Peter Avalon discusses his tryout experience with WWE.
Before becoming an AEW original, Peter Avalon had an experienced career on the independent scene, working with companies like Championship Wrestling From Hollywood, PWG, and CZW. Avalon also had experience working as an extra for WWE.
In a interview that Fightful conducted a couple of years ago, Avalon talked about Brodie Lee, who he worked against in a tag bout on a 2017 episode of WWE SmackDown.
"That man is another genuine man. I know everyone’s heard the personal stories. I don’t have a personal relationship with him unfortunately. But my short time knowing him, getting to interact with him, he’s a beautiful man. The time in WWE, he made me feel very comfortable. Especially because at the time it’s not a comfortable place to be backstage. Especially as an extra, man, and I was an extra in Phoenix at the time. I had a tryout match in front of the producers before the show. Then they threw me and another California guy, Fidel Bravo, in there to get beat up by the hammer boys."
Avalon continued on and went into detail about how Brodie made he and Bravo feel important.
"When we were in Gorilla position, of course me and Fidel are nervous, we’re talking to each other. We put together this match with them. Then as we’re sitting there warming up, stretching and doing our thing, Brodie’s just very talkative. He’s looking us in the face, the eyes and smiling and being very nice. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but when no one’s fucking look at you all day, for somebody to look at you in the eyes and smile and talk to you, it means a fucking lot, you know? I think he might have known we had mutual friends from the independents and have worked a lot of the same things, just at different times. We just had a good conversation and what we bonded over was our fandom of Kane. I complimented his beard and said it reminded me of Kane and he said, ‘That’s what I was going for when I asked for it. I love Kane.’ I was like, ‘Bro,’ and we just started talking about Kane."
Avalon went on to reveal that his tryout match on SmackDown led to people pulling him to the side to discuss a potential role on the now defunct 205 Live brand.
"Man, shit. I don’t even remember. I want to say, I think I just got booked as a regular extra and then because they saw that I was there they gave me the match in front of the producers. Adam Pearce was one of the producers. So going in, I knew a lot of the wrestlers at the time, which are a lot of my co-workers now, funny enough. Yeah, so they knew I was there so they gave me a match with a wrestler that I had been booking on the Arizona show in front of producers and it went well. It went well that they pulled me over to the side to talk to people. They were telling me they were considering me for 205. They had spots available for 205. Things like that."
You can see our full interview with Peter Avalon at the top of the page. Fans can see a list of some of our past Enhancement Stories below.
Past Enhancement Stories:
