Alex Shelley on How the Pandemic Prevented More of the Time Splitters in WWE NXT

– During a recent virtual signing with Captain’s Corner, Impact Wrestling World Champion Alex Shelley recalled his time teaming with KUSHIDA as the Time Splitters, including their brief run together in NXT. According to Shelley, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented fans from seeing more of the team in WWE NXT following their short-lived run in 2020, losing in the first round of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic that year. Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

Shelley on the Time Splitters: “Oh, I love Time Splitters. We started in 2012, so I left TNA in 2012, went to New Japan. I was under contract for three years, and the first thing I did was start teaming with KUSHIDA, and we had met him before because he had trained in Canada at the same school that we trained at. He was a few years after us, so our first time face-to-face meeting was 2008, and then he finished his excursion, which a lot of Japanese wrestlers do to gain some seasoning, and he went back to Japan. When he got back, I remember watching some of his matches for a smaller company, and oh my god, he looked just like the Motor City Machine Guns. Just like us, like if you mashed both of us together, you got this. He wrestled the part too, but he was always really, really good. We became best friends. I was best man at his wedding. He was there for me for a lot of different parts of my life and [we] stayed in touch.”

Alex Shelley on how the COVID-19 pandemic prevented a bigger run for the Time Splitters in NXT: “There was almost a point in 2020, before the pandemic, like if the pandemic hadn’t happened, you might have saw Time Splitters in WWE a lot more. But because that happened and things worked out the way they did, we got Time Splitters elsewhere. GCW, some independents, and IMPACT. Most importantly, we got Time Machine in that too, which to me is the most fun. That is my favorite thing to do. How lucky am I to have [Sabin] and KUSHIDA, and we all work together really, really, really well. So those are really special matches for me. Not to discount anything here [points to world title], but at the same time, my heart is with Time Machine in a lot of ways.”