Vince McMahon Was Behind James Ellsworth’s Push In WWE, Ignored Misgivings About The Idea

James Ellsworth’s time at the top of WWE SmackDown Live may have been brief, but it was certainly a memorable one for the man who made his WWE debut jobbing to Braun Strowman.

While speaking on the Oh You Didn’t Know? podcast, Road Dogg revealed that pushing James Ellsworth was entirely Vince McMahon’s idea and that he ignored others backstage when misgivings were shared.

“I’ll tell you whose idea a lot of this stuff with Ellsworth was, and that’s Vince McMahon. Man, he saw it, and he was right. When it comes to ratings, which is how you judge if somebody’s right or not in the TV business, we did well with Ellsworth. Like it was Ellsworth and AJ, Ellsworth and Dean Ambrose. It was like what are you doing? What are we doing here? And it was like, ‘No sir, we don’t want to put him in the main event.’ And he was like, ‘God, you have to.’ And he was right every week. It did better and better. It was like people had to see what we were gonna do here.”

Road Dogg

Ellsworth would challenge for the WWE Championship during his run with the promotion before becoming a valet for Carmella.

H/T to Ringside News

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