Buddy Murphy unknowingly got himself involved in a prominent WWE storyline.
On the July 30, 2019, episode of SmackDown, Roman Reigns was on his way to announce his SummerSlam opponent when a pile of scaffold suddenly fell down on top of him. Murphy became one of the prime suspects after he was spotted in the background of the shot. Speaking with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp, the former Cruiserweight Champion revealed that his cameo was not meant to happen and was completely accidental.
"That was a big mistake," Murphy began by saying. "It was not meant to happen. I did the cruiserweight stint, got drafted to SmackDown, wasn't being used and wondering why. I was hoping they wanted to insert me into a prominent role. I had the portfolio of matches and they had seen my work. Nothing happened. We had a show in Miami and it was meant to be me, [Mustafa] Ali, and Andrade in a triple threat. We were super excited because those are two of my boys. We come up with something great and are excited. Maybe thirty minutes before the show, they cancel the match. We were all gutted. We structured a match to showcase us all. High energy, exciting, everyone looks great, and it got scrapped."
He continued on, saying, "At the time, during commercials, they would send a guy out to cut a promo to the house and then leave so they didn't have to wrestle. It was a thing for a couple of weeks. The first time I did, I did the promo and it went online. The following week, I changed it up and it didn't go online. They gave me one and it got scrapped. They gave me another one like, 'say something like this.' 'I don't feel comfortable saying this stuff.' 'Why not?' 'I feel like an idiot saying it. You're saying the best-kept secret will be revealed, but you haven't told me when that's going to happen. I feel silly saying it over and over and over again. I could be saying this for two and a half years for all I know.'"
It was only after he agreed to think about doing the promo that he unknowingly got mixed up with one of WWE's top stars.
"They gave me this promo to do and I'm like, 'Again? I'm not saying it.' 'What would you like to say?' I said, 'I'll think about it.' I walk down and went between some cases and was going over stuff. I wanted to use the fire...I was ticked off because they kept giving me things that weren't going anywhere and I didn't want to say the same things over and over. As I'm doing that, I look over and see Roman walk past. Didn't think anything to it. Did the promo, left the show. I left earlier and I got a random message from Elias and he goes, 'Did I just spot a wild Murph?' 'What are you talking about?' 'On SmackDown.' 'What?' I go on Twitter and it was blowing up. I'm like, 'Oh shit.' They thought it was me or Goldberg because he had the same baseball t-shirt. It was great because it did (get me on TV), by accident. That was not meant to happen. That was not what they wanted and I hoped it didn't fall negatively on me. Especially when the boys are texting you and now they are thinking things. To be fair, they didn't yell 'clear,'" Murphy said.
The following week, Roman questioned Murphy about the incident. At the time, he named Rowan as Reigns' attacker, which eventually after weeks of investigating turned out to be true. On August 13, Buddy faced Roman in what he calls his big coming out with the company.
"That was my big coming out," Murphy explained. "I did all the stuff with the Cruiserweights and then I sat in the back for however long and the whole Reigns thing came where he was throwing me around. I was just happy to be part of it and would take whatever I could get and do it to the best of my ability. It was meant to be one week where I get there and it's me and Roman in the main event of SmackDown and I'm like, 'What is going on?' Then we had to do some meeting for a couple of hours and we come back and the match is gone. Roman pulls me aside and is like, 'I don't care about doing the match but tonight is not the night we do it. We're rushing.' I'm so deflated. SummerSlam weekend, I'm just talking shit on Twitter, and next thing you know, I'm wrestling Roman on SmackDown. He was awesome to put that together and gave me the reigns. He tweaked it a little, but I felt like he wanted to help me. I just wanted to bring it and kill it because that's what I'm used to doing. It was a Buddy Murphy-style match with a guy that would get critiqued that he couldn't wrestle. He's basically saying 'F U,' I'm saying, 'F U' and to this day people keep talking about it. It was a massive learning thing for me and put me on the map. Following it up with Daniel Bryan and killing it. I had a match with Ali in King of the Ring and we killed it. Long story short, Heyman talked about bringing me to Raw. Once I did those three matches, I was never used again on SmackDown."
Buddy Murphy was released by WWE on June 2, 2021, after eight years with the company. During that time, he also held the NXT Tag Team Titles with Wesley Blake and the Raw Tag Team Titles with Seth Rollins.
We'll have over a half-dozen articles from our interview with Buddy Murphy over the next week or so, including him talking about his post-release non-compete clause. You can see our full interview with Buddy Murphy at the top of the page, and follow him on Twitter at this link.
