an audience at the adidas Arena who knew Michael Oku, who was very happy to see him, and AEW didn't just ignore that, and even though he's been in AEW before, didn't present him as a jobber, didn't present him as less than, even though most of his accomplishments are in promotions outside of AEW. I think that was absolutely fantastic to watch.
Mike Johnson: I've been a big Michael Oku fan, and I've said it's just a matter of time before he's full-time with AEW. I'm looking forward to that personally, because I want to see him wrestle you and a lot of other people who he hasn't had the chance to wrestle with under the AEW banner. I know we're running out of time here. I'll ask you the silliest and hardest question of your life: Why should fans order AEW WrestleDream this weekend on MyAEW internationally, here in the States, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, etc.?
Mike Bailey: Because AEW is where the best wrestle. We are presenting the best pro wrestling in history, and I think that, especially when you look at the recent pay-per-views that AEW has put on, we cannot miss. They have been great, and they have been getting better and better, and we are presenting some of the consistently best matches. Clockwork Carnage is a brand new event, and if you look at the people that are going to be in it and the people that could potentially be in it after Dynamite this Wednesday, this could be an absolute all-timer, a banger for the ages. Clockwork Carnage is going to be awesome, so definitely tune in to WrestleDream.
Mike Johnson: It's going to be eight competitors entering Clockwork Carnage, also The Young Bucks against the Don Callis Family for the AEW World Tag Team Titles, Mercedes Moné against Tekkla for the AEW Women's Championship, and tons of other matches, including an awesome two-out-of-three-falls Trios match I'm really looking forward to watching. So, for everybody, you can check out all things AEW at AEW's website and social media. You can order the show on Amazon Prime, HBO Max, etc. We'll have all those details here. "Speedball," always a pleasure sitting down and talking to you.
Mike Bailey: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Mike.
Mike Johnson: All right, everybody. Until next time, be safe, be healthy, go watch some wrestling. I'm Mike Johnson. Thank you for your support.
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