Matt Sydal had a great run as Evan Bourne in WWE, but it almost never happened.
Sydal was a recent guest on The Ten Count with Steve Fall to discuss a wide variety of subjects. During the interview, Sydal spoke about all the obstacles he had to overcome as Evan Bourne to become a member of the WWE main roster. He noted that he had to make an opportunity for himself, so he showed up at a TV taping and wound up getting used in a dark match. In doing so, he gained an opportunity to showcase his skills.
“When I went to WWE, I was in Dragon Gate, I got signed on Nova’s last day as head of talent relations, Sydal said. “He mailed me a contract on his last day after they told me they weren’t gonna send me one,” Sydal said. “I did a tryout, they said, ‘No, we’re not hiring junior heavyweights. If we do, we’ll call you, but we don’t have a division for guys like you.
“Somehow, they sent me a contract, and I showed up to OVW two weeks later, and they didn’t even know I was supposed to be there. So there [was] nothing guaranteed. When I debuted on ECW, I also wasn’t supposed to even be at that show. I just basically showed up on my own because that’s how we do things in the Wild West. You had to make your own breaks back then. There was no system.”
Sydal went on to joke that he called himself up to the main roster by showing up the way he did. He recalled how his dark match against Jamie Noble impressed those in power to the point that he was subsequently booked every single week.
“They weren’t trying to bring me up. I wasn’t a chosen one or a picked talent, so I called myself up the big roster,” Sydal said. “As soon as I wrestled Jamie Noble in a dark match, people really saw what I had. They really saw what Jamie Noble had because that’s what we do in our business.
“People raise you up to their level, and that’s what Jamie Noble did to me, and after that, I was booked every single week. That’s it. They couldn’t use me. I wasn’t just booked on ECW. I was booked on the RAW/ECW events, but I was on every supershow; I was [booked] from Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, we had a show every night.”
During his time with WWE, Bourne won the WWE Tag Team Championship with Kofi Kingston. He was released in 2014, and he subsequently competed for NJPW, ROH, PWG, IMPACT Wrestling, among other companies, before he landed with AEW in 2020.
READ MORE: Matt Sydal: My Recent Injury Lit A Fire Under Me, I’m Putting Out My Best Work Now
What do you make of Matt Sydal’s comments? Are you surprised how Sydal’s opportunity with WWE came about? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
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