James Ellsworth is no longer a WWE Superstar, but he seems to be on good terms with the company.
Ellsworth had a good run with WWE, and it all started when he faced Braun Strowman during an episode of Raw in 2016.
James got squashed by Strowman, but before the match he told the fans that any man with two hands has a fighting chance, and that message resonated with people all around the world.
Ellsworth’s memorable debut eventually helped him land a WWE contract, and during a recent appearance on The Taz Show, the former Superstar revealed that Vince McMahon complimented him after the segment (via WrestleZone).
“Right after the match, Arn Anderson, who was the agent for the match, told me Vince [McMahon] was looking for me. I said, ‘Oh, really? Why would he be looking for me? What did I do wrong?’ I found Vince and he was coming down the stairs there outside of Gorilla looking for me and I found him. He said, ‘Hey, I just wanted to tell you that you did a very good job. I was very pleased with that. Thank you.’ I was like, ‘Huh?’ [Chris] Jericho called me that night and I told him about that and he told me the same thing [Vince rarely compliments] and told me the same thing on his podcast as well. It just doesn’t happen a lot. To me it was out of nowhere. I didn’t expect it and very very cool. I’ll never forget that moment, for sure.”
Even though his WWE debut is a moment that Ellsworth will surely remember forever, he noted that he had no idea what he would be doing that night when he showed up for Raw.
“I was an extra talent that day in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 25th 2016 and obviously, you’ve been there. As an extra talent, you don’t know what’s gonna happen that day. You could do nothing or you could do a match, just be a security guard, or a Rosebud or whatever. They picked me to do the match with [Braun] Strowman that night. It was the start of his singles push out of The Wyatt Family and did a match against him. I got to do like a twenty second promo before the match and did the match and from there it just escalated.”
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