Amazing Red Missed Out On Cruiserweight Classic Opportunity After Breaking His Leg Doing Motion Capture Work For WWE 2K

Skylar RussellAugust 13, 2026, 8:48 am

Amazing Red recalls missing out on the Cruiserweight Classic.

The tournament, which was held in 2016, featured a variety of talented names like Zack Sabre Jr, Johnny Gargano, Cedric Alexander, Tommaso Ciampa, Mustafa Ali, and Kota Ibushi.

As it turns out, The Amazing Red was also supposed to take part in the festivities. In a new interview with Chris Van Vliet, Red recalled being asked to do motion capture for a 2K game around the same time as the tournament.

“I’m super hyped. This is it. This is finally what this whole thing paid off for. I knew as soon as I stepped foot in any of these matches, confidently, I’m getting signed. That was just a thing, and maybe it probably was the idea for them also. So it’s about to show up, the Cruiserweight Classic, and I get hit up about doing the 2K video game, and that was one of my dreams at the at the time to be in the video game and do mocap. I thought that was one of my dreams. Doing this job sucks so bad. I would never do mocap for anything.”

Red went on to trash the experience that he had with 2K, saying that he broke his leg during a Spinal Tap attempt.

“Mocap is trash. Anybody that tells you otherwise is a liar. Anybody you had on the show that told you mocap was good, they’re lying. That’s like doing five matches at once. You’re not bumping on the pillow. You’re bumping in the ring. Everything’s legit real, and you’re bumping constantly. I’m hyped. I’m seeing the 2K stuff. Cool. I get dressed. I got the little balls everywhere, right? Real early in the morning, they’re super excited to work with me. I do a couple of moves, then they go up there. They go right into AJ Styles stuff, Spiral Tap. ou could do that?’ Yeah. Let me see. Go up there. Went up there, Spiral Tap. ‘All right, so look, we’re gonna have you do it a couple of times.’ So in mocap, for this kind of game, you have to like do it and miss and sell, do it and hit someone and sell, do it and if there’s a ladder or a chair there, different sell. But you always have to get up a certain way so they can clip it and put it up there, so I had to do this move like seven or eight times, and a spiral tap is a move I don’t like because I’m looking at the ground, I’m looking at the ring instead of the infrared. I’m kind of like backwards, so I don’t see what I’m doing. I just throw myself. But with Spiral Tap, you can see everything, and I’m not a gymnast. I just learned this jumping on the beds, so I’m not really professional doing this. I’m up to like eighth, ninth at this point. I get up there, and I just had a gut feeling, I gotta stop. Low Ki was there with me, and the guy goes, ‘Can you just do one more, man?’ I’m so sorry.’ Can you do just one more? And we’re gonna have you do this, and then we’ll go into a whole set of moves after this.’ I’m like, damn, my body’s killing me. I go up there. There’s two crash pads, just for this jump, right? And in the middle of the crash pad, it connects. So I go up there. I’m like, all right. For some reason, I just jump, and everything just blacks out for me, and I don’t know where I’m at. So I just jump, instant darkness, and I hear this [crack]. I wake up, and I’m on the crash pads, and my leg is backwards. So what happened is that whatever flip I did, my one foot went in between the crash pads that connected, and I went the other way, and I heard the loudest [snap], but I didn’t feel nothing. So I’m there. I’m hanging out. I’m just laying down, and everyone’s looking at me. And Low Ki screams at the top of his lungs, ‘Is anybody gonna effing help him? He broke his leg!’ Then they’re like, ‘Oh, call somebody!’ Then everybody started panicking. He said that when he took my leg out, it was backwards. Once I saw that, instant pain, heat everywhere, all of my body, and then I started screaming. And now, at this point, I’m bitter about the CM Punk situation. I’m bitter about the No Way Out situation, and this to me was like my last-ditch effort of being a part of WWE, doing a WWE game, no less. Broke my leg in half, and I’m screaming. I remember that at this point I think I was cursing God out, and I blamed it on him, and I was like, why don’t you want me to make it? Why don’t you want me to be great? All this stuff I did, paid my dues. I helped so many House of Glory guys. We gave them superstars to wrestle, and I felt like not in a genie kind of way, but in a way where it was like, man, I did all this good stuff, and I felt like this was my time. Why not now? Why do this to me now? To fast forward all that, I know why it happened. And that was a blessing in disguise. As weird as that may sound, as that may sound, breaking my leg was the best thing that happened to me.”

After saying that the leg injury brought him closer to God and his family, Red said that both 2K and WWE encouraged him to stay quiet about the injury.

“The week after. 2K told me to be quiet about it, WWE told me to be quiet about it. [Canyon Ceman], he said, ‘Don’t worry because we’re gonna plan to do a season two and you’ll be right on board for it. Ain’t no season two, I think it ended up being 205 Live, which I never got a call for either.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Red talked about previously turning down TNA’s attempts to put him in the Hall Of Fame. Check out his full comments by clicking here.