Yardbarker
x

How James Ellsworth jobbed his way into the heart of the wrestling world

The main event of the Sept. 13 edition of SmackDown Live, WWE’s weekly Tuesday night show, featured plenty of star power. You had John Cena, who for over a decade has been the face of the entire company. You could reasonably compare him to LeBron James or Tom Brady. You had Dean Ambrose, who recently lost the WWE Championship but has nonetheless been a tentpole talent for the Tuesday night show. And you had AJ Styles, the current champ, who made his WWE debut in January and has been in the midst of one of the best rookie years in recent history.

But, this being a tag-team match, there was one more competitor. Who could possibly share the stage with Cena, Ambrose and Styles, three of the top talents in WWE? Would be it Bray Wyatt, the spooky southern cult leader? Perhaps one of SmackDown’s younger stars like the unsociable Baron Corbin or the perma-grinning Apollo Crews? A more established name like 12-time champ Randy Orton? No, no, no and no. Enter a relative unknown who had barely appeared on WWE television before: James Ellsworth.

To understand James Ellsworth and how incredible it is that he was involved in such a match (if only briefly — more on that later), one must first understand the role he plays in the world of pro wrestling: He’s a jobber. A local competitor. Enhancement talent. He’s a loser by trade, someone who exists to be defeated by a grappler destined for greater glory. In a world of Harlem Globetrotters, he is a Washington General.

You might have guessed as much after taking one look at him. He does not, to put it charitably, have the traditional physique of a WWE superstar. He’s uncut and pale, and the man does not appear to have a chin; the path from his mouth to his rib cage has all the topography of Nebraska. So how the hell did he wind up on TV in the first place?

In short, WWE has had something of a jobber renaissance since July’s brand split (whereby the roster was divided between Monday night’s Raw and Tuesday night’s SmackDown Live). Dividing the talent pool meant new arcs for some characters, most notably Braun Strowman. Strowman, a bearded behemoth billed at 6-foot-8 and 385 pounds, was introduced as a member of Bray Wyatt’s stable, the Wyatt Family. But when Wyatt was drafted to SmackDown and Strowman to Raw, the latter required a reboot. It was time for Braun Strowman to branch out on his own.

Enter the local competition.

Strowman’s first several matches post-brand split came against unknown scrubs, Ellsworth the first among them. The point of such lopsided matches — known as “squash matches” — is to give the name-brand competitor a chance to show off his moves and get a dominant win, with the idea that such victories will build him up into a fearsome competitor. Having a local competitor rather than a full-timer take the loss offers a means of circumventing the zero-sum nature of a wrestling match; no one’s reputation takes a hit when a jobber loses.

As Strowman stomped his way down the entrance ramp before the match, commentator Byron Saxton posed to Ellsworth a simple question: “What in God’s name are you thinking stepping into the ring with a monster like Braun Strowman?”

Ellsworth’s response, delivered with a full diaper’s worth of trepidation, captured the very essence of jobberdom:

“What am I thinking? Having a match on Raw is a dream come true for me. I didn’t know it was going to be against Braun Strowman, so yes, I’m nervous; yes, I’m scared. But if I can somehow, some way, pull off the upset — because I truly believe any man with two hands has a fighting chance — I can only imagine what that may do for my career.”

The entire segment ended faster than you could microwave a bag of popcorn, but that was all the time Ellsworth needed to do his job, pun intended. He was rag-dolled around the ring, smacked and stomped and slammed from pillar to post. He was the first victim of Strowman’s new finishing maneuver, a reverse chokeslam, whereby the slammee is yanked up by the back of his neck and hurled face first into the mat. Ellsworth sold each move convincingly, which is to say that he did his job of making Braun look strong.

The biggest surprise of it all? Ellsworth got himself over. He inspired dozens of posts on pro wrestling message boards and was later invited to do an AMA on Reddit. He and his slogan — “Any man with two hands has a fighting chance” — were immortalized in the form of a T-shirt. Fans put his mug on signs. He was celebrated by the wrestling world, which means that he was remembered by the wrestling world. That’s no small feat.

The following weeks saw Strowman destroy similarly overmatched opponents, but none of them had Ellsworth’s je ne sais quoi. None of them elicited such a reaction. None of them mattered, to put it bluntly, and that’s OK; jobbers aren’t meant to matter — which only makes Ellsworth’s staying power more impressive.

Pro wrestling isn’t all that different from any other line of work. You never know when your opportunity is going to come, when that bit of luck is going to find you. But when it does, you need to capitalize. Ellsworth did.

As he explained on Chris Jericho’s podcast, he’s wrestled for a long time. He started just two days after graduating from high school — against his parents' wishes, although he does thank them for his distinct lack of chin, which he understands helps him stand out — and currently runs Adrenaline Championship Wrestling, an independent promotion based in Maryland. (In ACW, he wrestles as Pretty Jimmy Dream, and he partners with Adam Ugly to form the inventively named tag team of Pretty Ugly; indie wrestling is hilarious.) He even worked with WWE before, though never in a proper match. He had appeared on TV as one of Adam Rose’s Rosebuds, a gang of costume-clad ravers.

Ellsworth first got in touch with WWE, as one does, through its recruiting program, which is similar to any other job application. You go online, submit your résumé, send in some pictures, talk about what you can do and hope for a call back. Ellsworth has worked with established names such as Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Matt Hardy, Tommy Dreamer and Raven, which is to say that he had enough experience to at least catch WWE’s eye.

His big showcase came shortly before the aforementioned Raw when Arn Anderson, a WWE Hall of Famer and a current producer/agent, asked him to throw a couple punches to see what he had. Ellsworth’s strikes passed muster, and just like that he was booked into the match with Strowman.

Will we see Ellsworth on WWE TV again? It’s probably unlikely, but he made enough of his limited opportunity that it’s not an impossibility. The great hope is that he shows up as an entrant in the 30-man Royal Rumble.

But whether he comes back or not, he’s already made his mark. He introduced (or reintroduced) the modern audience to the concept of a jobber, which for decades was a staple of pro wrestling. WWE is still doing squash matches from time to time, and fans are at least somewhat into them. “Let’s go job-ber” chants have cropped up here and there. Ellsworth led the way, and had he not done so well in that first match, it’s easy to imagine the whole angle being mothballed.

But let’s jump back to that SmackDown main event I mentioned at the top. John Cena and Dean Ambrose composed one side, but AJ Styles still needed a partner. After conducting his own unfruitful search — no one wanted to join forces with the increasingly arrogant champ, naturally — General Manager Daniel Bryan appointed him a teammate: James Freaking Ellsworth. Weeks after appearing on Raw, he was back. And people remembered him! The crowd popped for him! He got his own entrance, and jobbers never get their own entrances. (He didn’t get music or a video package, but the good people of the Internet have since made one for him.)

Ah, but it was all too good to be true. The Miz, the smarmy Intercontinental Champion who fancies himself an A-list celebrity, ambushed Ellsworth as he was coming down the ramp. He hammered him with punches, mocked him in front of the camera, delivered his Skull-Crushing Finale finisher and took Ellsworth’s place alongside Styles in the main event. The crowd booed dutifully, and Ellsworth’s brand of mayonnaise-hued charisma surely had something to do with it.

The man no one had heard of a month ago actually contributed to a main event featuring some of the tippy-top talent on the roster. He went from independent grinder to one-off jobber to minor cult hero in a matter of weeks. If that ain’t an American success story, I don’t know what is.

More must-reads:

Customize Your Newsletter

+

Get the latest news and rumors, customized to your favorite sports and teams. Emailed daily. Always free!

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.