Tegan Nox Says AEW Walkout Story “Blew Up Over a Lie”

Nixon Newell, best known to WWE fans as Tegan Nox, is pushing back on the narrative that formed around her and Miranda Alize’s abrupt departure from an AEW Collision taping last November, saying the widely circulated version of events wasn’t accurate.

Newell and Alize were scheduled to wrestle a tag match on the November 8, 2025 episode of Collision but left the arena before the bout happened, sparking heavy speculation online about a backstage blowup. Speaking on a recent podcast appearance, Newell said the truth got buried under assumptions from people who had no involvement in the actual conversations that took place that night.

According to Newell, there was no dramatic confrontation with AEW management. She said she and Alize spoke with company officials, both sides understood each other’s position, and she was even told the door remained open for a return. Her account is that the pair chose not to go on because they had been promised roughly six minutes and a chance to do something meaningful with the time — not because they were unwilling to lose the match. Newell was clear that dropping the bout was never the sticking point, noting that losing has made up the bulk of her career.

What frustrated her most, she said, was watching secondhand reports and social media speculation snowball into claims she says simply weren’t true — including suggestions she had clashed with wrestlers she’d never met. She pointed to a viral post claiming she was seen “pounding beer” after the walkout as an example of how exaggerated the story became, joking that as a British wrestler, a single Michelob Ultra hardly qualifies.

The fallout, Newell says, went well beyond bad press. She revealed she received death threats on a near-daily basis for close to four months after the incident, and she says she still doesn’t understand why a portion of the fanbase has such intense animosity toward her — something she traces back as far as her injury at the 2017 Mae Young Classic.

This is the fullest explanation Newell has given publicly since leaving AEW, and it fills in gaps that fueled months of speculation about her AEW run and whether backstage tension played a role in her exit. The company never offered a detailed public account of what happened that night, which left a vacuum that online reaction filled with its own version of events. Newell’s comments suggest the situation was less adversarial than portrayed — a professional disagreement over a match arrangement rather than a dramatic falling-out.

With Newell confirming she was told she’d be welcome back, it’s worth watching whether that door ever actually opens, especially as AEW continues to shuffle its women’s division and Alize looks for a landing spot of her own. For now, Newell’s remarks serve mostly as a corrective to a story that took on a life of its own — and a reminder of how quickly online speculation can outrun the facts in pro wrestling.