Swerve Strickland Says Christian Cage Was a Mentor To Him In Their Feud

Swerve Strickland feuded with Christian Cage as his first AEW World Title feud, and he credits Cage for being a mentor at the time. Strickland feuded with Cage after winning the title at AEW Dynasty 2024, leading into AEW Double Or Nothing, where he retained his title.

Strickland was asked about that rivalry during his appearance on TMZ Inside the Ring. He recalled how Cage was someone he learned a lot from and how Xavier Woods reached out to him and told him he was in good hands with Cage. You can see highlights below:

On Cage Being a Mentor to Him In the Feud:

“Oh, very much so. Oh yeah, absolutely. First off, when that was coming about, one of the people that reached out to me that was like, ‘Oh man, you’re in good hands, you’re going to learn so much,’ was Xavier Woods. He was like, ‘Trust me, he’s like so smart about a lot of things. He’s a scientist with it. So you’re in great hands, and you’re going to learn a lot from that.’ And he was right.”

On Working With Cage in the Feud:

“And it’s a lot of things because you’re so like — this is your first feud as champion. So you want to make sure everything’s perfect. You want to make sure, like — and then you second guess. He was so good at taking you out of the second-guessing portion of it. And he was just like, ‘No, we got this. We got this and we don’t have a lot of time, but we’re going to make it impactful and make it meaningful.’ And he did that. He did that.

“As a veteran — and it was this actually made so much sense to the Swerve character. I’m going up against a veteran as my first championship title defense, it makes sense.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit TMZ Inside The Ring with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.