Trent Beretta Comments On NJPW's Rumored Plans For Him Before Joining AEW

AEW star Trent Beretta has given his take on the rumors that spread about what NJPW wanted to do with him had he stayed with the company. Beretta became a regular for NJPW in 2015. Along the way, he captured the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship four times with Rocky Romero. He also challenged Kenny Omega for the IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship. Beretta was still doing tag team title matches after losing to Omega, but he was booked strongly, getting the winning fall for Chaos to capture the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship with Tomohiro Ishii and Toru Yano at Wrestle Kingdom 12.

In 2019, Beretta made his exit from NJPW in favor of signing with AEW. At the time, rumors spread that NJPW officials were unhappy with Beretta's decision as there were supposedly plans to elevate his role into a more prominent singles performer. Speaking to Wrestling Inc. Senior News Editor Nick Hausman, Beretta responded to those rumors. "I don't know if that's true either, I don't know. I don't know what their plans are. I know when it came down to like ... No, actually I really don't have any details. I don't know, I heard the same thing, but then I mostly saw it online."

Beretta went on to say that he was never given any assurances by the NJPW brass about how he'd be booked before he jumped ship to AEW. "There was never anything like, 'If you stay here, you're going to be in the main event all the time.' Nobody said that or anything like that, but I guess it was maybe alluded to that, 'Yeah, you want to do single stuff instead of tag, you could do that,' but that's it. There was no real details." While Beretta has yet to win a title in AEW, he has tended to be featured pretty regularly on AEW programming as part of Best Friends, and recently challenged PAC for the All-Atlantic Championship.