Andre Chase ended up becoming one of NXT’s most unlikely success stories, but that was not the plan when WWE first signed him.
While speaking with The Wrestling Classic, Chase, now going by Andre Chance, opened up about how his WWE run started. He said the company brought him in after COVID during a major NXT transition period, but they were clear from the jump that he was not being signed to become a television act.
Chase explained that WWE needed experienced wrestlers to help a younger group of talent get better. Names like Bron Breakker, Tony D’Angelo, Carmelo Hayes, Trick Williams, and The Creeds were coming in, and WWE wanted him around to work with them. That is when Chase made it clear how blunt WWE was with him before he even signed.
“When I got signed to WWE, it was made abundantly clear I was never supposed to actually be on television. It was at a time after COVID where they had just released a lot of people, and they needed this new crop of guys coming in, like the Bron Breakkers, Tony D’Angelos, Carmelo Hayes, Trick Williams, the Creeds. They were like, ‘We just need somebody with experience to kind of work with them,’ and I was going to be one of those guys.”
Chase said WWE told him straight up that he would be signed, but fans were not supposed to see him on NXT every week.
“They told me before I even signed, ‘Hey, just listen, you’re coming in. We’re going to sign you, but you’re never going to be on television.’ I wasn’t naive enough to think this is exactly what it’s going to be, because wrestling changes every day, especially in a system like WWE. Things change by the hour there. So I was like, this just means for now. If I ever get an opportunity, I know it’ll be fine, and I know that I’ll get to where I want to go.”
That chance eventually came, and Chase made the most of it. The Andre Chase character turned into Chase U, one of the most recognizable acts in NXT. It started as a way to give him a character on television, but it grew into a full-on group with Thea Hail, Duke Hudson, and a rotating cast of students. Chase also cleared up one important part of the story. WWE did not sign him to sit around and do nothing. He was always supposed to wrestle, but the plan was for him to do it away from television.
“I always knew I was going to wrestle. They just told me I wasn’t going to wrestle on TV.”
He said WWE was preparing to bring live events back after COVID, and that was where he expected to be used.
“The idea was that I would always wrestle. It would just be on live events because they were just kind of waiting to come out of COVID, and then they knew we were going back on the road and they knew we were going to have live events again. So it was always going to be a position where I was going to wrestle. I just wasn’t going to wrestle on TV. I was only going to wrestle on the live events.”
That makes Chase U’s rise even crazier. WWE brought Andre Chase in as an experienced hand for live events, and he turned that into a multi-year NXT run, tag team title wins, and one of the loudest fan-backed acts on the brand. Chase may not have been part of WWE’s original television plans, but once he got the ball, he ran with it. Chase U became bigger than anyone expected, and fans still remember the act because it felt different from everything else on NXT.
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