WWE News: James Ellsworth opens up about appearing on Monday Night Raw
The Raw after the draft saw a lot of changes and returns, one of them notably being squash matches, where a local enhancement talent(or jobber) would be squashed by a signed WWE wrestler.
This has happened 2 weeks in a row now for Braun Strowman(and Nia Jax).
The first enhancement talent that Strowman faced, James Ellsworth, seems to have shot up in popularity, partly because of his look, and also his appealing dialogue “Any man with two hands has a fighting chance”.
Ellsworth said that it was an honour to be the first in line to have the squash match with Strowman. On Sam Roberts’ Wrestling Podcast he said that he had no issues even if WWE brought him back in that very role, and would gladly accept.
He is also very overwhelmed with the social media response he has gotten.
Ellsworth told IYH Wrestling:
“Well, actually I’ve been doing extra talent stuff for them for a couple of years now. I was actually a Rosebud a couple of times with Adam Rose. Ever since then every time they’re near where I live here in Baltimore, if they’re around the area, they call me and I come in as extra talent.
That was my first match on WWE television, and it just happened that day. I went into RAW; I didn’t expect to wrestle but I got there and they had all the extras around the ring. Arn Anderson just came up to me and said ‘Hey kid, let me see you throw a punch.’ I threw a punch and he said, ‘You know, that wasn’t bad at all.’
I said thank you and he got me in the ring and the next thing I know he looks at me and goes, ‘You want to wrestle Braun Strowman tonight on RAW?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, that would be great.’ That’s how it happened…It all came about so quickly; it was all very sudden and unexpected honestly.”
His dialogue “Any man with two hands has a fighting chance” was created by him too:
“They have scripts to hand out, and they gave me the script. I’m reading it, and they were like do you have any ideas of what you might add to that?…I was like, ‘Well, can I say this line about my hands? I think it would be cool.’
And he said, ‘Well, say the line’, and I said “Any man with two hands has a fighting chance.” And the writer goes, ‘Well, I like it a lot, but I’ve got to clear it with the office; I’ll let you know’…I didn’t see the writer for like an hour and a half after that (so I thought) they must have said no, and he came back and he said, ‘Dude, they actually liked the line and they want you to use it, so now you have to.’
So I said ‘Oh, OK, I got it; no problem’, and I got to say it. So that was really cool that I actually had a little bit of input into it; that was amazing.”
Ellsworth has been a pro-wrestler for 14 years, and is the founder of Adrenaline Championship Wrestling, which is based in Baltimore.