It's been a couple of months since James Ellsworth was released from his WWE contract but try not to feel too sorry for him because he'll soon be making a killing on the independents after an enjoyable sixteen month run with the company. He had a lot of very memorable moments but it turns out that there's at least one more which could have been added to the list had it come to pass.
During a recent chat with Chris Jericho, Ellsworth was asked about his WWE run and what the original plans for him were and it turns out that he was supposed to debut at SummerSlam!
"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."
That would have been fun to see but Ellsworth ultimately won a WWE contract during a feud with AJ Styles. Interestingly, he confirms that when he battled The Phenomenal One for the WWE Championship, he wasn't under contract at the time and that has to be a first for Vince McMahon!