Update on Jacques Rougeau tribute video not airing at AEW Redemption | Exclusive
Dave Meltzer had more on the situation involving Jacques Rougeau backstage at AEW Redemption on the most recent edition of Wrestling Observer Radio.
In this week’s edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Meltzer reported that AEW chose not to air a tribute video Rougeau had prepared for the pre-show segment honoring four generations of his family.
Meltzer said everything is fine now between AEW and Rougeau, but that it was an issue backstage at the show in Montreal.
Meltzer said:
“Number one, there was AI content in the video, and Tony Khan is against AI content. So that’s one. Number two, it was too long. Number three, they did not have musical rights to the music that he had in the video. And number four, there was issue with some of the footage, in particular the footage of Jacques pinning Hulk Hogan, because that was a WCW show, which means that WWE owned the rights to it, which means they couldn’t show it.”
Rougeau pinned Hollywood Hogan during a non-title WCW house show held at the Molson Centre in Montreal, Quebec. Meltzer noted that AEW knew it would be unable to show footage of the match because it was a WCW event and WWE owns the footage.
Meltzer continued:
“Of course Jacques wants his pin of Hulk Hogan to be out there, and, you know, it’s his big claim to fame locally, is that he convinced and paid Hulk Hogan a lot of money to let him pin Hulk Hogan in Montreal at the Bell Centre. So he wanted that out there, but they couldn’t air it, and he was unhappy.”
“In the end, everything’s fine now, but it was absolutely an issue. Like I said, even building security was aware of it.”
“Every one of those issues was a no. Even if there’s even one of them, I mean, they absolutely could not have put the Hulk Hogan pin. They absolutely could not have put that on. They knew they would get sued by WWE.”
The full edition of Wrestling Observer Radio is available here for subscribers.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has appeared in award-winning publications such as NOW Magazine and The Huffington Post. He joined the F4WOnline team in 2019 and was named managing editor in the summer of 2026. Born in Calgary, Alberta, Ian has covered professional wrestling for more than 15 years.