Blake Christian further looks back at his time in WWE.
In the summer of 2021, Blake Christian made his WWE in-ring debut after signing with the company earlier that year. His first match was against KUSHIDA for the NXT Cruiserweight Title.
Christian, known in WWE as ‘Trey Baxter’, wrapped up with the company four months after his television debut as he was part of the crop of talents that were released in November.
That period of Christian’s career was touched on during his appearance on the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast. In previous media appearances, he’s spoken about a character change he was going to undergo in NXT as it was transitioning into NXT 2.0. Christian said during this recent interview that there was an idea pitched that Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque shot down because he felt Christian should simply be allowed to wrestle as himself. Blake went on to add that former Head of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis was ‘high’ on him.
Triple H was there [NXT] when I started. Obviously, the first match with KUSHIDA or whatever. This one gimmick was pitched to me that I was totally okay with, you know? At the time, I wanna be on TV and used the best way I can so maybe this is it so they pitched it to me and Triple H shot it down. He’s like, ‘No. This guy’s a wrestler, let’s let him wrestle. Put him in there with KUSHIDA’ and I’m very grateful for that. I got that opportunity. But when 2.0 came around, that’s when Triple H was out with the heart issues or whatever. He was recovering from that and really, we just — we didn’t take our business to him because he’s recovering with his family so it was Shawn’s show. So Shawn [Michaels] was running things and we had made a video for Triple H and stuff like that but, yeah, Triple H was there for the beginning of it, not towards the end.
I prefer not to [say what the pitched gimmick was]. It’s out there on TV now but, yeah, the guy they gave it to is a tremendous wrestler and I love him to death so very much. I’m very thankful that they gave it to somebody that would do well with it.
When we first talked about it, it was like they were shooting it down because that’s not what NXT was but NXT became something different when it became 2.0. It was more colors, more young audience, stuff like that. So, the gimmick very much hit this 2.0 audience and they were all for it, even John Laurinaitis was high on me too but, you know, things just don’t work out and sometimes you get cut. It’s okay, it’s a part of life. I knew what I was signing up for when I signed that contract. Like I said, I didn’t wanna live my WWE career in fear of getting released. I wanted to have fun so, it is what it is.
When he was released, he received a text from William Regal and was told that if he never needed anything, just reach out. Christian said Regal has always been good to him.
Even when I got released [from WWE], he [William Regal] shot me a text and he’s like, ‘Anytime you ever need me to watch some of your stuff, anytime you need anything, just reach out to me’ so, he’s always been very good to me.
As this conversation was ongoing, Christian mentioned that he did ask if he could keep his more well-known name but those in WWE told him they could not own that.
I asked [if I could keep ‘Blake Christian’ in WWE]. But my real name is like that so they’re like, ‘Oh, we can’t own a real name.’ But, I did ask them. But yeah, it just didn’t work out.
The 25-year-old Blake Christian is a regular for Game Changer Wrestling. This weekend, his match from the NJPW STRONG Showdown taping is airing on NJPW World.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
