Vince McMahon’s Bold Call: Unconventional Superstar Defies Expectations in WWE Main Event

In 2016 Vince McMahon decided to bring back the brand extension once again. After the second brand extension, SmackDown was doing pretty well with Dean Ambrose and AJ Styles being their top guys. This was the only time when Styles was treated as a main event star and he played his part perfectly.

During this run he had a surprising opponent who kept challenging him for the WWE Championship. The Challenger was James Ellsworth. He was not only a jobber but a comedy wrestler. He is segments were mostly comedy as well. Ellsworth even received victories over AJ Styles when he was the WWE Champion.

Vince McMahon’s Bold Call: Unconventional Superstar Defies Expectations in WWE Main Event

Of course WWE used this segment to build up the feud between Styles and Dean Ambrose. Still it was a pretty fun segment overall but not everybody loved it as Styles being the WWE champion losing to a jobber did not make the fans much happy. Road Dogg recently remembered angle and revealed how Vince McMahon wanted to put is surprising wrestler on the main events. Speaking on his ‘Oh, You Didn’t Know…’ Podcast, he said;

“And Ellsworth. I’ll tell you whose idea a lot of this stuff was with Ellsworth, and that’s Vince McMahon.” Said the former six times WWE Tag Team Champion and the WWE Hall of Famer.

James Ellsworth Featured On The Main Event Roles In 2016

Road Dogg Jesse james continued, “Man he saw it, and he was right. When it comes to ratings, which is how you judge if somebody is right or not in the TV business, we did well with Ellsworth.

“Like it was Ellsworth and AJ, and Ellsworth and Dean Ambrose, what are we doing here? And it was like, ‘No, sir. No, we don’t want to put him in the main event again,’ and he’s like, ‘God you have to.’

“And he was right. Every week it did better and better, it was like people just had to see what we were going to do here, you know? So yeah, I don’t know. It was a good time.”

Soon Ellsworth went back to the jobberland once again and did not survive in WWE for long either. Such storylines are extremely uncommon in the main event segment. A lot of fans still believe that this storyline somehow buried Styles even being the WWE Champion. But Styles had been a two times WWE champion and he is still one of the best assets of the WWE roster.

H/T – Inside The Ropes