Mike Kanellis (Bennett) Comments on Making it to WWE After 15 Years

Mike Bennett, now known to WWE fans as Mike Kanellis, had his first professional wrestling match at 17 years of age. Now 15 years later, he has achieved his dream of performing for WWE.

The 32-year old, who got his first big break in ROH in 2008, posted the following to his social media accounts recently:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVyWwERlzUB/

Mike “Kanellis” Bennett Career

As a 23-year old, Bennett began performing with Ring of Honor. In 2014, he joined the Kingdom faction which at the time also included Matt Hardy and Adam Cole. The faction would eventually be reduced to just Matt Taven and Bennett however, though they would go on to have a successful run as a tag-team.

In 2016, Maria and Mike signed with TNA. They almost resigned with the company in 2017 as well, but were encouraged to wait by Kevin Owens. The couple also reached out to Paul Heyman, who encouraged them to get in contact with Triple H.

“He (HHH) emailed me back and he was really nice about everything and he was like, ‘alright,’ he was like, ‘I’ll have someone be in touch with you.’ And I’m so used to… I’m kind of jaded in [pro] wrestling, just through everything, so hearing that, he was really nice, so that was great. The most I took out of it was, ‘wow, that was really great – he was really nice about everything. Cool.’ And I was like, ‘but, if I don’t hear from anybody, I’m not going to be surprised.’ But a week later, or maybe, yeah, a couple of weeks later, I don’t know, Regal called me and they offered me a contract and I was just kind of blown away. I was just kind of like, ‘holy cow!’ I think it was like the end of January or so and I was just blown away. I remember looking at Maria and I was like, ‘yeah, they offered’ and she was like, ‘oh, well, what is it? Is it NXT?’ And I was like, ‘no, they want to bring us right up to the main roster’ and she was like, ‘holy cow!’ And I was like, ‘well, we’ve got to take it.’ And so we had to reach back out to TNA and be like, ‘oh, we’re going to go in a different direction.’ It’s this weird dynamic because you want to keep everything a secret and quiet, which is impossible to do in the [pro] wrestling business nowadays.”