Trending

Q/A: AEW Star Wheeler Yuta Discusses Philly Return, Flyers Playoff Run, and the “Universal Language” of Wrestling

By Nick Piccone

Published: May 27th, 2026 · 10:24 AM EDT

---

All Elite Wrestling returns to Philadelphia’s Liacouras Center Wednesday night with a live taping of Dynamite and Collision. This will mark the first AEW event since the Memorial Day Weekend pay-per-view staple, Double or Nothing, this past Sunday. Since its inception in 2019, AEW has held various TV tapings in Philly, including 2025’s Dynasty pay-per-view.

Crossing Broad caught up with AEW star and Philly sports fan Wheeler Yuta ahead of the show to discuss how much returning to here means to him, his introduction to pro wrestling, current path in AEW, the Flyers’ playoff run, and more!

---

Crossing Broad: I know you’re from the Philly area, so when you come back and wrestle here, does it have an extra special meaning to you?

Wheeler Yuta: Not born here, but all my family’s from here, so I come here for every holiday and stuff and I’ve been here for over 10 years now myself. But yeah, it’s always really special. I have a lot of friends and family in the crowd and I always feel like Philadelphia, with sports and wrestling, have some of the best energy. So I’m very excited to be able to experience that again myself, but also, you know, show it off for the rest of the world.

CB: Did any of the wrestling events that took place in Philly kind of shape your desire to eventually become a professional wrestler?

WY: Yeah, definitely. One of those Christmases I was talking about is the first time I was introduced to wrestling – by my cousin – so this is the city where I really fell in love with it. I was always a big fan of, obviously, there’s the legacy of ECW and that’s a little bit before I was a fan. But like the independent promotions that used to run out of the 2300 Arena, like CZW and Chikara. Those were places that I was lucky enough to then wrestle in later. That was really special to me, and then we got to do a residency there for AEW, so that was always really cool. I used to watch those promotions all the time on the internet and stuff, and then I wound up being trained by a lot of those guys so that was always very special to me when I was younger, just that local wrestling scene. 

CB: And now AEW is known for having a lot of working relationships with different promotions, not only around here, but around the world. Do you think that has affected wrestlers positively to have that ability to go to different countries around the world and perform versus maybe just staying in one country? And as a wrestler, how does that benefit your career? 

WY: Yeah, I think that as a wrestler, it’s really cool to be able to go and experience these different places. It’s professional wrestling everywhere you go. It is like a universal language, but at the same time, that doesn’t mean there’s not dialects. There’s different places that are doing wrestling just a little bit differently. Like I went to Mexico, and they have a much more high-flying style with a lot of those wrestlers, but also like these very cool submissions that you don’t see in the States. You go to Japan and it’s presented in a much more serious light than it is in a lot of places. So, there’s different aspects that help you grow as a performer and really help you become a master of all different facets of your crafts. But I think that even more so than that, it’s just awesome for the fans, because there’s so many cool dream matches that you just never thought you’d get. Like, no one thought that – before he obviously signed with [AEW] – no one thought that Kazuchika Okada was gonna come over and wrestle on a major American television show, but here he is. So, there’s countless examples, like Ishii, Naito, and just guys from New Japan specifically, but same with CMLL, there’s so many different matches and opportunities that you get that you just wouldn’t have if we were close-minded.

CB: Absolutely. I’m a pro wrestling fan at heart, so I love the fact that we can see those different matches that, a decade ago, we never would have expected. So you as a wrestling fan, even before you started getting into pro wrestling, did you kind of hope that we would eventually see something like this? Because I know for a while, it was just one show in town. But now there is so much more opportunity available. Did you ever think that would be possible as you were coming up? 

WY: Yeah, I mean, when you’re like a little kid, and you don’t really know how, I guess how wrestling works, you know, I’d always just hear kind of about – I mean I was alive when WCW was around and all that, but I was, I was younger – so it was like by the time I became like really, really locked in as a fan, it’s like, well, man, like that’s, there’s all, like you said, there’s only one game in town, so that was, that was all gone. And as a kid, it was always like, ‘man, it would be really cool if there was like another place or another thing.’ But then as you start to get there in wrestling, and start becoming a wrestler, it felt like it was just not a possibility, like there was just no way this mountain that we can’t climb. But then The Elite, obviously, getting so popular outside of that one company and being able to prove that there is a market for this. A lot of wrestling fans were disenchanted and now being able to bring them back in is just a testament to the hard work that the guys in The Elite did when they were on the independents and now in AEW, just building it up from the ground floor. And it’s a testament to all of us that are working in AEW now just to push it and bring it forward because we don’t have the history that WWE has, so obviously we’re going to be behind the eight ball a little bit. But I think that we’ve done an excellent job carving out that alternative. 

CB: I’d agree with that. Focusing on AEW a little bit more here, you align yourself with guys like Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Bryan Danielson – how much has that benefited your career through the years? 

WY: It’s been just, like, what a blessing, right? Bryan Danielson has been one of my favorites since the first time I saw him wrestle, so, the fact that I was able to learn from him, learn so much about, you know, the technical side of wrestling and then, even just real life advice that he would give me was always incredibly valuable, so I’m so thankful for that. Despite the whole plastic bag situation (laughs). And as for Jon Moxley, he’s a leader in the truest sense of the word in that he brings everyone up by his example. He works hard. He tries to make every show he can make. He is always focused on trying to get better at his craft. No matter what he has to do every day just to find one way to sharpen some aspect of his game. So, just in that and leading by example and then bringing up the rest of us in the Death Riders, it’s been so remarkable to see how I really feel like he turned a time where the company was not looking for a new direction, but I think we needed someone to step up, and he really stepped up and took the ball right, and he’s done that time and time again. 

CB: Are there pros and cons of being in a group versus being a singles guy? Or are those just based on who you surround yourself with? Like the Death Riders. Or do you see yourself as someone that’ll eventually be a singles guy?

WY: Yeah, I think that for me right now, I’ve always, especially in AEW, always sort of been tied to a faction. But I’ve enjoyed the camaraderie of it, and I don’t think that, you know, being in the Death Riders or being in a faction, especially in AEW, I don’t think it really hinders you at all in terms of like achieving your singles goals. So, I’ve very much enjoyed what I’ve done in the Death Riders, and I plan on sticking it out for quite a long time, but I do have obviously single aspirations and things of that nature. I want to win a singles championship in AEW one day, and I want to main event All In one day, and they’re obviously these goals I have, but I think that being in the Death Riders has been a great way for me to move forward, and I think that there’s a good chance that I’ll achieve all those goals while still being being a member of the Death Riders. 

CB: You recently lost a match where you had to shave your head. I know changes in appearance for wrestlers are sometimes, you know, they don’t want to do that or they do. How do you go about this appearance change – do you view it as a reinvention of your character or is it just a part of Wheeler Yuta’s character arc?

WY: Yeah, I think by like the third or fourth week of “Get a haircut!” chants, I was like, all right, we got something here, so I’m definitely not gonna get a haircut for as long as possible. It’s funny cause I was joking with someone that I feel like I just got out of the awkward phase and then chopped my hair off, so now I’m gonna get into another awkward phase soon. But yeah, doing the hair match, it was definitely a sacrifice I was willing to make because I think the hair was almost becoming a character of its own on the show, and I was like, there’s only one logical satisfactory way for this to all kind of conclude, and for me to get my haircut. So, there’s a lot of decision making and a lot of things that go on at AEW behind the scenes, but when the opportunity presented itself, I was very excited to have a Hair vs. Hair match. 

CB: You just mentioned short-term and long-term goals, but I was going to ask if you had some short-term and long-term goals as a part of this industry? You’re a young guy, your in-ring career is nowhere close to being over, but do you see yourself sticking around in the industry once the in-ring aspect ends?

WY: Yeah, I haven’t quite gotten that far in terms of what the off ramp is, but I do love professional wrestling, so I can certainly see if the right opportunity presents itself to me staying in the industry in some capacity when I’m done. That’s definitely longer, longer term goals. More of my short-term goals would focus on me and Daniel Garcia – having had a few tag matches recently that have been very fun and I think we’re building a lot of chemistry as a team. We spent a lot of time on the opposite side of the ring, so now that we’re on the same side, it’s been very enjoyable and like a new challenge. So I think that short-term goal would just see how far we can go with the tag team and how far we can go in the Death Riders, but long-term goals would definitely be to make a name for myself and have some single success, whether that’s in the context of the Death Riders or not. 

CB: You’re a big Philly sports fan. Were you surprised that the Flyers’ playoff run came out of nowhere? I mean, I was happy they beat the Penguins, but what did you make of their playoff run and how they head into next season? 

WY: I followed this season maybe closer than I have followed any season in a long time. And it was so much fun. The beginning of the season, all of the question marks about the new guys, it just worked out great. Like [Trevor] Zegras. ‘The early days in Anaheim, can he reclaim that?’ Yep, he can. He had the best year of the group. ‘Can Dan Vladar prove that he’s more than just a tandem guy?’ Yep, he can. He’s the team MVP. All of the boxes were checked. Like Christian Dvorak, he’s playing great! All right, boom, boom, boom. This is awesome. And then I went to the Ducks game. I had the time of my life. I was like, ‘We are making the playoffs!’ And then January happened and I went, ‘Oh boy…’ I guess that’s my whole thing of the season. But all January, I’m watching them play, and I’m like, ‘I know we’re better than this. I know we’re better.‘  And I will say when [the percentage to make the playoffs] got down to 3%, I lost a little bit of faith, for sure, but I always felt like whether they were gonna make the playoffs or not, they were a playoff team. So the fact that they were able to get in there, have an awesome series against Pittsburgh, it was so much fun. I drove past the sports complex right after the Game 6 overtime winner. I was coming back from Dynamite, actually, right past the sports complex. I played the victory song, started honking my horn. It was great. But yeah, I think for next year, again, there’s those question marks of how long do we sign Vladar for, can we maintain that success, but I’m very, very optimistic for the future of the Flyers. I think they get back to the playoffs next year, but even if they don’t, I think the team has a very, very bright future. 

CB: What do you make of this drama with Rick Tocchet and Matvei Michkov, or is that, hopefully, you know, water under the bridge? 

WY: Yeah, it’s funny. I listened to PHLY where that whole thing started at the carnival. I listen to them a lot and I don’t know. My opinion on it is that Tocchet probably thought, ‘OK. How do I make Michkov more a part of the team’ and not just, maybe this is optimistic, I don’t know, and not just have him be singled out with all this pressure, so he tried to make him part of the team. So he kept saying, ‘It’s a team thing, it’s a team thing,’ and then it got a little overboard. That’s my optimistic take on it. Was he actually really mad at him for showing up out of shape? Yeah, probably. But my optimistic take is he was trying to make him part of the team and he went too far. 

CB: The Phillies. They’re struggling. Do you think they make the playoffs?

WY: Ugh. I’m gonna say… I’m gonna say yes because I don’t want to live in that reality again where they miss the playoffs. I mean, it’s the same question marks it’s always been. It’s like, where do we get an impactful right-handed bat, you know, it’s the same stuff as always. But pour one out for my guy, Rob Thomson, that one bummed me out when he got let go, but Donnie Baseball’s been pretty fun. 

CB: The Eagles. You got any win/loss predictions? 

WY: *laughs* I don’t know.

CB: Well, we probably know AJ Brown’s not gonna be here, right?

WY: Yeah, yeah. 

CB: Well, I hope they have a good season. The Super Bowl a couple years ago was just incredible, just dismantling the Chiefs. How did you feel watching that game? Did you feel like you were dreaming? Because I did.

WY: It was, it was surreal. So I went to Chiefs/Eagles 1 (Super Bowl 57), and they did not win, so maybe a little bit of PTSD, but I was, for whatever reason, I was excited standing up for the opening kickoff (at Super Bowl 59), and then I just decided I wasn’t going to sit down once they started winning. And I was like, okay, so I stood for the whole game. I thought that would be good luck. I think when they pulled the starters, I think I might have sat down.