PJ Black Recalls WWE Tryout, Being Told By Dusty Rhodes He ‘Can’t Wrestle’

PJ Black didn’t get the reaction he hoped for from Dusty Rhodes during his WWE tryout, as he recently recalled. The former Justin Gabriel signed a developmental deal with WWE in 2008 and eventually ended up on TV via the original NXT and then part of the Nexus. He looked back on his tryout in an interview with Developmentally Speaking, and you can see highlights below (h/t to Wrestling Inc):

On his tryout: “Long story short, I got invited to the tryout in FCW in Florida, so I flew to the US and FCW at the time, in Tampa. I walked into this office, and there’s Dr. Tom Prichard, Steve Keirn, Norman Smiley, Dustin Rhodes. And it was very intimidating, and they popped my tape in…they watched this tape, and I thought the match was fantastic. It was one of my favorite matches ever. And I was playing this stripper/porn star character at the time, did a decent promo and everything. And when they were finished, they all kind of looked at each other, it got quiet, and I was like ‘Oh shoot.’ And Dusty was like ‘Well, you can’t wrestle for s**t, but you can do all the other stuff.'”

On the delay in his signing after tryout match: “It took them about year to get my work papers to work in the US, so during those twelve months, I was just…I got a job at the gym. I was just working really hard. I was like ‘Wow, the dream is finally going to come true. I’m going to be paid to just full time wrestle.’ So I got into really good shape, worked on some character stuff, got some really cool gear. And then I ended up moving to Tampa, Florida where FCW was at the time, and probably one of the most fun years of my life in wrestling.”