Remember the brief run James Storm had in NXT?
After being in TNA for over ten years, the former TNA World Heavyweight Champion finally made his way over to WWE. Storm surprised everyone by making his NXT debut against Danny Birch and winning. Storm returned the following month and beat Adam Rose. Those are the only two records of James Storm in WWE.
That’s because the 47-year-old returned back TNA/Impact Wrestling. It was a head scratching decision as Storm had done everything there was to do in the promotion, and NXT/WWE was a much needed fresh start. Storm was definitely offered a full time contract in WWE, but he made the decision to return to his former employer.
Why?
James Storm went on the Wrestling Life with Ben Veal to explain his reasoning for turning down a WWE contract and his reasoning is quite sensible.
“Yeah, everybody thinks it’s because of the money and all of this whatever. I’m one of the guys, even Hunter [Triple H] told me, ‘Look, you won’t be here long.’ He goes, ‘Vince [McMahon] loves characters and you’re a character that can work and you’re great on the mic so you won’t be here long at all in NXT.’ Which is fine, I wouldn’t have minded wrestling in NXT, a lot of my friends were there as well because they went to the main roster.
It was something where they sent me the contract first and I ran through it and stuff but when I got down there to talk to them about signing it, the dates had changed. It went to a lot more dates, which it’s fine or whatever, but at the time, me and my wife were trying to have a baby and we had to do all this other stuff or whatever.
The dates just wasn’t going to match up and TNA was the way better option because they wasn’t running that many house shows at the time, it was all just TV and pay-per-views. Hunter just told me, he goes, ‘Hey, you know, you never know way down the line, just keep yourself in shape and you never know what can happen.’ It’s just one of those things where I don’t know, I’ve always kept myself in shape. I remember Jim Ross saying on his podcast, he goes, ‘Whenever you get the call, they’re not going to wait for you to get in shape. They want you ready to go'".
Other than his brief TNA return in 2023, Storm has been mainly working the independent scene. He’s currently the USA Pro Heavyweight Champion and UPW World Heavyweight Champion. Check out the full podcast where Storm talks about the NXT/WWE partnership and so much more.