"Speedball" Mike Bailey was not in line to join NXT.
Mike Bailey is currently a member of the IMPACT roster. However, several years ago, he was banned from entering the United States. Now, Bailey is reflecting on that in a new interview with Denise Salcedo.
In the interview, Bailey reveals to Denise that during this time, the Japanese promotion, DDT, became his home.
“You assume that things are gonna go a certain way for your wrestling career, a lot of people with whom I wrestled at PWG during 2015/2016 ended up going to NXT shortly thereafter or IMPACT back then. That’s sorta what I was hoping would happen with myself as well, and once you know that’s not gonna happen the trajectory that you had made for yourself is not gonna work out at all. You have two options basically, I can just quit, I can stop, I can take the “L” and move on to something else with my career and let pro wrestling go or I can figure out another way to become a successful pro wrestler outside of the United States outside of the place where everyone wants to be. That forced me to look at Europe, shortly after I was banned I did some shows in Canada, RevPro, then I got to wrestle for DDT…DDT was really my home from 2016 to 2020 right up until the pandemic, I would have been right back there id the pandemic wouldn’t have made things so darn difficult. DDT became my home, I was able to learn a living as a pro wrestler outside of the U.S, my mission was really to keep as much momentum as I could going up until the end of my 5-year admissibility.”
Bailey also clarifies that despite doing some shows for NXT, he was never in any concrete talks to join that roster.
"Not in any concrete way…. There were discussions but they’re kinda always are, you always hear rumblings and I never know how much of that is true. So that’s always a weird thing, I’ve heard people say that people have said that they heard someone say that they were definitely going to sign me. I don’t know how much that's worth."
Now, you can catch Mike Bailey every Thursday on IMPACT Wrestling on AXS TV. We have full coverage every Thursday beginning at 8 p.m. eastern time.
