All Elite Wrestling has released multiple people from its merchandise design department. Reddit user Kato Macabre has claimed that the entire AEW merch design team has been let go:
“In what seems to be an imminent split between AEW and ProWrestling Tees, the whole merch design team (Jacob C. Paul, Erik Veszelka, Mel Coleman and probably a few others but I don’t have confirmation) got laid off today (The team designed exclusively for AEW, and everything released on ShopAEW was designed by them, but they worked for PWTees, so them being laid off is a direct consequence of AEW ending their partnership with PWTees).
I had the pleasure to be in the AEW merch design team and work alongside them, and they genuinely are in my opinion the best artists you can find in the pro wrestling world, and I’m very shocked, sad and a bit angry that they were just cut one day to another.
Of course things might change and they might be hired by AEW themselves at some point soon, but so far it’s not looking like it and I just thought that they deserved that people who might not have known put a name behind the merch you’ve seen in the past couple of years, and their work celebrated.”
Mel Coleman, who also appeared ringside during the April 8 episode of Dynamite as the woman taking a photo with Andrade El Idolo, later confirmed her departure in a post on X before deleting it. She wrote:
“A chapter closed. Thank you for the opportunities and memories. I’m still shell shocked. But wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been supporting not only my journey but my brothers in art. Thank you to the wonderful women and men I’ve met because of this opportunity. I’m in the dark right now and I don’t know what will happen. But Thank you for your love.”
Erik Veszelka, who had been with AEW for a year, also addressed his departure on X in the following post:
“My time with AEW has come to an end.
Thank you to everyone who supported me during the journey. I’m disappointed, but also super grateful for the opportunity, and the work that I was able to do.
As always, my commissions are open, if you need any design work done, hit me up🙏”
Jacob Paul also confirmed his exit via Instagram:
“As of today, I am no longer an official contracted AEW/ROH merchandise artist. Everything must run its course and unfortunately, this was the end of mine. The company is shifting to a new merchandising strategy and unfortunately I am not factored into it.
I will be OK. You may still see a couple of things I made showing up here and there, because that’s the nature of the product pipeline. I look forward to you getting to see the last few designs I had approved.
Thank you to everyone for your support, it has been wonderful. I got to work with almost everyone I wanted to work with in wrestling. I got to work with Kenny Omega, Kazuchika Okada, the Young Bucks, Timeless Toni Storm, Mercedes Moné, Hangman Adam Page, Will Ospreay, Jon Moxley, Dustin Rhodes, and many more. I got to define the look of the entire line of kids merch. I got to leave my mark on a lot of major events, including All In Texas. I got to sit front row for AEW Collision, and see many favorites wrestler live. It was a rad time, and I thank each and every one of the talents I got to work with for the amazing experience.
For now, I am going to focus on my full time job, draw for myself, maybe bat some ideas around with my family and friends. I will not be taking any commissions, so please for my own sanity, don’t ask.
See you, space cowboy.”
However, Pro Wrestling Tees issued a response denying parts of the online claim:
“The person who made the reddit post circulating has no knowledge of our business. Nothing on that post is true except that we unfortunately told some of our contracted designers that we would not need them for as many AEW designs anymore. Some of the AEW designers are still contracted. Nothing has changed otherwise and we are still fulfilling merchandise for AEW.”
