Young said they were close to joining the company.
Joining Chris Van Vliet for a new recording of his Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast was Eric Young. The 26-year veteran dove into his career and looked back at when himself and Robert Roode (Bobby Roode) were close to being hired by WWE in the early 2000s.
He spoke about how tasking it is to break through in the U.S.A. as a non-citizen and having to deal with visa issues among other hurdles. He claimed that him and Roode were not hired at the time because they’re Canadian.
Well, it’s hard (trying to break through in the U.S.A. as a non-citizen). We’ve chit-chatted about this on the way over here today is American people or American wrestlers or people in entertainment in general don’t understand the extra added level of difficulty because coming here and working here without a visa or without being married or without something is illegal. Completely illegal. So it makes it so much more difficult than anyone realizes. Me and Bobby Roode were very close to being hired by the WWE, probably around 2001. We had done, who knows, 20, 25 dark matches and tryout things and they were interested but, it came down to they were going to hire us and we came up in a meeting and they’re like, ‘Oh, well they’re Canadian’ and they’re like, ‘Oh. Well who else could we –’ I don’t know who the two other guys that they hired were. But, it was basically, because we were Canadian, they didn’t end up signing us. So, yeah, it just adds this really, really difficult layer that most people aren’t aware of.
In a prior media appearance, Young revealed that before his latest exit from WWE, he signed an NDA. To read more, click here.
If the quote in this article are used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
