From the Rumour Mill: WWE had some interesting plans for James Ellsworth leading up to WrestleMania 34 

What's the story?

James Ellsworth was released from WWE earlier this week, in what wasn't considered to be a big shock, since he had seemingly been written off WWE TV over the past few weeks.

Despite this, it seems that WWE actually had some interesting plans for the former star heading into WrestleMania 34 that have recently been scrapped because of his release.

In case you didn't know...

James Ellsworth has been around the women's division in WWE throughout the last few months and even helped Carmella to win the Money in the Bank contract back in May.

James recently competed against Becky Lynch in the first intergender match in WWE for a number of years last week, even though the company didn't get a lot of positive feedback from the match, that was won by the Irish Lasskicker.

Carmella turned on Ellsworth after he lost the match and it seems that was the end of his current storyline with The Princess of Staten Island and ended up being his final appearance in WWE.

The heart of the matter

According to Prowrestlingsheet Radio's 100th episode of their podcast with James McKenna and Ryan Satin, WWE originally had plans for James Ellsworth to face off against Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 34 next year in New Orleans for the SmackDown Women's Championship.

It seems that these plans came straight from WWE Chairman Vince McMahon himself and the story was that Ellsworth was going to announce that he was transitioning into a woman in the coming months so that he was eligible to compete for the Championship.

These were still the plans as late as August and they even called for Ellsworth to win the Championship at some point in the near future. McKenna also stated that originally there were plans for Ellsworth to actually keep the Money in the Bank case that he won for Carmella earlier this year so this could fit in with future plans.

What's next?

James recently tweeted to say that he would be available for outside bookings from February 12th, 2018 when his 90-day no-compete clause was up.

Regardless of any plans that WWE once had for the former Independent star, the company made the decision to release him this past week, so the company won't be following through on any of these ideas.

Authors take

Ellsworth managed to draw heat from the WWE Universe almost effortlessly and it would have been an interesting storyline for WWE to try to pull off against many fans wishes.

It seems that the WWE Universe will never actually know how this would have played out unless the original plans are leaked in full, but it would definitely have been a different kind of angle for WWE to pursue throughout WrestleMania season.