Ellsworth on Post-WWE Life, Wrestling Career, Rise in the WWE, and More

F4WOnline held a recent interview with James Ellsworth discussing his life after the WWE, his wrestling career, rising from an enhancement talent to a prominent role in the WWE, and more.

On the topic of his life after leaving the WWE, Ellsworth stated he has been spending a lot of time with his family and enjoying every moment of it. He also mentioned his current break has been the longest amount of time he has ever had off in his career.

I’ve just been spending time with my kids. I’ve been wrestling since I was 17 years old and I’ve never had this much time off. 90 days is a long time when you’re a wrestler being home, so I’m just making the best of it by enjoying time with my two daughters.

On the topic of how he got chosen by the WWE, Ellsworth stated he simply emailed them with his wrestling info when they started looking for enhancement talent. He feels WWE should be using local enhancement talent more often to avoid burning through matchups with their stars.

I had been “extra talent” several times before then, although I had never had a match (in WWE) before then. You email them and send pictures and say “I’m from this area and if you need extra guys, I’m available” and they call you or they don’t. But back to WWE using enhancement talent so they don’t burn through matches, I think that’s a really good thing when they do that. They’ve stopped doing that lately and they’re burning through matches. It was cool when they brought that back, but now you’re just seeing matches all the time: John Cena vs. Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman vs. Brock Lesnar we’ve already seen. It’s something (enhancement matches) that I think they should do more often.

On the topic of becoming a full-time wrestler for the WWE, Ellsworth stated he was not under contract when he returned after the Braun Strowman match until the November tour of the United Kingdom in 2016.

After the initial match with Strowman, I wasn’t seen on television again for six weeks. When I came back, I was supposed to team with AJ Styles to face Dean Ambrose and John Cena — that’s when The Miz came out and beat me up — and even then, no contract was offered. When they brought me back a month later to wrestle Styles for the first time with Dean Ambrose as the referee, still no contract was offered The contract was offered when I went to Scotland for SmackDown for the six-man match I had that night with me, Kane and Ambrose vs. Randy Orton, Bray Wyatt, and Luke Harper. That was the night it was offered to me and that was probably early November 2016 (laughing).

On the topic of being paired together with Carmella, Ellsworth stated he had a lot of fun and got to make several new friends during the time.

It was so much fun. I added something different to the women’s division. You had this little guy wreaking havoc on the women’s division. I got along with all of those girls and they got along with me, and we had a lot of fun. We were all very sad when it ended, because we had a lot of fun doing it.

Later in the interview, Ellsworth was asked about his reaction to being involved in a Wrestlemania event. He stated it was a surreal moment and managed to achieve the biggest goal of his wrestling career.

The wrestling business is like no other business. Literally, one minute you would be at a Boys and Girls Club wrestling in front of 100 kids and the next minute you could be in front of 75,000 people at WrestleMania. It’s just a weird business and the farther you go up, the more you understand that. For me, it doesn’t matter. I just like to do it, wherever it’s at. WrestleMania was my biggest goal and now that I’ve accomplished it, it’s different. A year before, I’m doing a match somewhere in West Virginia in front of 100 people to a year later, I’m grabbing the MITB contract. It is surreal and it takes you back.

Other topics discussed included him being a fan of wrestling since childhood, life difficulties as an indie wrestler, his debut promo in the WWE, rumors of Vince McMahon wanting him to be a transgendered wrestler, and running his own indie wrestling company.