AEW star Jack Perry has opened up about his experience during the “Four Pillars” storyline in 2023, revealing that the period was the most miserable of his professional wrestling career. The high-profile angle brought together four of AEW’s top “homegrown” talents—Perry, MJF, Darby Allin, and Sammy Guevara—and culminated in a four-way match for the AEW World Championship at the Double or Nothing pay-per-view. While it was a main event program, Perry felt the timing was wrong and that the storyline ultimately benefited only one person. His candid comments shed light on the creative frustrations that some talented performers can face when pushed into high-profile angles they don’t fully believe in.
In a recent interview with Haley Miller of VICE, Perry was candid about his feelings on the storyline and revealed that he had pleaded with management to postpone it.
“The pillars thing up to that point was the most miserable I had ever been, I didn’t wanna do that at that time. I literally said, I begged, I was like, ‘Can we do this later? I feel like this is only really benefiting one person. And we all could grow so much more.’ I had just beaten Christian when that happened and then Christian got injured and that whole thing took way longer than it was supposed to. I was kinda floating around killing time until he got back so I could beat him. After I beat him, the next thing I got put in was that. I was like, ‘Could you guys let me get going a little bit? Sammy could be built up even more, Darby, and this could be a huge thing where any one of us could win the world title at the end of this.”
Perry also believes that the storyline led to fans beginning to turn on his “Jungle Boy” babyface character, and he wanted to embrace that with a heel turn, a move that was initially rejected.
“I felt so not good about what I was doing at the point I was at. I really felt people were starting to turn on me a little there. And I thought, ‘I think I should lean into that and like make this story here. Am I gonna turn to win the world title?’ That was met with people being like, ‘No, you gotta stay [face]! You’re Jungle Boy,’ yeah, but Jungle Boy has nothing to say and people are starting to not like me. As soon as I started to tease that I was gonna go the other way, people were interested again because I was interested again. The heel turn was like a whole new world for me. My main thing there was people told me, ‘you’re never gonna be able to be a heel.’ I knew I could. Obviously, I wasn’t the greatest in the world. There were parts of it that were rocky and I had to figure it out ’cause I’d been Jungle Boy my whole life. To me, it was just to prove that I could do it.”
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