Chris Harris wasn’t a Wild Cat in WWE.
The ‘WildCat’ Chris Harris recently returned to IMPACT for his first match since 2018, when he teamed with long time partner James Storm, Heath and the Good Brothers to defeat Honor No More at IMPACT Wrestling’s Against All Odds Pay-Per-View on July 1st. Now, Chris Harris sat down on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet where he talked about his recent return, as well as his time with WWE. Chris reflected on his name change as well, when he was Braden Walker.
It was unfortunate that they would do that but I can’t say that I was surprised. Going in there, they just want to erase your past, which is unfortunate because you try so hard to build up a reputation for yourself and not that they would ever talk about TNA, but they don’t want them to talk about you like you are a rookie. Going in there, I tried to keep a positive attitude. The Wildcat is gone, I’m going to be a whole new character. They gave me the name, and a lot of people have trashed that for years, but it wasn’t a surprise. They gave me the name, if I was still able to be myself, I could take any name that they throw at me. I could make Braden Walker work if they had given me an opportunity. There was no preparation and no thought behind it. I think I was doomed from the start.
– Chris Harris via INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet
Chris continued on to talk about his time with WWE, which he felt like he wasn’t given an opportunity.
I was there for close to a year, and I just from the get go, I just saw different things. When I first went, people were excited to see me and they didn’t want news getting out, it felt like a big deal. ‘We’ve got plans for you.’ Things like that. I felt like maybe I made the right decision. But within weeks, I was seeing that there was no background to this and no thought and I was just going to be one of the ones that are just thrown out there, and I was. I was just thrown out there, there was no story or background to Braden Walker anything like that. I had generic music, gear, name, there was no reason for people to get behind me. I still feel like I could have made that work if they let me wrestle, but they were even taking that away from me. Seconds and minutes before I went out, I had a producer change my match. ‘You can’t do this and you can’t do that, so why don’t you try…’ You’re messing with me man, I couldn’t go out and be myself in the ring. It was very unfortunate and I felt like I could make it work, but the opportunity was never presented to me.
– Chris Harris via INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet
You can hear more from this interview above. Chris Harris currently hasn’t wrestled any more matches with IMPACT since his Against All Odds return, but has made on-screen appearances in backstage segments.
H/T INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet.
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