RJ City explains decision to end AEW YouTube series
Appearing on a new episode of AEW Unrestricted, RJ City explained why he decided to end his long-running YouTube series.
“Hey! (EW)” ran on the promotion’s official YouTube channel for nearly four years until wrapping up this month. It was a comedic interview series with City speaking with a different AEW personality each week. In total, 165 episodes were produced during the show’s run.
City joked on Unrestricted that he decided to end the show because the idea had been run into the ground by this point. It’s difficult to get new guests every week, and City didn’t know if he wanted to have anyone on twice.
“I think I just ran it into the ground and said, ‘Well, I think we’ve reached our destination.’ We did four years, we did 165 episodes. As I said in the episode, we were down to the nose and the assh*les. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but it’s very hard to get guests,” he said.
“Then I’m like, I don’t know if I want to have people on again. I don’t know if I want to do a second Eddie Kingston one, and the people are like, ‘It’s not as good as the first.'”
City said the series felt like a “blind date” with him and the guest figuring each other out in real time. In one instance, Arn Anderson did not know the concept of “Hey! (EW)” and thought he would be sitting down for a serious interview, but everything worked out in the end.
Highlighting guests who don’t normally get to feature in long-form interviews was important to City, with him naming Jamie Hayter as someone who surprised him with how funny she was.
“It was a really nice place to see people talk who don’t really get a chance to talk at that kind of length, at that kind of speed, and then they do a really good job,” City said. “I mean, obviously, there’s people like Dalton [Castle] and Mark Briscoe, where you’re like, ‘This is going to be easy.’ But then there’s other people like Jamie Hayter, who I’d never seen that side of her before. She was just down for the filth from the beginning.”
A comedic wrestler, City still works for AEW despite the end of “Hey! (EW).” He is part of the creative team and appears on screen as a PPV pre-show host.
“As I’ve gotten older, I realize it’s good to be sad about things,” he said about stopping the YouTube series. “It’s good to end something and be sad about it [and] go, ‘That was good’ and end it while it was good.”
The final episode of “Hey! (EW)” can be watched below:
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.