One of the top stars in TNA Wrestling is ‘Speedball’ Mike Bailey. Recently, he shared the story of how he was (nearly) signed by WWE, then let go, and then finally ended up in TNA.
Recently, Mike Bailey was a special guest on Chris Jericho’s Talk is Jericho podcast. While speaking on the show, Bailey mentioned that he had multiple offers at one point in time, and he chose NXT.
“January 2022 is when I debuted with TNA, with IMPACT then. But it was a long road, even then. When my ban came up, the day, I tweeted a little highlight video that I made, a little announcement my ban was ended and then that got a lot of attention and that got me talking to everyone. That got me signed with NXT for a couple months until they let me go without actually hiring me.
“After that video came out, I had already been talking with TNA, talked to some people from AEW, talked to NXT, got a bunch of offers and ended up taking the NXT one. Very excited to be there, they do the background check, they do the visa paperwork, that takes a couple months.” [H/T POST Wrestling]
Mike Bailey’s hiring process was stopped
As Bailey was ready to move to Orlando, Florida. But then things changed and WWE stopped his hiring process.
“Just (a) couple days after I submit the visa paperwork, for this one, you have to go and do a whole career retrospective and all the articles with all your accolades, you have to gather that and send it in. So I worked on that for several weeks, sent it all in. Then I see they’re starting to release a lot of people in NXT. They’re letting go of people and the person that had hired me, there was rumors that they had gotten released so I texted them and I was like, ‘Hey, is everything okay? Are we good?’
“And they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, no problem. Contract’s in the mail. We’re sending it tomorrow’ and then the next day, I got an email saying, ‘Hey, due to new hiring guidelines, we’re gonna have to stop your hiring process…’ Yes, it was (Canyon Ceman that I was talking to).”
Mike Bailey was freaking out but then ended up signing with TNA Wrestling
Finally, Speedball Mike Bailey contacted TNA once again and managed to get an offer and finally signed with TNA.
“I was not like, whatever (he laughed). I was freaking out. I was pretty panicked. Again, this is a big deal for someone like me. I had made some very serious steps to plan my move to Orlando. Uproot my whole life and then here we are again so it’s like, well, let’s see what we can do to fix this and so I got back in touch with everyone that I had spoken to and I ended up signing with TNA, with IMPACT.
“You made that decision not even two months ago (Bailey said about WWE wanting to bring him in). You haven’t even brought me in yet. The only thing I wished is that they had at least gave me the visa and flew me down so I would have (at) least have something to show for it but not even me just sitting at home,” Speedball Mike Bailey said.
Do you think WWE dropped the ball on Mike Bailey?
