During an appearance on Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast, Murphy talked about getting his first opportunity in WWE:
“I went there and there were 80 people trying out. Sami Callihan was one of them and I swear to this day that tryout was for him but he got hurt. You know when you’re there, they have their eyes on someone. Sami was hot. He was the indie guy at the time. I thought this was just to get him. He got hurt on day one or day two, but there were these football players and I’m not a big guy. These football players would knock you out of the way. They were like 6ft 6. It was tough to stand out in the pack but they were all falling. By day one, there were maybe 65 left. By day three, there were 50 because they couldn’t do the workload. They thought this was going to be a cakewalk. I had so much determination and there was nothing that was going to break me. Sometimes I wish I still had that determination and focus. To this day Norman Smiley and Robbie Brookside said it was the toughest tryout they had ever been a part of. You had Bill DeMott, Joey Mercury, Norman, Terry. It was four days of hell and then at the end of it, you had to go promo for Dusty. I was starstruck by these people and I had to go and blow them out of the water.”
Murphy also talked about working with Seth Rollins and how he kept grinding to get noticed in WWE:
“It’s cool to work with him in the ring and to be in the ring with somebody of his caliber. I also got to learn being by his side and seeing it at ringside. I’ve had good matches. I feel like I’m a wrestler’s wrestler. I’ve had my 205 matches which I went out there and I felt like I killed it every time I went out there. Then I went to SmackDown and got lost in the shuffle and accidentally in the background, I wrestled Roman and killed it. I wrestled Bryan the week after that and killed that. I wrestled Ali the week after that and killed that. Then I was off TV and I’m wondering, what’s going on. I feel like I gave two of the best matches of the year back to back and then I’m not seen again. Then Paul Heyman wanted me on Raw and much respect to Paul. He pulled me aside and he said some real kind words to me. He wanted me to come to Raw and asked if there was anything holding me to SmackDown. I said I want to put my best foot forward. I got drafted from SmackDown to Raw last year.”
(quote courtesy of WrestlingNews.co)
