AEW: Five possible opponents for Jake Hager’s first match

After debuting on the AEW Dynamite premiere and joining Chris Jericho’s Inner Circle stable, we’ve yet to see the towering Jake Hager in the squared circle. That should all change following his upcoming Bellator MMA bout on Oct. 25.

Wrestling fans will be familiar with Hager for his almost 10-year spell with WWE under the moniker Jack Swagger.

The former All-American from the University of Oklahoma might also be familiar to MMA fans for his recent pair of matches under the Bellator banner where he competes as a heavyweight. Both fights ending via arm-triangle chokes.

After a quick two year tour on the independents, appearances in Lucha Underground and MLW, then a successful kick-off to his MMA career, Hager is back on our television sets as the hired muscle in Chris Jericho’s ‘Inner Circle’.

While Hager has yet to compete in an AEW ring, the flashes of violence we have seen have us convinced he didn’t sign with All Elite to look pretty in a polo.

Here’s our list of five possible opponents for Jake Hager:

5. Dustin Rhodes

We’ve already been blessed with a small glimpse of this confrontation after the second episode of ‘Dynamite’ ended in an all-out brawl between the Elite, The Rhodes’ and the ‘Inner Circle’.

For us, Hager facing off against Dustin Rhodes in his debut just makes total sense. Two relatively imposing figures who have worked together before and who could have a believable hard-hitting match.

We could quite easily set this up with Hager hunting Rhodes backstage, beating him down, and Dustin challenging him to a match. This would be a great opportunity for Dustin to put Jake over without the need for squash matches.