Elias Reveals Brutal WWE Rejections and the $3,000 Gamble That Finally Got Him Noticed

WWE star Elias didn’t have an easy road to the big leagues—and he’s not hiding how rough the journey really was.

Speaking on Inside The Ropes, Elias opened up about spending thousands of dollars on tryouts, repeated harsh rejections from WWE officials, and the unexpected break that finally got him noticed. Elias explained that even getting a shot in WWE was a struggle from the start, and it came with a hefty price tag.

“It was actually a really crazy story because even to get to NXT was such a struggle. That alone… I tell guys this now, just getting to WWE is such a hard road to travel there. In fact, I did a paid tryout very early on. My whole goal the whole time was get to WWE.”

At the time, WWE’s developmental system, FCW, offered paid tryouts—but the experience wasn’t exactly encouraging.

“You used to be able to pay $1,000, and you’d fly yourself down there, and they’d get eyes on you and stuff like that. I did that, and they laid into me with how bad I was. They told me, ‘You don’t look good. You can’t talk. You don’t know how to wrestle.’ A million different things.”

Elias admitted he had no idea how tough the path would be.

“I thought, you know, you just sign up to be a wrestler and all of a sudden you make it to WWE. I didn’t know the path, and they shut me down.”

But that first rejection wasn’t enough to stop him.

“A year later, I did the same thing, and they said no again. A little less harsh, but still harsh.”

Still determined, Elias dropped another $1,000 for a third tryout.

“And then a year after that, I did the same thing—paid $1,000—and I am not making the kind of money that could just put $1,000 out there, but I was determined to get there somehow.”

Unfortunately, the answer didn’t change.

“After the third tryout, they said, ‘Nope, not happening. Not happening.’”

But Elias didn’t give up. He kept grinding on the independent scene and took extra work with WWE as a background talent. That persistence finally paid off when WWE producer Scott Armstrong spotted him.

“I would do extra work with WWE, just be a guy who was an extra. After doing that for probably another year and a half or so—while on the indies, while learning my craft and training with guys like Rip Rogers and any good mind I could find, any good seminar—one day, as an extra, Scott Armstrong saw me and he said, ‘Hey, I want you to wrestle one of our guys tonight.’”

That opponent? None other than Dean Ambrose, just before his Shield debut.

“It was Dean Ambrose, before he debuted in The Shield. He was just having dark matches and stuff like that. He asked me, ‘Hey, can you wrestle him tonight?’ I said, ‘Of course.’”

Elias recalled the match taking place at Hershey Arena.

“We did it that night at Hershey Arena. I went out there, I got beat up by Dean Ambrose—he kicked the crap out of me—and I remember I walked to the back and there were a couple guys: William Regal, Pat Patterson, and Scott Armstrong.”

The feedback, finally, was positive.

“They said, ‘Hey man, you look like an athlete out there. You look really good.’”

That praise led to a major opportunity.

“I was like, ‘Oh, thanks guys so much.’ Okay, cool. Well, after that, probably two weeks later, I got a call from a guy named Canyon who used to run the talent situation there. He said, ‘Hey, we’d like to fly you in for a tryout. We’d like to fly you to Florida. We’d like to pay you for the week. Come down, try out.’”

While that tryout didn’t immediately land him a contract either, it marked the beginning of WWE finally seeing him as more than just another hopeful—and the rest, as they say, is history.

What’s your take—do you respect Elias’ grind to get to WWE, or do you think the system makes it too hard for new talent? Drop a comment and let us know.

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