Moore thought the company would drop him immediately after being late to his first meeting.
Guest appearing on a new edition of Developmentally Speaking was 26-year veteran Shannon Moore. During their conversation, Moore spoke about WWE picking up his contract with WCW after the company was purchased.
He recalled receiving an offer from John Laurinaitis. Moore was supposed to meet with Jim Ross in-person but the night prior, he went out and the late night resulted in him missing his flight. Moore thinks J.R. took that personally.
I was flying home and I just remember looking at the window just like, well I had a good run. I guess my career’s over now. Because, you know, Tom Prichard told me previously, ‘It’s a land of giants’ and it just started to shift a little bit by that point but still was a big man’s game. Even though the cruiserweight division and stuff was starting to come about around that time. But yeah, I thought I was gone, I thought I was fired. I was like, man, they’ll (WWE) never pick up my contract. There’s 60 guys on the roster that’s bigger than me and it’s like, why would they pick me up?… After I was home for a couple of days, I get a phone call from Johnny Ace and he’s like, ‘Hey kid. We’re gonna pick your contract up. You’re gonna have your first meeting with JR.’ I think it was in Atlanta. ‘You’re gonna fly down and you’re gonna meet J.R. in a hotel and he’s just gonna talk about what’s next.’ ‘Alright, that’s cool.’ Think I went out to a club or something the night before and missed my flight to go to meet J.R. and I was like, I’m definitely fired now. There’s no way they’re gonna keep… So I call Johnny. I’m like, ‘Hey Johnny. I missed my flight.’ Dude, he cut a promo on me. Just kind of yelled at me. He’s like, ‘What are you thinking? An idiot.’ I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t know what happened.’ I didn’t tell him I was at a party the night before but I was like, ‘Man, I just overslept.’ So I thought, definitely now, I’m done. I’m gonna fly down to J.R.’s and he’s gonna say, hey, thanks for coming but we don’t need you no more, and I think J.R. took that personal. Me and J.R., we got along but we never had that real deep relationship like I had with a lot of the office, you know? Like Johnny Ace. I think it was just that presence that was set from day one because it was like, ah, I knew I messed up as soon as I walked in. So I get to Atlanta finally and I go into my meeting and J.R.’s on the phone. I knock on the door, he’s like, ‘Come in’ and I walk in. He’s like, ‘Give me a minute.’ He’s on the phone. He gets off and he’s like, ‘That’s Mick Foley. You know Mick Foley?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I know Mick.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, hell of a guy.’ I said, ‘Yeah, he is.’ I was like, ‘Mick’s awesome. I love Mick’ and he’s like, ‘Alright, well, why’d you miss your flight?’ And I was like, ‘I’m sorry. It was a mistake’ and all he said was, ‘Alright. Well, you know, we’re gonna build our cruiserweight division. You’re gonna be one of our players and I’m glad you’ve come down.’ I was like, that’s it? So that’s pretty much it, then I left and I just sit home for, I don’t know, a good another couple months and I’m like, ‘What is going on?’
He looked back on being in WWE’s developmental system and then getting the call to be on the road. He stated that Chris Benoit had a lot to do with his call-up.
Nah, it was honestly out of the blue (Moore said about his WWE main roster call-up). Chris Benoit was a main factor I think in me getting pulled up. He had seen a lot of the cruiserweight stuff that me and Jamie (Noble) and Chad (Collyer) were doing and Jamie got pulled up first and then they pulled me up to do house shows with Jamie. At first, I think Chris would do stuff just to entertain him, because we’d go out, we’re trying to do early Chris Benoit-Eddie Guerrero stuff or Eddie-Dean (Malenko). That’s kind of the style that me and Jamie were shooting for whenever we first got up on the road with Chris and Chris would always come to us. He’s like, ‘Man, you gotta lay it in! Come on. You guys need to go out there and you need to lay it in’ and it’s like, we were punching each other as hard as we could. Every night, we’d come back and I’m like, ‘Jamie, my teeth are about to fall out’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah dude. My nose is broke.’ We can’t keep killing each other and every time, Chris is like, ‘That was great, that was great’ so he’s pumping us up. Now we set this standard that whenever we come back, Chris likes it and it was like that for a long time where we were doing house shows together and then Chris is like, ‘You gotta lay it in harder, gotta lay it in harder’ and finally we’re like, ‘Dude, Chris, we’re tired. You’re killing us. My teeth are about to fall out. Jamie’s nose is broke, he can’t hear in his ears. We’re messed up.’ He finally laid off a little bit and just, you know, he was still watching, critiquing our matches but, it was just funny because I think he just loved to see us out there just killing each other.
The 44-year-old Moore most recently wrestled in early 2022. His last televised match was under the IMPACT Wrestling banner in 2012.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Developmentally Speaking with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
