Peter Avalon Addresses AEW Casting Two Librarians

While Peter Avalon has played a variety of different gimmicks over the course of his career, he is best known as The Librarian, which he revealed was "all Tony Khan's idea."

The Librarian was a gimmick that got mixed reviews from the AEW fanbase at the time, but he revealed to "Insight with Chris Van Vliet" exactly how the idea came to fruition, with his AEW career all kickstarting by Cody Rhodes sending him a DM to keep the date of the first Double Or Nothing free.

"At a Bar Wrestling show, at The Bootleg, we're downstairs and I believe it was, the Bucks came, Christopher Daniels maybe, Scorpio Sky was booked ... and they just started telling me this idea about the Librarian, and it was Tony's idea ... They said, 'After Tony explained to us the idea, we thought the only person that could get this over and play this well is Peter Avalon,'" he said.

Even though The Young Bucks instantly thought of him for the role, the "jist of the idea" from Khan was simply him saying "shush" to people in the crowd in order to get heat. But that is something that ended up changing slightly due to his appearances on "Being The Elite," which added more layers to the role.

"The Bucks wanted to do the take on it where it's — 'I am Peter Avalon, and I am going to take this dumb part because I want my foot in the company by any means necessary, so we are kind of acknowledging that this gimmick is dumb, but I am gonna do it because I want the job,' and we kind of played it like that on BTE," he said. "Ultimately, I just kind of became a Librarian and started just believing it, and then the team with Brandon happened, and then the split happened."

While he initially started as a solo Librarian, that ended up changing due to AEW running a contest for people to send in promos to become one alongside of him, and he admitted that decision was "kind of done on the fly."

"I was under the understanding that I was the Librarian, and BTE, we were talking about that like I am Librarian. Then this thing came out ... They kind of told me that it was going to happen and that they had the idea for it where there's two Librarian's now, and I am like, 'Whatever. I am down for whatever, I am open, I am Professional Peter and I can make anything work', especially anything silly."

While a lot of people applied to take on the second Librarian role, it was Bates who was given it, which Avalon believes is because "she's just good at what she does, she's a natural entertainer," as he weighed in on his decision to be slightly different from Khan's original idea for the gimmick.

"It was just kind of written as we went on, and it was a lot of my own brainchild trying to think of what to say," he said. "Tony wanted it to be very Lanny Poffo, but I didn't want to be just a direct Lanny Poffo, so I was like, maybe I don't do poetry. Let me dive in and see what a librarian actually does ... So I was like, that's what I'll try to do. I will spit facts."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Insight with Chris Van Vliet" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.