LJ Cleary Explains How He Came To Take Part In WWE’s SummerSlam Tryout

LJ Cleary talks about how he ended up taking part in WWE’s SummerSlam tryout.

The week of WWE SummerSam in New Jersey, WWE would hold their latest set of tryouts for both US and European based talent. Several Irish wrestlers made the trip over, including Lyra Valkyria’s partner LJ Cleary, who has made a name for himself in both the European and Japanese wrestling scenes.

While speaking to WrestleMobs in a new interview, LJ explained how he came to be offered the spot in the WWE tryout during SummerSlam week.

“So for for me, it was through a contact that I’ve known for quite a good few years. I would just stay in touch over, like, I think it’s very much out there that he’s gone around to all the schools now, Jim Smallman, like he’s kind of popping into- that’s out publicly. Like he’s, he’s at all the schools and we would keep- so he’s- we met in 2019 when I first did Progress because he used to own Progress or (was) one of the owners. He always brings up to me like a chat that we had in 2019. I remember it was when I was in More Than Hype and he kind of popped into a locker room and he was like, ‘oh, lads, like nice to meet you. Can I just get like some notes like about you guys?’ Like, he would do ring announcing, and I was like, yeah, I was like, ‘I’ll come and talk to you now in a second’, and I remember we sat in a room, we talked about 10 minutes. It was a very nice chat. Very much just me being me, like, half kind of, like, neurotic wrestling fan slash, like, nerd. That’s how I would describe myself personally and, you know, he would kind of always bring up to me, like, oh, like, you know, like, ‘I really got a great sense of, like, who you were off that chat.’ I was fortunate enough to do two weeks at the UK PC just before it closed down. So just over three years ago now, 2022. He put me for, like, he vouched me for that. Then, it was my, I say we kind of lost touch. I stopped sending him stuff because I was so focused on Japan. It wasn’t like a, I’m not reaching out to Jim. Like we would still maybe like, you know, reply to a story here and there. Then I saw he was coming to the School of Irish Wrestling. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m actually home during that time. It’d be great to see ya.’ and he was like, you haven’t sent me anything in ages. Like, can you send me some new stuff? I was like, ‘Oh yeah, my bad.’ Like, sorry. Then like that essentially kind of got the ball rolling to be offered the opportunity to come and take part at the tryout.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Cleary spoke about the experience of the tryouts themselves and getting the chance to meet his childhood hero, John Cena. You can read more about that here.

Should you use any portion of the quotes above, transcription credit should go to Fightful with an H/T linking back to this article.