Road Dogg Says Vince McMahon Demanded James Ellsworth Be Put In WWE Main Events

One of the most unlikely WWE stories of the past decade was the ascent of James Ellsworth. 

After becoming something of a meme following his pre-match promo and squash match loss to Braun Strowman on the July 25, 2016 episode of Raw, Ellsworth became a fixture on SmackDown and found himself wrestling in main events against WWE Champion AJ Styles. 

According to Road Dogg, this was at the behest of Vince McMahon. 

Speaking about Ellsworth's prevalence on the blue brand during a recent edition of his Oh...You Didn't Know podcast, the WWE Hall of Famer said: 

"And Ellsworth. I'll tell you whose idea a lot of this stuff was with Ellsworth, and that's Vince McMahon.

"Man he saw it, and he was right. When it comes to ratings, which is how you judge if somebody is right or not in the TV business, we did well with Ellsworth. Like it was Ellsworth and AJ, and Ellsworth and Dean Ambrose, what are we doing here? And it was like, 'No, sir. No, we don't want to put him in the main event again', and he's like, 'God, you have to'.

"And he was right. Every week it did better and better, it was like people just had to see what we were going to do here, you know? So yeah, I don't know. It was a good time." 

After feuding with 'The Phenomenal One', Ellsworth aligned himself with Carmella. He was released on November 15, 2017. 

H/T Inside The Ropes

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