EC3 Recalls The Story Of His Matches With Dean Ambrose (Exclusive)

In January 2019, WWE revealed that Dean Ambrose would not be re-signing with the company. The revelation was shocking but it signaled the beginning of the end for his time in WWE. One person who suffered because of it was EC3.

Ec3 had just debuted on the main roster and WWE had the bright idea of putting him against Ambrose. WWE didn’t realize that fans were going to cheer Ambrose for choosing to walk away from the company and it effectively ended EC3’s babyface run. More accurately, it ended his run on the main roster as a whole. Ambrose (now known as Jon Moxley) told this story on Talk is Jericho following his departure last year.

In a recent interview with WrestleTalk’s own Louis Dangoor, EC3 had a chance to tell his side of the story. One of the more interesting parts being that he was excited to play with the dynamic of the babyface being cheered, but never got the chance. Here is the quote:

“I only know that iteration of the story and I would trust him to know more than me because he had connections with people in the office. Yeah, I would cheer for Moxley over me any day of the week. The guy just told the company ‘I don’t need your money’ like what a hero, in people’s eyes and plus who’s this idiot who just stares at a mirror? Why am I going to cheer for this guy as opposed to this guy who beats people up and has sacrificed his body for five-six years on tv, who we love and we’ve been watching everyday? Yeah, I’m gonna cheer for this idiot who just dick-dances in front of a mirror? No. Absolutely not.

So it makes sense and we had the one match on tv, and the Moment of Bliss segment where I couldn’t speak. Maybe if I spoke it would have worked, maybe not, I don’t know. Maybe if I spoke I would have been fired the next day. Who cares? It doesn’t matter at this point. So we have the match, it’s like a three-minute tv match. We work the live events together next week and we’re having good matches but I’m ‘the good guy’ and he’s ‘the bad guy’ and he’s getting cheered and I’m getting booed.

And I’m sitting there thinking ‘this is perfect. This is where I want to be, because think of the Cena response or when Roman was first coming up. Like there’s so much money in the pushed-down-their-throat, white-meat babyface. Like good-looking, stereotypical muscle guy who’s like not as good as everybody else but we’re making him seem like he’s the best ever. As opposed to the people who the fans’ eyes earned it, worked hard, got overlooked, because the people in charge have a thing for this guy.

Like this is perfect. I could run with that and there’s a huge amount of potential in that. That 50/50 split crowd like I know we’re onto something and then in one of the matches on the live events, we’re in the middle of doing it and he’s like ‘let’s switch it up. Just turn it up. Act like the bad guy.’ And I did and it was even better. It was sweet. Like we had something like hell yeah. The next week, we get to tv and they’re like ‘you’re gonna be the heel now’ and like ‘Oh, that’s even better let me cut a heel promo’ and then just nope. Nothing.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZDAEFiD-2o&t=1369s

EC3 was largely taken off television after his short feud with Ambrose. For the rest of his WWE tenure, he mostly appeared on Main Event. He was then one of the many people released by WWE on Black Wednesday. Since then he has been airing vignettes on Twitter with the tagline Control Your Narrative.

What do you think of WWE’s handling of EC3? Let us know on Twitter!

• ec3
• dean ambrose
• Jon Moxley
• wwe

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