You may not remember it, but Frankie Kazarian had a brief stint in the WWE.
Kazarian’s stint with the WWE was mostly confined to their Velocity show back in 2005, but it wasn’t a very long stint to remember. His whole stint lasted a month on the main roster and five months in their developmental territory OVW. Speaking with the Wrestling Perspective podcast, Kazarian reflected on his time with the WWE and said he felt he wasn’t mature enough to be there at the time.
“So for me, when I got to WWE, my short stint there, I never really took wrestling seriously as a business. What I mean by that is, wrestling was my passion. It was what I always wanted to do. What I loved. I worked my ass off, moved across the country to train to do it. I did every show. If you set up a ring, I would be there. I worked so hard at it, and all the sudden I started getting paid to do it. Then all the sudden I got a contact. Then all the sudden I was getting weekly paychecks, and it was just like, ‘Cool, this was all part of it.’ When I got to WWE, I realized quickly, ‘Oh, this is a business.’ At that time of my life, I don’t think I was mentally mature enough to handle the professional wrestling business on that level. WWE is — they’ve been around forever. They have it nailed. WWE is never going anywhere. I wasn’t ready to be the businessman that I needed to be. So, what my short run there taught me is that, yes, this is my passion, this is my heart and my soul, but I’m a businessman and I need to treat this like a business. So I’ll always be grateful for my time there for that because that was one of those lessons that kind of slapped me right in the face at the right time in my life.”
Kazarian eventually returned to Impact (then TNA Wrestling) Wrestling in 2006 and continued to build to greatness. Now Kazarian has become a founding member and staple of All Elite Wrestling.
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