James Ellsworth on Getting a Job w/ WWE, Carmella, WrestleMania, Post-WWE Life

Former WWE Superstar James Ellsworth recently spoke to F4WOnline.com.

What He's Been Up to Since Being Released from WWE:

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.

How He Initially Got a Job with WWE:

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.

Getting a Full-Time Offer from WWE:

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.

Working with Carmella:

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.

Being Involved in a WrestleMania Match:

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.