According to All Wrestling News, James Ellsworth is not under a WWE contract and is working on a per-date basis.
His last appearance was this past Tuesday night on SmackDown Live when he was in the main event of the show, in a WWE World Championship match against AJ Styles which he won by disqualification. He was not told about any future appearances after that.
In case you forgot, Ellsworth made his first appearance in WWE in a squash match against Braun Strowman. What made him appealing was his unique look and also the little mic time he had, where he said the now-classic dialogue, “Any man with two hands has a fighting chance”.
His popularity soared in social media with memes and praise for Ellsworth, which he fully embraced and was appreciative of. He himself said that he believed he was just going to have the match and be forgotten about like everyone else.
He has since made 3 appearances on Smackdown Live, the first where General Manager Daniel Bryan made him AJ Styles’ tag team partner against Dean Ambrose and John Cena.
Then, he had a match against AJ Styles last week in which he was successful (albeit help from Dean Ambrose), and this week, he had a championship match against AJ Styles, which he won by DQ, making him 2-0 against The Phenomenal One, being among the few who has beaten Styles more than once since he joined WWE.
Ellsworth was called in a couple of times post-draft but then was told there was nothing for him. This was before he got his first Smackdown Live appearances.
He told Chris Jericho on his podcast that his future plan is to keep trying to get into WWE, and if that doesn’t happen, he will continue running his independent promotion Adrenaline Championship Wrestling.
Here are his two appearances from this week’s Smackdown Live:
Take a look at his championship match as well this last week on SmackDown.
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One of Samoa Joe's colleagues had harsh words for him HERE
