Former WWE star Ariya Daivari who mostly worked in the 205 Live stage and your main goal in WWE remained the NXT Cruiserweight Championship for most of the time period recently talked about his time in WWE. He revealed how he was hired in the WWE and he also talked about the structure of 205 Live.
Ariya Daivari started his professional wrestling career at a very young age of 17 in 2006. He started his professional wrestling career on the independent circuit and spent over 10 years on the independent circuit. In this Tanya time period he won a lot of championships all around The Indies number of Heavyweight Championships and other titles as well.
Ariya Daivari Talks About His WWE Hiring Process
In 2016, Daivari was signed by WWE and he started working on the newly founded brand of WWE, 205 Live. WWE signed him mainly to extend the roster of 205 Live and he was quite a good fit for the roster of 205 Live. Throughout his WWE career he remained a 205 Live. Sometimes he worked on WWE Main Event Show as well.
WWE never thought of him very highly. He has mostly been treated as a jobber. In his five year WWE career he failed to win any Championship in WWE. Throughout this year, WWE went through a budget cut progress, and as a result WWE released a lot of talents.
One of them was Daivari, unfortunately. After getting released from WWE he was signed by AEW and after having a number of appearances for the new promotion, it is quite clear that he would be treated as a jobber here as well.
Ariya Daivari who mostly worked in the 205 Live stage and your main goal in WWE remained the NXT Cruiserweight Championship for most of the time period recently spoke to Tommy Dreamer’s House of Hardcore podcast where he talked about his time in WWE. He revealed how he was hired in the WWE and he also talked about the structure of 205 Live. He said;
“I did a tryout. They said no. There was a whole year in between that. In 2015, I thought, let’s make some sh*t happen. I did a few Ring of Honor matches. In January 2016, I got an email saying, ‘We’re having this project.’ At the time, it was called the Global Cruiserweight series or something like that, and ‘‘You’re one of the guys we want to use for that.’
“It got me thinking that maybe when they said at my tryout, ‘We like you, but not just right now’, I thought that was just their standard answer, but maybe they were just waiting for the right thing to come up, and that Cruiserweight Classic was it. I got the email in January, and six months later, and in the summer we did it. It was fun. It was awesome. It got a lot of buzz.
“Obviously I asked them, ‘Is this leading to any full time work?’ They said, ‘We thought you did a great job. Maybe we’ll have you back for the Cruiserweight Classic next year.’ Shortly after that, they hit me up and said, “We want you to come in for NXT.’ Then they said, ‘We want you to wrestle TJP on Monday Night RAW.’ I was like, wow, this is the craziest extra booking I ever got. We did that a handful of times.
“It was me, (Drew) Gulak, and (Tony)Neese. The three of us heels were getting booked in and out on all these Raw’s and pre shows on PPVs, all without a job, all without a deal. I think we did that for that whole summer all the way up to October. I remember we did the pre show on Survivor Series.
“I was like, man, we’re on a PPV, kind of, but we don’t have jobs. This is weird. We saw Hunter and asked him, ‘Is this leading to anything?’ He said, ‘Keep your Mondays open.’ I walked away like and I was like, ok, I guess we’ll just be freelance WWE wrestlers. The next day, we all got contracts offered to us. It wasn’t until October 2016 that it was official.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription