With the former NXT North American Champion heavily favored to win the AEW World Championship at Dynasty, fans knew Swerve Strickland would make a serious impression with his debut on the show, but when he emerged from the babyface tunnel wearing a full Killmonger bodysuit from Black Panther, it made an already special moment into something worthy of a special spot in AEW history.

But why did Strickland choose Killmonger when T'Challa is the babyface of that particular movie? Well, Strickland explained that to Renee Paquette on AEW Close Up, and needless to say, the reasoning is very interesting.

“I went through a lot of pain to get to this moment. I didn't always do things the right way. Did a lot of bad things to get what I needed to get, to go where I needed to go. That's kind of mirrored and parallel with the Killmonger, and that's why I kind of resonate with that. I'm not a hero. The Persona of Swerve Strickland is not a hero; he is a warrior,” Swerve Strickland told Renee Paquette via WrestleZone.

“Warriors from any perspective can be deemed as a good or bad. That's up to people to decide. Like ‘Man, actually he had a point. He did a lot of bad things because he had to fight and scratch and claw 'cause nobody else was going to do it for him. He had to do it on his own, and he had to find his way.' And that's what I did. I wasn't coming to just be awarded the throne. I'm here to take it, and that's what I did.”

Should Strickland have embraced being a hero instead of a warrior, going for the North Star of goodness that is the Black Panther instead of the anti-hero of Killmonger? Potentially so, but it's clear Strickland is doing things his own way as a babyface champion in AEW, and as a result, he's going to embrace being something of a tweener where it benefits him.

Don Callis wants to recruit Swerve Strickland into his family.

Speaking of the new era of AEW under the watchful eye of Swerve Strickland, Don Callis discussed his desire to add a few more high-profile players to his namesake faction, including the man who calls himself the true “Best in the World,” as he detailed on the Battleground podcast.

“I'm in recruitment mode. I've got my eye firmly set on Swerve Strickland because Swerve is a class A talent with a class C management, and I'm talking about Prince Nana, who I like, he's a good guy. But Prince Nana is not equipped to manage the world champion. I am, and I've proven it. I've managed multiple world champions in my career. Everything I touch turns to gold. Everything Nana touches turns to nothing,” Don Callis explained on Battleground.

“I am all about advancing the Don Callis Family. We are all about higher-level consciousness, where if we wrestle each other, it's about making ourselves better. It's not about putting one guy down. So I think I'm very, very focused on that,” Don Callis explained via Fightful. “I think, you look at Kyle Fletcher, six-five, 240, kid's only 24 years old. As we used to say in the business, he's a puppy with big paws. So you can imagine what Kyle Fletcher is gonna look like a year from now, after listening to my tutelage. You can imagine what Powerhouse Hobbs is gonna do when he comes back. [Konosuke] Takeshita, who's probably the best pure athlete in All Elite Wrestling, former Olympic-level decathlete, these are the types of athletes that I recruit. Now, I'm looking at Swerve Strickland, I'm looking at Orange Cassidy, Claudio, and a kid named Zak Knight, who I think is an up-and-comer as well.”

Should Strickland join the Don Callis Family? No, probably not, but hey, Zak Knight would be an interesting addition to the group, especially considering it would add Saraya into the fray and make an already unpopular faction even more so, which can either produce something really good or really bad… in a fun way. Either way, with Callis seemingly flirting with the idea of managing Orange Cassidy moving forward now that the Best Friends are effectively over, who knows, maybe Strickland will have to come face-to-face with a newer, badder version of OC who operates more like the “Wrestling Machine” and less like the fun-loving Kurt Angle who sang Jimmy Crack Corn and road around in a milk truck two decades ago.