Jeff Cobb Describes His WWE Tryout Process, Getting Listed as ‘Indy Worker’ Over Athlete, His Advantages by Not Working NXT

– During a recent interview with Talk Is Jericho, Jeff Cobb discussed his career and why he currently prefers not being signed to NXT and also his experience attending a WWE tryout session. Below are some highlights.

Cobb on the advantages that he’s not in NXT for his personal life: “And I’m not downplaying or talking down on NXT or anything like that, but I don’t think I’d be able to do that if I was there. Like, ‘Well. Guess I’m gonna go to the beach this weekend. Or let’s go to Long Beach and hang out,’ or if my buddy’s getting married, I don’t have to ask anybody, ‘Can I go?’ or, ‘I think I wanna go to a wedding.'”

Jeff Cobb on his WWE tryout and the cardio drills: “Oh my gosh, yeah. It was crazy. A lot of running the ropes, a lot of rolls, which is great. A lot of Brookside shuffles. It’s pretty much a — you put your hands on your head, and you do a side shuffle around the ring. You stay close to the ropes. You don’t go towards the center, so you’re in the center of the ropes looking directly across, and that’s your partner. So you have to do a shuffle and try to stay in-sync with them. So, by the time they’re in the corner, you should be in the opposite corner. And then, same with the other two. So you like a perfect square, diamond or however you’re looking at it at all times. That’s the goal, but then it gets pretty tough after that.”

Jeff Cobb on being listed as an “indy worker” over an “athlete”: “I don’t want to go off on another tangent, but when I was doing our check-ins, like we had weigh-ins, and I looked down and I saw the clipboard, and it said, ‘Athlete 1-20.’ And then it said, ‘Indy Workers 21 through I dunno, 30 or whatever.’ I was like, ‘C’mon. I was in the Olympics. Does that count?’ I’m under indy worker. I get it. So, the former football players or crossfit athletes, they were in the athlete category, which is funny because you’d be surprised how many NFL football players or former NFL football players can’t do a forward roll, or do the couple and then they’re done. … There’s a few of them that like did, and then they couldn’t do it, so they sit on the side until the next drill or whatever. There was a few that like, we do these roll up kind of thing for like, I dunno, like a minute or two. And then [Robbie] Brookside would be like, ‘Alright! Get out of here! Go through the next ring!’ So you’d have to sprint out of there and go to the next ring and do the exact same rolls that we did. And then I remember being the next one in just watching this football player grab the second rope to get out of the ring, missed it, and went headfirst to the ground. I was like, ‘That’s an athlete, guys. That’s an athlete.'”

If you use any quotes from this podcast, credit Talk is Jericho with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.