NJPW Star Jeff Cobb spoke with Steve Fall of Ten Count on a variety of topics such as his tryout with the WWE in 2014 as well as being told that they didn’t want to hire anyone over the age of 30 despite them signing Kevin Owens at the time.
Jeff Cobb said:
“Originally, my first tryout I ever had was in 2014. Then at that moment, or at that time, six of us got pulled to the side. We did some interviews, took some pictures, and then it switched in a couple of days or so, like, ‘We don’t want anybody over 30.’ At that time, NXT wasn’t as huge as it eventually became. I believe they just signed Kevin Owens at the time. They had all this influx of indie guys coming in, or bigger name indie guys, so they were like, ‘Okay, well, we don’t want anybody over 30, but then we make exceptions to the rules about this.’ A month later, there’s rumors like, ‘Okay, we don’t want any more independent guys because we have too many’, or whatever. So it changes and that’s totally fine. I can’t be upset about that because it’s their business model and it’s what they want to do with their company. So I didn’t hear from them for a long time.”
Jeff Cobb also spoke about how he was contacted by both William Regal and Brian Kendrick right before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as well as how it was around the time when he and NJPW were in contract negotiation talks and AEW offered him a contract as well.
Jeff Cobb said:
“Just so happened right before the pandemic of 2020, William Regal would call me. Brian Kendrick would call me and say, ‘Is it cool to pass your number to Canyon Ceman?’ I’m always open to talk to people, entertain talks, or whatever. This was actually around the time when New Japan and I were figuring out a contract. At the same time AEW offered me a contract as well.”
“At the end of the day, I can make a great living being in Japan and doing a couple appearances here and there. It may not be WWE, The Rock money, but I’m a very low maintenance kind of guy, so I don’t need millions and millions of dollars, although, you know, people are like, you know, you’re stupid for not taking it.”
“A few months after a bunch of conversations with Canyon Ceman is when he got fired, and a whole, I don’t want to say, dumping of the roster happened. Looking back, I think I made a good choice because if I went there, six months later, I could have been released and then go crawling back to another company for a job.”
You can check out Jeff Cobb's comments in the video below. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
