Former WWE tag team champions AOP almost walked out on the company hours before their main roster debut.
Akam, 32, and Rezar, 31, made their name as Authors of Pain in NXT alongside veteran manager Paul Ellering, but when they got called up in April 2018, they were told they’d have to leave their mentor behind.
‘That was the day that we were deciding to stop with WWE,’ Rezar exclusively told Metro. ‘We were just called up. And the first day at the main roster, they were telling us, “You have to leave Paul Ellering.”
‘And me and my tag team partner Akam, Sonny, he said, “Yo, let’s just give our resignation letter and just leave”. But Paul told us, “Try it out. I’ve helped you guys to get there, so much hard work, we can always get the back back together later.”‘
The wrestler, now going by his real name Gzim Selmani as he returns to combat sports and pursues a career in boxing after calling out former World Strongest Man Eddie Hall, claimed the shift in presentation was due to then-boss Vince McMahon’s bizarre approach.
‘He didn’t like older people than him or people his age on the show. He wanted to be the only elderly person who would be in the spotlight at the time,’ he said.
The duo didn’t walk out, but ‘it wasn’t the same’ without Paul, as they soon ended up working with Drake Maverick, who was in more of a comedy role.
‘Drake Maverick is a creative genius, man. He knows the wrestling business inside and out,’ Gzim said. ‘[But] we were never happy on the main roster. We couldn’t do our thing, we felt like a piece was missing.’
There were even tentative plans at one point to split AOP up, and Gzim claimed some people saw him as his own star.
‘A lot of people backstage [in creative] were pushing to do that. But I made my name in a tag team. I don’t go behind someone’s back,’ he said. ‘The talks were there, but I was never really interested.’
The team were released in 2020 before a return in 2024, after over a year on the sidelines waiting for a creative pitch.
‘They had a lot of ideas, but the storylines didn’t make sense at that time – for them, because we were ready to do anything,’ he pondered, reflecting on the period before The Final Testament was formed with Karrion Kross and Scarlett Bordeaux.
They insisted on having Ellering back too, but Gzim feels more should have been done with the group, and their leader in particular.
”Kross has all the talent in the world to become a WWE Champion and be the face of WWE, and they just didn’t give it to him. It’s f***ing crazy,’ he said.
He claimed creative chief Triple H was ‘very excited at the beginning’, but ‘made a lot of promises’ that didn’t come to fruition.
But he insisted he has ‘nothing bad to say about Hunter’, and the boss was ‘always respectful’ towards AOP.
The team was released again in February this year, and Gzim is returning to his fighting roots after getting into combat sports as a ‘little kid’.
He started judo at four years old, and became a national champion in the Netherlands in the under-12 and under-16 brackets, before moving into boxing and kickboxing.
MMA followed, and he signed with Bellator and main evented a BAMMA card, before WWE came calling.
‘I got scouted when I was 18,’ he said. ‘But I always kept training. I was always staying sharp.’
During those early days in pro wrestling, veteran William Regal – who scouted him in Dubai for his tryout – ‘taught him the business’, along with fellow Brit Robbie Brookside.
‘Those two really took me under their wing,’ he recalled with a smile.
Now it’s time to get back into boxing, and Gzim made a statement by calling out Eddie Hall.
‘I saw him getting in the ring and calling out Dylan Dennis after his fight. And that’s just absurd to me. The guy’s three, four times his size,’ he ranted.
‘Fight someone that’s not scared, and that’s your size. And if you’re a scared, little p***y, then you go fight a guy a quarter of your size.’
Gzim, who is managed by Shane Watson, is down to 292lbs after hitting 350 during his time with WWE, and he’s not closing the door on a return to wrestling, while he, Akam and Ellering still talk ‘every day’.
‘If I want to get into wrestling in six to 10 years, I will do it – however many years it is,’ he said. ‘But right now, my focus is on fighting and winning as much as possible. Let’s do it.’
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