Wardlow Discusses His Failed WWE Tryout

AEW star Wardlow seems primed for a breakout year as a babyface in All Elite Wrestling in 2022, having already planted the seeds of dissension between him and MJF.

However, if it was down to Wardlow, he may not even be in AEW right now. Wardlow recently sat down with Chris Van Vliet, where he recalled a failed tryout he had with WWE.

He said:

“I aced that tryout out, I mean, with flying colors and they didn’t want me. So for the first time in my life, I went, ‘oh, well maybe this isn’t going to happen’. Fortunately, I stuck with it, and I was determined to make it happen one way or another. I thank God every day that AEW came about. But yeah man, being denied, that was a unique experience and a unique feeling. But it put me where I needed to be, and I’m happy for it.”

Wardlow carried on, describing how being rejected during his WWE tryout motivated him to keep going.

He said:

“At that time that was it. I mean, you had Impact and I was emailing them, you know, like every other week. Because realistically if it was WWE, the only real thing left was Impact. And if not Impact, then you’re just trying to get booked on the indies. Because that’s what, you know, they said, ‘go make a name for yourself’. I accepted that challenge. Yeah, how do you like my name now? So, yeah man, you know, I just kept going. I was trying to get booked on like, bigger indie shows to make a name for myself and try and get out there. And fortunately, it wasn’t too long after that, and it was like Warrior Wrestling, I did that in Chicago, which is a little bit of a bigger promotion. Started branching out a little bit to Canada and then to Greektown Wrestling and then, fortunately, one day woke up to a phone call from QT Marshall and the rest is history.”

Wardlow spoke about how he felt he was destined to be a WWE star, believing that ‘a certain individual’ would see him as ‘their guy’.

He said:

“I always believed I was going to walk in WWE’s front doors and they were going to go, ‘what took you so long? Get over here’. So you know, I don’t want to sound cocky, I’m very confident that I was confident years ago and it didn’t happen. You know, but I still feel like a certain individual in that company would look at me and go, ‘you’re my guy’. So I’m not surprised, I feel like I’m right up their ally of what their cookie-cutter wrestler would be. But hey, they had their shot.”

It was reported earlier this month that WWE is very interested in signing Wardlow when his AEW contract expires, but Wardlow has also spoken about wanting to be a lifer in AEW.

transcription via WrestlingInc.

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• Wardlow
• tryout
• AEW
• wwe

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