Alex Shelley Recalls Being Kushida’s Best Man At His Wedding, Says If Not For The Pandemic, Time Splitters Would’ve Teamed Up More

Despite not being able to team up more in the WWE, Alex Shelley is grateful to have two very important people teaming with him in his wrestling career.

In 2020, Shelley participated in WWE as KUSHIDA’s teammate in the 2020 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, marking their first collaboration in New Japan Pro-Wrestling since 2015. They competed in two live events before being defeated by the Grizzled Young Veterans (James Drake & Zack Gibson) in the opening round of the tournament.

During a virtual signing with Captain’s Corner, Shelley expressed his perspective on partnering with KUSHIDA. Initially, he reflected on how the team came to be.

“Oh, I love Time Splitters. We started in 2012, so I left TNA in 2012, went to New Japan. I was under contract for three years, and the first thing I did was start teaming with KUSHIDA, and we had met him before because he had trained in Canada at the same school that we trained at. He was a few years after us, so our first time face-to-face meeting was 2008, and then he finished his excursion, which a lot of Japanese wrestlers do to gain some seasoning, and he went back to Japan. When he got back, I remember watching some of his matches for a smaller company, and oh my god, he looked just like the Motor City Machine Guns. Just like us, like if you mashed both of us together, you got this. He wrestled the part too, but he was always really, really good. We became best friends. I was best man at his wedding. He was there for me for a lot of different parts of my life and [we] stayed in touch,” Shelley said.

Shelley mentioned that he and KUSHIDA had an opportunity to work in WWE again. He referred to their time at NXT, which came to an end after they lost in the first round of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. Although KUSHIDA continued to work for WWE, Shelley left the company. Shelley expressed that they might have continued working at WWE had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There was almost a point in 2020, before the pandemic, like if the pandemic hadn’t happened, you might have saw Time Splitters in WWE a lot more. But because that happened and things worked out the way they did, we got Time Splitters elsewhere. GCW, some independents, and IMPACT. Most importantly, we got Time Machine in that too, which to me is the most fun. That is my favorite thing to do. How lucky am I to have [Sabin] and KUSHIDA, and we all work together really, really, really well. So those are really special matches for me. Not to discount anything here [points to world title], but at the same time, my heart is with Time Machine in a lot of ways,” Shelley said.

Shelley currently holds the title of IMPACT World Champion, which he earned by defeating Steve Maclin at IMPACT Against All Odds 2023. KUSHIDA left WWE in 2022 and has since competed for NJPW and IMPACT. His victory in the Ultimate X match at IMPACT Slammiversary 2023 was a notable achievement.

h/t from Fightful.

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