The great James Ellsworth on how he was chosen to get beat up by Braun Strowman on Raw

When Braun Strowman was drafted to Monday Night Raw, he was left on his own thanks to Bray Wyatt and Erick Rowan, his crew in the The Wyatt Family, getting drafted to SmackDown Live. So instead of standing around looking big and strong while Bray cuts his cryptic promos, BigLong DingDong is back to doing what he does best.

Beating up much smaller men.

The first to do the honors was the great James Ellsworth. Here’s how that came about, as he told IYH Wrestling:

“Well, actually I’ve been doing extra talent stuff for them for a couple of years now. I was actually a Rosebud a couple of times with Adam Rose. Ever since then every time they’re near where I live here in Baltimore, if they’re around the area, they call me and I come in as extra talent. That was my first match on WWE television, and it just happened that day. I went in to RAW; I didn’t expect to wrestle but I got there and they had all the extras around the ring. Arn Anderson just came up to me and said ‘Hey kid, let me see you throw a punch.’ I threw a punch and he said, ‘You know, that wasn’t bad at all.’ I said thank you and he got me in the ring and the next thing I know he looks at me and goes, ‘You want to wrestle Braun Strowman tonight on RAW?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, that would be great.’ That’s how it happened…It all came about so quickly; it was all very sudden and unexpected honestly.”

Oh, and about that “any man with two hands has a fighting chance” line? Yeah, he was the one who came up with that:

“They have scripts to hand out, and they gave me the script. I’m reading it, and they were like do you have any ideas of what you might add to that?…I was like, ‘Well, can I say this line about my hands? I think it would be cool.’ And he said, ‘Well, say the line’, and I said “Any man with two hands has a fighting chance.” And the writer goes, ‘Well, I like it a lot, but I’ve got to clear it with the office; I’ll let you know’…I didn’t see the writer for like an hour and a half after that (so I thought) they must have said no, and he came back and he said, ‘Dude, they actually liked the line and they want you to use it, so now you have to.’ So I said ‘Oh, OK, I got it; no problem’, and I got to say it. So that was really cool that I actually had a little bit of input into it; that was amazing.”

What a man.