Alex Hammerstone nearly quit pro wrestling altogether.
Before joining MLW, Hammerstone was contacted about going to a 2018 WWE tryout. However, the tryout did not pan out as well as he thought it was going to be.
Telling the story about the WWE tryout to Chris Van Vliet, Hammerstone said he was contacted by WWE in November 2017. He was excited about the prospects of moving to Florida to have a chance to be with the company, but was then told shortly before he was set to move to Florida that he was no longer needed. The experience of his WWE tryout being gone before it even began almost caused him to quit wrestling.
"It ended up being like 'Hey, well I think we want to bring you in. We're going to start the hiring process'. And I remember, I was on the toilet at work when I read that email and I had to read it four times over and then I started crying because I was like 'Holy crap! Dream come true! It's happening.' And then I literally burst out of the bathroom and knocked on my boss's office. It was just like an involuntary reaction, I was like 'Jeff, read this!' and he was like 'Oh my God!' and he legitimately called a staff meeting to tell everybody what had just happened and everyone congratulated me. This was probably the end of November, 2017. The conversation with WWE was basically like be ready to move out to Florida by May or maybe June. So I start getting all of my duck in a row to move and we're going through a couple of steps like sending in all of my paperwork and doing my background check. The next step is my whole medical test and it's not happening, it's not happening, it's not happening. And then I start pestering them to see what's going on. Then in April, and keep in mind in my head I'm moving there in May, so in April they say 'Sorry to inform you but we're just way too full right now, we hired too many people this year and we can't bring you in'. And it doesn't say like 'Give us three months' or 'Give us this' it just says 'We can't bring you in'. And that was it. And I was like what? And for the next couple of months someone every once in a while would be like 'Hey, when are you going to Florida?' and I'd have to explain the whole thing to them. I had to explain this so many times and every time it was like a punch in the gut, you know? So it was rough, man. It was a rough time and literally that experience almost made me quit wrestling. I was very close," Hammerstone said.
Hammerstone would go on to find further success in wrestling and currently stands as the MLW National Openweight Champion.
You can check out the interview in the video at the top of the page and the audio podcast above. Credit to Chris Van Vliet for the transcription.