James Storm had a brief run in NXT in 2015, wrestling two matches on television before leaving the territory.
Storm returned to TNA at the start of 2016.
Speaking on Wrestling Life with Ben Veal, Storm explained why he didn't sign with NXT.
“Yeah, everybody thinks it’s because of the money and all of this whatever. I’m one of the guys, even Hunter [Triple H] told me, ‘Look, you won’t be here long.’ He goes, ‘Vince [McMahon] loves characters and you’re a character that can work and you’re great on the mic so you won’t be here long at all in NXT.’ Which is fine, I wouldn’t have minded wrestling in NXT, a lot of my friends were there as well because they went to the main roster. It was something where they sent me the contract first and I ran through it and stuff but when I got down there to talk to them about signing it, the dates had changed. It went to a lot more dates, which it’s fine or whatever, but at the time, me and my wife were trying to have a baby and we had to do all this other stuff or whatever. The dates just wasn’t going to match up and TNA was the way better option because they wasn’t running that many house shows at the time, it was all just TV and pay-per-views. Hunter just told me, he goes, ‘Hey, you know, you never know way down the line, just keep yourself in shape and you never know what can happen.’ It’s just one of those things where I don’t know, I’ve always kept myself in shape. I remember Jim Ross saying on his podcast, he goes, ‘Whenever you get the call, they’re not going to wait for you to get in shape. They want you ready to go,'" he said.
Storm continues to compete on the independent scene.
Elsewhere during the interview, Storm commented on the WWE-TNA partnership. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
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