No one could have predicted that James Ellsworth would become a contracted WWE Superstar one day. The wrestler had made a handful of appearances on WWE programming over the years as an enhancement talent or as a background character, but his life changed forever when he was brought in by the company to lose to Braun Strowman during an episode of Raw in 2016. Although Ellsworth was quickly put away by “The Monster Among Men” fans instantly were drawn to Ellsworth, and after a few follow-up appearances, WWE signed him to a deal before later releasing him in 2017. James Ellsworth even returned to SmackDown for a brief second WWE stint during Carmella’s feud with Asuka earlier this year.
James Ellsworth recently took part in an interview on The Taz Show podcast and discussed his WWE debut. He noted that he was selected to be Strowman’s opponent in what was Braun’s first match as a singles competitor on Raw. Ellsworth also revealed that WWE Hall of Famer Arn Anderson, the producer for the match, said that Vince McMahon wanted to speak with him after the match ended. James feared that the Chairman was upset with his performance that evening, but instead, Vince actually complimented him. Ellsworth now wrestles regularly on the independent circuit, but he appears to have a decent relationship with key WWE officials, so perhaps he will make a few more WWE appearances in the near future.
“He said, ‘Hey, I just wanted to tell you that you did a very good job. I was very pleased with that. Thank you.’ I was like, ‘Huh?’ [Chris] Jericho called me that night and I told him about that and he told me the same thing [Vince rarely compliments] and told me the same thing on his podcast as well. It just doesn’t happen a lot. To me it was out of nowhere. I didn’t expect it and very very cool. I’ll never forget that moment, for sure.” Ellsworth told Taz.

WWE’s Super Show-Down event in Melbourne, Australia took place this past Saturday, and given that the show was held in the massive Melbourne Cricket Ground stadium, fans have been interested in finding out what the attendance figures were for Super Show-Down. During the show, WWE announcer Michael Cole proclaimed that 70,309 fans were in attendance for the show, but WWE has a reported tendency to exaggerate the attendance numbers for some of their stadium events, so fans were quick to doubt that this was a legitimate attendance figure. Sure enough, during Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer reported that the actual attendance number is believed to be somewhere roughly around 62,000.