After being released from WWE last year following over a year-long run with the company, James Ellsworth appeared on Chris Jericho’s podcast, Talk Is Jericho, to talk about his time with the company. Ellsworth was signed after his July 25th, 2016 squash match appearance with Braun Strowman. He instantly became a fan favorite and was signed to a WWE deal shortly thereafter.
During the episode Ellsworth revealed some scrapped plans for him at the 2016 SummerSlam pay-per-view (PPV). It was originally pitched to have him defeat Heath Slater for a WWE contract when the pair were both free agents:
“I get an email that says, ‘Hey, there’s an idea for you for SummerSlam. It’s Barclays Center; you could drive there from Baltimore.’ I’m thinking I’m gonna be a part of SummerSlam for two weeks. The Friday before SummerSlam, they’re like, ‘Hey, creative changed, we don’t have anything for you, hopefully, we’ll have something soon. I found out months after that what the SummerSlam thing was supposed to be. When Heath Slater didn’t get drafted by Raw or Smackdown, and he was a free agent.
“He was trying to get a contract out of them both, he was supposed to come out at SummerSlam, demanding, ‘Daniel Bryan, I want a contract!’ Daniel Bryan’s trying to make it easy for him. ‘All right, I’ll give you a Smackdown contract, all you have to do is beat this guy,’ and it was me! The idea was I was supposed to go over and I was supposed to win the contract.
“But what happened was Slater winded up getting babyface reactions before then, he was getting over as a babyface doing that angle. If they ever did anything with me, at first, they wanted me to be a babyface. But I was like, ‘Man, I almost had a SummerSlam match with Heath Slater!’ That would’ve been fun.”
You can listen to Ellsworth on Talk Is Jericho by clicking this link here.
