WWE Was in Discussions with Mike Bailey for Contract Prior to TNA

Shortly after his match against Josh Alexander on Halloween at the Destiny Wrestling’s Raising Hell event back in 2021, Mike Bailey signed a contract with TNA Wrestling. However, that wasn’t the promotion he was bound to go to from the beginning. Rather, he had some different things planned. 

Right after signing with the company, Bailey revealed that he was in talks with WWE for signing a new contract. However, things turned around at the last moment. In a recent appearance on the Talk is Jericho show, the star revealed the reason he didn’t sign with WWE. 

While he had planned to sign with NXT, some changes in the hiring guidelines of WWE took place, which stopped his hiring process. Not only WWE, but he had offers from numerous places, including AEW, but things ended up well for him when he decided to sign with TNA Wrestling. 

“January 2022 is when I debuted with TNA, with IMPACT then. But it was a long road, even then. When my ban came up, the day, I tweeted a little highlight video that I made, a little announcement my ban was ended and then that got a lot of attention and that got me talking to everyone. That got me signed with NXT for a couple months until they let me go without actually hiring me.”

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“After that video came out, I had already been talking with TNA, talked to some people from AEW, talked to NXT, got a bunch of offers and ended up taking the NXT one. Very excited to be there, they do the background check, they do the visa paperwork, that takes a couple months.”

“Just (a) couple days after I submit the visa paperwork, for this one, you have to go and do a whole career retrospective and all the articles with all your accolades, you have to gather that and send it in. So I worked on that for several weeks, sent it all in. Then I see they’re starting to release a lot of people in NXT.”

“They’re letting go of people and the person that had hired me, there was rumors that they had gotten released so I texted them and I was like, ‘Hey, is everything okay? Are we good?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, no problem. Contract’s in the mail. We’re sending it tomorrow’ and then the next day, I got an email saying, ‘Hey, due to new hiring guidelines, we’re gonna have to stop your hiring process…’”

While Mike Bailey couldn’t sign with WWE, he has been having a great time in TNA. Not only that, but the star also makes appearances in NJPW and the independent circuit sometimes.

Do you think Mike Bailey should have signed with WWE? Let us know in the comments section below.