Bey was offered an IMPACT Wrestling deal the day after his WWE appearance.
For the first time since his broken neck and spinal surgery in the fall of 2024, Chris Bey sat down for a long-form interview. He appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet.
Among the conversational topics that they touched on was Bey’s WWE debut in October 2019 for the 205 Live program. He shared that members of the 205 Live roster advocated for him to get a tryout with the company. Bey said the next day, he was offered a deal from IMPACT/TNA.
I believe there was (an opportunity to do more with WWE after 205 Live match). I know there were talks with a couple of people about attempting to get me a tryout, and I know if I would have had a tryout, I would have succeeded. Not me being arrogant. I just know myself. When I get an opportunity to do something, I nail it. That’s what I do. You have to. You have to believe in yourself the way I believe in myself because once you have a little bit of doubt, you make a mistake and once you make that mistake, sometimes it’s hard to recover from. I’ll make a mistake sometimes and I’ll be like, alright, let me make sure the next thing is perfect. Some people make a mistake and they fall from there. Everything else is a mistake, they can’t pick it back up. I’m the other way around, so I’m not afraid to make a mistake but I don’t plan to make a mistake. I plan to be perfect, and that night on 205 Live, I think went perfect and I remember when I came through the curtain, I believe Adam Pearce put me over real nice, said some kind of words to me and a bunch of people from the roster, the 205 Live roster, were very adamant on trying to get me a tryout which I thought was really cool because you hear people being afraid of people taking their spots or whatever, people not being helpful. I felt the complete opposite. I walked into WWE Gorilla as this extra and these guys were like, ‘No, we need to get this guy a tryout. This guy should be here with us.’ So I was very grateful that those guys were so nice and so sharing of their spots and their opportunities. The next day I got offered the TNA deal, and I sat on it for a while.
To read in detail about Bey’s recovery from the major injury, how he’s feeling present-day and much more, head over to this link.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
