PJ Black (Justin Gabriel): Dusty Rhodes Told Me I Couldn’t Wrestle At My First WWE Tryout

Dusty Rhodes had some harsh words for a young Justin Gabriel.

While on an episode of Developmentally Speaking, former WWE Tag Team Champion Justin Gabriel (Now known as PJ Black) spoke about the first time he was contacted by the company to do his first tryout with them and this is what he was told by the late-great legend, Dusty Rhodes.

“Long story short, I got invited to the tryout in FCW in Florida, so I flew to the US and FCW at the time, in Tampa,” Gabriel said. “I walked into this office, and there’s Dr. Tom Prichard, Steve Keirn, Norman Smiley, Dustin Rhodes. And it was very intimidating, and they popped my tape in…they watched this tape, and I thought the match was fantastic. It was one of my favorite matches ever. And I was playing this stripper/porn star character at the time, did a decent promo and everything. And when they were finished, they all kind of looked at each other, it got quiet, and I was like ‘Oh shoot.’ And Dusty was like ‘Well, you can’t wrestle for s**t, but you can do all the other stuff.'”

Gabriel would go on to win the WWE Tag Team Championships with Heath Slater as part of the Nexus and the Corre before he asked for his release on the day of the 2015 Royal Rumble.

H/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.

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