Buddy Murphy Tried to Get on 205 Live a Year Before He Made It

– Buddy Murphy appeared on Lilian Garcia’s Chasing Glory and discussed his 205 Live run, plus more. Highlights are below per Wrestling Inc:

On who he learned from in NXT: “Our tag team wrestling skills? All Revival, Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder. They taught us tag team wrestling. We’d have these matches with them and they’d just kinda do it, and we’d just kinda learn so much, and then we would take that and we would take that to newer guys, like Enzo & Cass. We would do that with them, and then Jordan & Gable at the time, and then it just became this – the tag team [division] was good!”

On pushing to get on 205 Live: “I asked for 205 like a year before it happened. They just said no. They said, ‘Nah, there’s no spots there’. And I was like, ‘Okay’. Then I tried it again and I had this whole idea, and I remember watching a TakeOver, and I remember watching it and I got so mad watching it, because I think it was a year after we lost the titles. And it was at the Barclays Center for TakeOver, and I remember watching it, and I just got so mad. And I turned the TV off and said, ‘Why aren’t I on that? I was on it last year. I was the tag team champion last year. Now, I can’t do anything. Nothing’s good enough.’ I just looked in to stuff to do to keep me occupied. Alright, I’m gonna start dieting. I’m gonna start working out more. So then I started to lose weight and then I started to see some results, and I started to drop some weight. Then I pitched 205 again. ‘No!’ ‘Alright.’ So I was doing all this stuff and then they announced the Classic – the tournament – for the Crusierweight Title after it got vacated, and the winners were gonna face each other at WrestleMania. I ended up messaging Adam Pierce, who’s one of the producers of 205, and I was like, ‘Hey Adam, I saw there was this tournament. Not sure if it’s fully booked yet, but if it isn’t, I’d like to put my name in the hat.’ And I don’t know this, but I assume that, maybe Adam had to have eventually said, ‘Well, what about Buddy Murphy? He’s sitting there.’ They go, “‘He ain’t 205.’ ‘No, he’s close.’ And then all of a sudden, they’re like, ‘How much do you weigh?’ I said, ‘208 or something’, and they’re like, ‘come in on Tuesday, I need to weigh you.’ So I just went in and I was like – almost 205 – just get it to 204. So then I come in, and I didn’t drink any water. I sat in the sauna, I got down, I weighed myself and I was 204. And he’s like, ‘Alright.’ And he took a photo of me and then I think he sent it to Triple H, and next thing you know, I’m just doing live events and I’m sitting at the house. I get a phone call from Ryan Katz, he goes, ‘What time can you come in tomorrow?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? For what?’ He goes, ‘You don’t know?’ I go, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘We need to film vignettes, you’re debuting on Tuesday.”

On having a backup plan when he is in NXT: “Calling yourself the ‘Best Kept Secret’ is a die on your own sword. If you’re saying, ‘I’m good, you just don’t know it yet.’ And then you don’t deliver? You’re killed. And it was all a set up between you, and me, and everybody that’s listening to this now, ‘Best Kept Secret’ was a thing for me to do on the indies. I though that my time was up [in WWE]. Like, I couldn’t think of anything. I felt I hated wrestling. I was like, well I can go back to Australia or I can do something here. That whole in itself. I put the whole logo on my pants because I thought, ‘Okay, if I have that on my pants, then when I go somewhere, I’ll at least have a photo of me in WWE wearing that logo and that will work for merch later on. I was thinking all these things, like if it doesn’t work out, I need something to fall in to. And The Best Kept Secret, well, ‘they just didn’t use me – that’s their fault.'”

On Mustafa Ali: “[Ali is] one of the most unselfish, easy-to-work-with, nice guys that I’ve probably met in my entire 30 years on this planet. He’s just a sweet dude and he loves his family, and you know it’s a good person and a good man when all they do is talk about how much they love their family. I think that’s just a really good quality. And working with him, we’re very similar…When he got called up, I’m very happy for him and I hope he continues to kill it, and I’m certain that he will…I think I’m ready for [the main roster]. I think that it will be bittersweet because 205 gave me this opportunity, and I feel like, the guys in 205 are the best guys. We all have the same work ethic and we all want to create the best brand, and that’s our baby, we’re trying to create the buzz ourselves. We’re the stepchild and we’re trying to [say], ‘Hey, we’re over here too but we do it ourselves.'”