“Cowboy” James Storm spoke with Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet and revealed that he was set to be brought back into the company, where he previously had a short NXT run in 2015, after WrestleMania. When the pandemic began, his return to WWE came to a screeching halt.
On the COVID-19 pandemic stopping his WWE run: “It really couldn’t have hit at a worse time. Because, there’s only I don’t know, probably five people that know that I was actually supposed to start with WWE right after WrestleMania. I was supposed to debut with them, because I got the call at Royal Rumble weekend. And Paul Heyman wanted to bring me in for Raw, for Monday Night Raw. And they’re like, ‘You know, since the Rumble’s already passed, let’s build up to WrestleMania, right after WrestleMania.’ And I was like, ‘All right, sweet. Cool.’”
Being contacted by WWE in January: “They actually emailed me on Thursday before the Rumble, before the Rumble weekend. But my email wasn’t working, so I didn’t get it until Wednesday when I got back home from the NWA stuff. And so I went and did the NWA show and all this. Well, I winded up hyper-extending my knee in one of the matches at the NWA show. And I was like, ‘Oh, man. This hurts, blah blah blah.’ And then I get home, and I see I got an email from Canyon Ceman saying, ‘Hey, we’re interested. Paul Heyman wants me to reach out and bring you to Raw.’ I was thinking, I was like, ‘Wait. I think Bobby [Roode] is going to Raw. This could be interesting.’ Ya know?”
On NWA releasing him:: “It was just one of those things where technically, I was supposed to still have like a rollover clause in my contract. But I had talked to Dave Lagana and Billy [Corgan]. And they were like, ‘Look, we’ll let you out of it.’ Because they told me all along that, ‘Look, our goal is to help you get up there.’ And that’s what they told me all along, like, ‘You belong up there, you should be there. Thank you for helping us out to get on the map and everything.’
“And so they let me out of the contract, and I was actually going to drop — I told them that I would work the weekend of WrestleMania shows with Eli [Drake] to drop the NWA belts to whoever they wanted to drop it to. Just go out on good terms, good business, you know? And then that show got cancelled for the NWA, and then you know, it kept snowballing everything. Everything just [kept] being cancelled.”
His last contact with WWE: “It was like end of July. For right now, everything’s on hold, so we don’t know if we’ll be able to move forward with it and everything. It’s like you know, that’s cool. Like ‘Hey, thank you guys for the opportunity. Hopefully I’ll see you guys against down the road or something.’”
On talking with Paul Heyman about it: “You know, I messaged Paul and was like, ‘Hey man, just so you know, for right now it’s, you know, because they basically let so many talents go, I didn’t expect him to keep me around. And he was just like, ‘Man, it’s kind of a big loss for them. They don’t even know it, because you could help out so much.’ But hopefully you know, you never know who could come into power and be like, ‘Hey, let’s bring Storm in to help with the younger talent as well.”
