Mike Bennett has been working hard to make a name for himself and finally landed in the WWE at Money In The Bank. He made his surprise debut alongside his real-life wife Maria Kanellis. Sporting his wife’s last name to draw even more heat, Mike is riding high and can’t wait to make a name for himself in WWE.
Mike wanted to be a WWE superstar since his first show when he happened to witness Mick Foley defeat The Rock for the WWF World Title. After that moment the wrestling bug bit him in a big way. Mike recently spoke to Edge and Christian on their Pod Of Awesomeness and discussed some of the trials he had to go through in order to finally land his dream job in WWE.
“Me and Maria have a joke where we say my career went every direction except where I thought it was going to go. And you start in one direction and you start with one goal in mind and then life happens to you and you go in every other direction you didn’t expect.”
“But one thing that stays consistent is that one dream, you know. Just because it wasn’t a straight line doesn’t mean the destination still isn’t there. You just kind of went the scenic route to get there.”
Mike says he didn’t know what to do because his Impact Wrestling contract was expiring, but he said he had “that itch” to try WWE. So he emailed Paul Heyman. The Advocate told Bennett he would have someone be in touch with him and that seemed to be the end of the story.
There was a time when they thought about resigning with Impact wrestling. Mike said Kevin Owens called and asked him what he was doing by resigning with Impact. “What are you guys doing? I heard you guys were resigning with TNA, I don’t think you should do that. You should come here.” A couple of days later William Regal called him and offered him a deal to come straight to the main roster.
To keep it as secret as possible Mike told Impact Wrestling they couldn’t resign with them due to “personal reasons.” Mike said the three months he spent at home waiting to debut with WWE seemed like ten years.
Mike also said he didn’t know he was going to debut at Money In The Bank until Mark Carrano called him told him to be in St Louis. When Kevin Owens and Mike met again backstage at Money In The Bank before his debut, KO told Bennett “aren’t you glad you listened to me?”
If you use any portion of the quotes in this article please credit E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription
