James Ellsworth became an overnight sensation | Image Credits : WWE website
Sportshadow got the opportunity to interview former WWE star James Ellsworth. The ACW promoter let his heart out while speaking to Prem Deshpande in a myriad of topics like joining and leaving WWE, Logan Paul's rise, partnership with Carmella, wrestlers vs promoters, Snapchat allegations, and more.
I knew in the match I was going to punch [Braun] Strowman twice. And they had given me the promo was which was essentially like your last words before Strowman was going to kill you. And I was looking through the promo that Jimmy Jacobs wrote. He was a writer at the time there at WWE.
And I loved the promo and I asked him, "Can I say any man with two hands has a fighting chance because I'm punching him twice." He's like, "Yeah, it's a good line. Go ahead and say it." I don't think he thought much of it.
But, in the movie Rocky V, he says, "I figure if you have two hands, you have a chance." So I kind of took that and made my own little spin on it. And, it was my words. No, I didn't think it'd catch on like that or anything.
I just wanted to say it because I knew I was punching Strowman twice in a match. And man, that's awesome that my own words caught on with the audience.
He [Jimmy Jacobs] was like, "Oh! It's a good line. You can go ahead and say it." Like he didn't think much of it. He was just like, yeah you can say that line. I don't care. So, thank God for Jimmy Jacobs and him saying yes to that because if he didn't, I'd have never said it, which is crazy to think about.
[These one-liners] goes back to Austin 3:16. He just said after he defeated Jake the Snake Roberts at King of the Ring 1996. Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass like it just popped in his head. So you never know what's going to like catch on or not.
Sometimes, it might be something written or sometimes it might be your instinct and for me, I didn't know it was going to catch on but it was instinctive for me to say that line because I knew I was punching Strowman twice in the match.
I figured this little underdog character against this big gigantic man; why would I be fighting him? To me it's because any man with two hands has a fighting chance I'm going to give this a try.
Before the match, all I kept thinking was I want to do a good job because my thinking at the time was this may be my only time I'm ever going to be on Monday Night Raw or in WWE at all in a match.
So, I just want to do a good job. I want to look back on this and know that this particular match I had on Monday Night Raw, I wanted to feel like I did good with it. I did a good job with it. And that's all I kept thinking is, man, I'm going to sell my ass off, prove it with the facial expressions. I'm going to act scared when it's time to act scared. I'm going to act like it's ready to go when it's time to go.
And then when he beat me up, I was like, man, I just need to sell. That's all I kept thinking.
Then the match happens and the promo happens before the match and everything and I was feeling like it was going well.
So when the match was over, I was like, "Okay, that felt good." You know, I didn't think anything of it. I just figured it was good enough for them or whatever.
And I get to the back and Arn Anderson, who was the agent for the match, said, "Hey, good job." He goes, "Vince wants to see you." And I've never up until this point, I've never talked to Vince McMahon.
Like I saw him in a hallway a few times when I was an extra or an enhancement guy in the back just waiting to get an opportunity.
So I go see Vince and he comes and he takes his head set off and he comes over and talks to me. He goes, "Hey, your facial expressions were great. Your selling was great. Your your promo was fantastic. I have no choice but to hire you."
I'm like, "Whoa!" I was like, "Oh, thank you!" And he goes, "I'll be in touch." He said, go see talent relations.
And, I'm still rattled from the batch because, Braun Strowman is a tough guy. He beat the crap out of me. And, I'm still like getting myself together. I'm like, "Do I have a concussion? Did he just say he's going to hire me?"
Triple H comes and finds me. He goes, "He's not kidding. He he wants to hire you. So, if you want to be here, here's your chance." I'm like, "Yeah, I want to be here."
So, people think it was all the stuff on the internet afterwards. The internet's a funny place, right? They people in their minds thought because they made memes of me and were sharing me a lot, which I appreciate it. They thought that's why I got hired. It's that's not at all true.
The truth is Vince McMahon just hired me right after the match because he thought I was good.
So I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland here in the United States. And, I always loved wrestling since I can remember. I remember being a kid and seeing the Ultimate Warrior for the first time and thinking, "Wow, this guy looks cool."
And I was just hooked. And it's something I always wanted to do. And, I was always small and I always never looked like somebody that could be a wrestler, right? But I never let that stuff bothered me. I always just wanted to pursue it.
I always just wanted to be a wrestler and growing up I did. It wasn't easy. I went through a lot of trials and tribulations just like I do in wrestling. But, I've loved every minute of wrestling. I was on the independent scene 14 years before I got to WWE and I've been gone from WWE for seven years now.
It's something that I can't ever see myself stop doing whether it's wrestling or being a manager like I was for Carmella because I thought that went really well.
I'm not the biggest guy and I grew up in a neighborhood that's not good. I'm not trying to cry about it, but it wasn't the nicest of neighborhoods. It doesn't matter what situation I'm in. I I try to enjoy life and I grew up in kind of a rough neighborhood and people people would try to pick on me.
But the good thing about me is and maybe I if somebody's watching this I can help them. If people are trying to bully you or try to pick on you because you're smaller than them or you look different or whatever, you got to always stick up for yourself. Always. Even if it's scary. And I always did.
We didn't have cable growing up, so it was hard. Like, my grandfather had to tape wrestling for me on back then. On the weekends, I would go to my grandparents' house and catch up on the wrestling.
I was always small and I didn't have any workout equipment or anything. I could look at the wrestlers on TV and and notice that they're a lot bigger than me and look a lot cooler than me. I'm like I don't have any means to do this.
But, my parents were great. They did what they could and we always made sure we had food on the table. We just didn't grow up with like a backyard or anything cool which is fine. It made me appreciate stuff later on in life.
Life is tough no matter who you are. Everyone goes through things, right? And, luckily for me, because I grew up with not having much, I appreciate everything I have and I have thick skin. I don't worry about what people say or like, so it got me ready for a lot.
Fast forward, I graduated high school. I started going to a wrestling school in 2002. It's a lot different than now. It's a lot more tough back then where they made you earn it. You had to earn getting on shows.
You had to train hard. You had to set up the tear down rings. I'm sure I see people still do that, but not like we did back in those days. It would take a while before you got on a show. You would really have to pay your dues. You really have to work hard at it and you'd really have to like scratch and crawl for any opportunity.
I'm glad it was [tough] because it got me ready for a tough business because wrestling is a very very tough business and you it's not for the weakened heart. You got to be tough physically and tough mentally to get ready for the wrestling business.
Everybody can be become a media personality now. Wrestling is very hard. Anyone could put on some wrestling gear and get in a wrestling ring and take some bumps and call themselves a wrestler. And it wasn't like that when I got in. It It was really really hard to get on shows. And now it's just too easy.
And, not everyone but there are people, maybe a minority that feel entitled like they feel like they deserve you. The wrestling business owes no one nothing.
So it's like a lot of entitlement these days and it wasn't like that back then. You really appreciated being a part of it at all back when I started and now it's so much entitlement man. This is kind of off subject but not really.
You see these stories on the internet and I won't name any names because I'm friends with a lot of these people that, "Oh, I make more money now than when I was doing the indies than I did in WWE." You see people see say that right?
And my question to them would be, "Did you make more money on the indies before you were in WWE? No. Or, did WWE give you a platform? It was millions and millions of people that now know who you are.
So therefore, when you leave WWE and you have a name now. For a year or two, you will probably make more money because you could charge a lot more than what for a match than you what you were making in WWE for a match. And this is what they don't say in these interviews.
That only happens for a year or two unless you go to another big company. If you're just on the independent, you get like a nice year or two where people want to book you because you're fresh off of WWE and you have that WWE name.
But after that, if you don't get picked up and it significantly goes down and they're not saying that in these interviews, they just want to be like, "Oh, I make more money now than I do I did in WWE. It's because WWE gave you that television time."
Well, I think a lot of people knock WWE when they leave and meet me. I never did and I never will. I made a good living there. I lived my dream there. I had a great time there. I got to travel the world and somebody else paid for it.
I had action figures and and t-shirts and video games and all that. I think these people forget this when they leave.
You might not have been treated the way you wanted to. You might not have been booked the way you wanted to be booked. But come on, everybody wants to be wants to be the main event, right?
But another thing, I think they forget is how many people would just kill for the opportunity that they got. That there's a lot of good wrestlers on the independent scene who never get that opportunity, who have never gotten that opportunity, and never will get that opportunity to be on WWE television, whether it's Raw, Smackdown, or NXT.
I'm like guys just be appreciative of the opportunity even if it didn't end the way you wanted it to or you didn't get treated the way you wanted to be treated. Take that opportunity you were given and say, "Thanks for the opportunity. Now go bust your butt on the indies."
Look at Matt Cardona. He was Zack Ryder for 15 years on WWE. Got let go. He's not bashing WWE. He's going, "Okay, all right. I'm going to take what you give me and I'm going to run with it and and and make myself worth something." And, he did it.
These writers, they're not perfect. No one's freaking perfect! But, they have a hard job. They got to write all this television year around like a lot of television Raw Smackdown NXT PLE's like it's a lot.
So sometimes all these ideas that they're writing all year, not everything's going to be great. It's a lot of stuff.
And then sometimes things are amazing. You're like, "Wow, this is so amazing." Like, John Cena and Dominic Mysterio from last week's Raw was amazing,
They have extras in the back. They essentially hire indie workers from the area that email WWE or maybe they know somebody there or whatever. They get to be come in and be extras whether you get to do a squash match like I did with Strowman or you get to be a Rose Bud with Adam Rose like I did one time.
If they need like fake security guards or you're an extra just like a movie or a TV show. You're in the background. You really just there to to help the show for that particular night.
So, I knew a referee, Darrick Moore. We went to a wrestling school together. He was refereeing on Raw. He would tell me who to email. So, I would email, sometimes I would get invited, sometimes I wouldn't. But when I would get invited, I would always be respectful, always be kind, and always show my face and all.
And then the Strowman match, Arn Anderson, like I said, he was the agent. There was like six of us, six extras. He goes, "Hey," and he points at me because I was the smallest one. He goes, "Let me see you throw a punch." He said, "If you can throw a good punch, you're going to be on Monday Night Raw tonight."
And he said, "But you know, throw a punch. Don't hurt him." So I threw the punch. And he goes, "You got the match."
Maybe if I would have thrown a bad punch, he wouldn't have put me in the match. But I threw a really good punch and he put me in the match and the rest it just escalated from there.
One [sort of reaction] is like the people that had been in the business a long time that did independent and had been around for they they understood it. They're like, "Oh, this kid's catching fire. He's getting over." So, they have to use him."
Now, there's those guys that maybe were just at NXT that had no previous wrestling history or wrestling experience.
And to them, you just get signed to NXT and then when you're ready, you just go to the main roster. So some of them were like, "Why is this kid on the main roster? He didn't go to NXT."
I wish I would have had some time in NXT because they have time and money invested in the people that did go through NXT.
So you get more opportunities if you did. Me, I just caught fire and like, you know, I'm essentially I got adopted like a stepchild.
But no, I got along with everybody after they got to know me and everything. Like I got along with everybody just fine. But yeah, like there's people that have just been in wrestling for a long time, went through the independent, trained at a school, then got signed to WWE and they understood the business.
And then there was those who maybe because they played football, you know, that got signed because they look good and they're good-looking people and which is great. Television is all about having good-looking people; people that look better than me, right? Like that's what television is and I get it. So the ones that didn't have the experience, I don't think understood it at first, but once they got to know me and they're like, "Oh, okay. He's cool and this is cool. It's happening for him."
Logan Paul is meant to be a WWE superstar because he got the looks. He's got that aura. He talks great. He has a platform. I don't think anybody can argue with his platform on why WWE would want to use him on television.
And, he has a huge following and he's a good-looking guy. He's in great shape. He's athletic and he's picking up wrestling quicker than anyone I've ever seen pick up wrestling before in my life. I think eventually, he is going to be a World Heavyweight Champion.
Maybe people are upset that maybe he's getting opportunities that they don't. But he definitely deserves every opportunity he's getting. He's working hard at the craft. He's picking it up quickly and he's doing a great job.
I get the business. When The Rock says know your role. I knew my role was to be comedic one.
It's funny if you watch the match I had with Becky Lynch on Smackdown from London. I wrestled a little bit in that match. I do this one technical counter into a wrist lock from like from a waist lock and and you can hear Corey Graves go what a counter.
If you go back and watch the match, he says that because I show a little bit of wrestling. And when I get to the back, Vince is like, "Oh, I don't care that you know how to wrestle. You're here to be funny. You did some good technical wrestling out there. Why did you do that?"
I was, "Oh, I'm sorry. Becky and I were kind of like the same size, so I figured I could wrestle her a little bit." And I think she thought the same thing.
But if you watch that match, the crowd's really into it and everything. But they're mostly into the comedic spots where she's giving me airplane spins or whatever. That's what I was there for as a comedic relief.
They had that thing one time with Carmella. They had me on a leash and I'm barking like a dog. I just didn't think it was entertaining. I didn't care that I was doing it. I'll do whatever they want me to do. But that was the only time where I was like, it's really not that good.
I couldn't get into it. I couldn't feel it. And I felt like Carmella and I had been good heels. I stole the Money in the Bank contract. I gave it to her. You know, that big moment with Money in the Bank.
And we're getting a lot of boos and a lot of good heat. And then they went to that and I'm like, kind of kills it, you know? But that was the only time. Other than that, no!
I didn't think, man, I got to have a technically sound wrestling. I got to go to 205 Live and wrestle everybody and show what I could do. And that takes away from the character James Ellsworth was there. So, yes and no to answer your question.
That was the only time where I felt the story was a little weird and I voiced that and maybe I shouldn't have but I would tell anybody that's there now like unless you're a top guy just do what you're asked do it. To the best of your ability have fun with it do what you can while you're out there
So, if I would just go out there and make it entertaining which I tried like a lot of times. I try to like get away from her and she'd pull me back, stuff like that. But, we didn't get to do it much on TV because I think it was a little edgy for back then but on the house shows we'd have some fun with it and stuff was working with it.
If you're a top guy, there's a pecking order. So, if you're a top guy, you're going to get more leverage than a guy that's mid-card or the opening card guy. That's it.
Oh, man. I loved it. So, I we didn't find out that was happening to the day of, but I kind of guessed it. I kind of guessed it because Vince started getting real big on Carmella and first we heard Becky was going to win that Money in the Bank and that was like the Smackdown before the pay-per-view.
And I told Carmella, "I think you're winning it." I said, "We we're getting a lot of heat now. "No, they're going to give it to Becky," Carmella said. I'm like, "I don't know. I think I'm going to help you win it." And she goes, "Ah, they're not going to do that. It's the first women's one. Like, they're not going to have you, a man, help win the first ever Women's Money in the Bank."
And, we get to the building that day and John Laurinaitis pulls me aside. He goes, "Hey, here's the plan. You're going to help Carmella win. You're going to grab the briefcase and give it to her. Then two weeks later on Smackdown, we're going to do another one because we know that'll draw ratings. So you're the controversy. You're the guy that creates this controversy. So now we have to do another one. So we do another one on Smackdown. It's going to pop us a big rating. We're excited about this.
And then I go to Carmella. I'm like, hey, you're winning. He just told me you're winning. I'm helping you win it.
And she was like, "What? That they are they're going to do that even though it's the first women's one?" I said, "That's why they're going to do it because it's the first Women's Money in the Bank. That's why they're going to doit. It's going to make people upset and it's going to cause this big chaos."
So then when you guys have the rematch, you know, people are going to be like, "All right, maybe they'll get it. Maybe we'll have a distinctive winner this time." Which in the rematch, I still interfered, but Becky took care of me and then Carmella ultimately went up the ladder and grab it on her own.
They (people in the internet) think they did the second one because the first one made everyone mad. No, they always had the second one planned the whole time. Before the first one ever happened, the second one was planned.
But that was a great couple of weeks of television, man. Like, we came out that when we did the the pay-per-view, the Money in the Bank. Smackdown back then was on Tuesdays. I remember we came out on Smackdown two days later and the boos were so loud on us. I was like, man, I told Carmella. Well, you knew that was coming.
That's the reaction we were looking for. And I told Carmella, I said, "There's no way you don't become women's champion. This is too much now. This is too much. Like they have to give it to you.
And, she was scared she wasn't going to win the second one. And I was like, "No, we'll still have you win the second one because otherwise, they are going to do a third one because they're going to be like, no, you won the first one, then somebody else won the second one, so you guys got to settle it in a third one."
It was a great run for her. I don't know if she understands this or not. That was definitely her best run there at WWE because she won the Money in the Bank and then ultimately she won the women's title. Once I wasn't with her anymore and I left, she never won the Money in the Bank or the women's title again. Yeah, she was like women's tag champion a few times and like did other things, but she was never Women's champion again.
I think we worked well together because we were opposites and opposites attract as they say. I was her manager. I was so proud of that because I helped her get to the point where now they had to give her the title. As a manager, that's your goal. So, you need to take whoever you're managing and help give them the rub for them to become the star. Now, it's not about me anymore. It's about make helping make this person. And I feel like I 100% did that with Carmella.
I think what might have been like now she's got the Money in the Bank briefcase. She don't really need you. She has the briefcase. Maybe that was it. And they have to write television for other people. They have to bring people up from NXT. So, when you bring people up from NXT, you got to get rid of some people to make some room for the television.
So, in 2018, they called me. They're like, "So, we're not going to release you. We're going to bring you back. And they didn't release me. Like they gave me the ninety days. In the middle of that, they called me like, "Hey, we're going to continue your contract and bring you back and just let you work out the rest of your contract." I'm like, "Oh, okay." I was so excited.
I was like, "Well, what about all the indie dates I got?" They're like, "You can do your indie dates. Just come here. You're we're going to bring you back for TV." So, they brought me back and I did a couple of months of TV. And then once I left because my contract was up like the day they had Paige fire me on Smackdown because she was the general manager. My contract was up the next day and that's why I was gone.
I mean, they sold a lot of T-shirts off of me and stuff, which is great. It worked out for everybody. And yeah, but I didn't think they really knew what to do with me after that. To me, the stuff I did with Carmella was great. I think I could do that for the rest of my career. I could be a manager for anybody and help progress whatever character that they are. That's what I would love to do going forward.
This is just me being honest. I really thought and again this is me being me. I made a mistake. I really thought they were just going to offer me another deal. I didn't ask. I'm getting reactions and my numbers for television were doing good. So, I thought, well, they're going to offer me another deal and then they just never did, which was my fault.
I should have asked like, "Hey, is there any way we can ne negotiate another deal? I would love to still be here." I should have showed that initiative. I did not. I was being, I guess, cocky is the word.
And then when when the deal was up and they didn't, I was like, "Whoa, maybe I should have." I'm bad at that, man. Maybe I should have got an agent or something to talk to them for me or or I just never tried. I just I figured if they want me, they'll give me a call. They didn't.
Maybe I should have showed more initiative into trying to get another contractor to stay in there because the character is something you could do a lot of things with. And I do believe that.
I didn't start ACW. ACW started in 2009. And I took it over in 2011 or 2012. I've been a part of ACW since 2009. Even when I was in WWE, they would have shows every other month. And I'd be there, but I wouldn't be on the shows because I wasn't allowed, but I would be running the shows from the back.
I've been running a lot of shows. Probably like 30 to 40 a year between doing festivals and doing just regular buildings. I run a lot of shows and I still wrestle in the indies and I do a lot of conventions.
So, I have a show on Friday for ACW. Then on Saturday, I'm driving up to New York. Well, after the show Friday, I'm driving up to New York, which is about four hours. I'm doing the big convention with a lot of big stars there.
So I'm driving up to do that from like 10 to 2 and then at 2 I'm driving 4 hours back and wrestling on another show. So I'm running a show, doing autograph session, and then wrestling on another show all in two days this weekend. Exactly a life what a 10-year-old James Morris wanted to live.
This is what I always dreamed of. WWE is the big dream. Accomplished it. I am still a wrestler. You just got to do it. You just got to keep going. If you keep going, you don't know where your final destiny is going to be. Like maybe if I keep going, maybe WWE calls me next year when AJ Styles is retiring. Maybe, I could be a part of that.
If I quit and I stop and I just surrender and be like I'm done with this, I'll never know. Whether I'm wrestling in front of 75 people or 75,000 people, I give it my all to entertain the people that are watching me perform.
I do have this this position where I can look at things from a promoter side because I've been promote wrestling shows so long and I've been obviously wrestling for 23 years since I was 17 years old.
I could see promoter sides of things. I could see wrestler side of things. And I could tell you the promoter side of things is very thankless job.
They get all the heat. They get all the slack. The wrestlers kind of want, want, want, and the promoter if they don't give, give, give, give then the wrestlers start trying to give the promoter a bad name or something. They don't understand that it takes a lot to promote a wrestling show.
You got to advertise. You got to book venues. You got to book wrestlers. You got to book doctors to show up to the show. You got to deal with like 20 wrestlers or how many you're booking. You got to deal with bonds and you got to deal with insurance stuff and and they just think, "Oh well! You're making all this money." It's a trick to make money at it.
Yes, there are bad promoters that treat the wrestlers like crap too. There is that but there's not a lot of them.
The promoters are just trying to pull on a show and and make sure the fans are having a good time and I do want to turn a profit at it because it is a business.
The wrestlers I think need to respect the promoters more because if it wasn't for the promoters, you have no place to wrestle.
So just be a little more kind to your promoters. And, if you don't like a promoter, all you have to do is not work for them. You work for anybody. It's up to you. Like if you don't like a certain place, you don't have to talk smack about it and you just go to somewhere else and wrestle. That's all. It's really that simple.
I feel like you have to be kind to people even if they're not so kind back to you, but at the same time, you got to let them know that you're the boss. Like you could be like, "Hey, I hear you. I understand you. I'm listening. But if it's still something I want you to do and I'm the one paying you, I expect you to do it. And if you don't want to do it, that's fine. I understand. No one's putting a gun to your head. You go somewhere else." Some are harder to manage than than others.
But you try to be kind to everyone. And then if they take your kindness for weakness, then you got to move on from them.
There's people who are full of malice. The internet can be a pretty pretty brutal place for everybody. Luckily for me, I do have very thick skin because I've been through a lot in my life. They (people on internet) read like a headline or something and they just think something's so true and they don't let things play out and do actual research on it.
Am I a perfect person? No. But, I'm a father of two. I'm a husband and I have a clean criminal record. I've never been arrested in my life. Cops never talked to me about me committing a crime ever in my life. So, I think my record speaks for itself. I understand people can be easily manipulated on the internet. So, I don't blame anyone for that.
I didn't pay much attention to it, honestly. You would think so (being affected by such news). First I'm like, "Oh, this is a bummer because this ain't true." People think this is true.
All these people know that that this crime could have been committed, right? But, nothing ever happens to you. You never get arrested. A cop doesn't even talk to you and it's because you didn't do anything. But there's people out there that might think he did because they read it on the internet. That's crazy, right?
It's almost kind of like it's it's happening in a fictional world. It might have bothered me a little bit, but you got to move. At the same time too, my my grandfather was dying, so I was more focused on that. I wasn't worried about me. I was worried about that because that was my buddy who I loved, who showed me wrestling, who taped those VHS's for me. I was more focused on that.
I try to keep it positive. Like, if you show me love, I'm going to show you love back. I feel bad for anyone that's ever actually been a victim of a crime or been put into a place or situations that they didn't ask to be in. But I've never done that to anyone. And, I feel bad for those that actually have to go through that because there are people that lie about going through that and they're not really going through it. You know what I mean? That's not fair to the people that actually have gone through some stuff.
I was on a show last week and there was a six-foot tall girl. She's probably going to be signed to WWE one day. Christyan Reed, look her up. 6'4. And this girl gets in the ring and she gives me a choke slam, right? There's about 200 people. And when she choke slammed me, because I'm the bad guy, she's the good guy, babyfaced girl. They got so loud. It felt like there was 100,000 people there.
I remember like rolling out of the ring and hearing the crowd's reaction. I'm like, this is why I still do this. It is cool to get that emotion out of people from doing this art form.
Wrestling is the best art form in the world because there's a lot of creativity to it.
There's a lot you could do with it but it's done right like that just little old James Ellsworth being a little heel, you know, talking smack and all and then this six foot four girl gets in. So that's what I mean by keeping it going. I'm going to keep doing stuff like that. I'm going to keep running my shows. I'm going to keep entertaining people wherever I go.
Hopefully I can wind up there in India. I know you guys are awesome fans over there. So, I definitely want to come and perform over there. I've been all over the world but not India. Stuff I haven't experienced.
**If you use quotes from the article, please credit the Youtube video and link to Sportshadow.com for the transcript**