Blake Christian made his WWE in-ring debut in the summer of 2021. The NXT Cruiserweight Title battle versus KUSHIDA was his debut contest.
Christian, also referred to as “Trey Baxter” in the WWE, parted ways with the company four months after making his television debut.
Christian spoke about that time in his career on the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast. He has discussed a character change he was planning to make in NXT as it changed into NXT 2.0 in past media interviews. Christian claimed that Paul “Triple H” Levesque rejected a suggestion.
“Triple H was there [NXT] when I started. Obviously, the first match with KUSHIDA or whatever. This one gimmick was pitched to me that I was totally okay with, you know? At the time, I wanna be on TV and used the best way I can so maybe this is it so they pitched it to me and Triple H shot it down. He’s like, ‘No. This guy’s a wrestler, let’s let him wrestle. Put him in there with KUSHIDA’ and I’m very grateful for that. I got that opportunity. But when 2.0 came around, that’s when Triple H was out with the heart issues or whatever. He was recovering from that and really, we just — we didn’t take our business to him because he’s recovering with his family so it was Shawn’s show. So Shawn [Michaels] was running things and we had made a video for Triple H and stuff like that but, yeah, Triple H was there for the beginning of it, not towards the end.
I prefer not to [say what the pitched gimmick was]. It’s out there on TV now but, yeah, the guy they gave it to is a tremendous wrestler and I love him to death so very much. I’m very thankful that they gave it to somebody that would do well with it.
When we first talked about it, it was like they were shooting it down because that’s not what NXT was but NXT became something different when it became 2.0. It was more colors, more young audience, stuff like that. So, the gimmick very much hit this 2.0 audience and they were all for it, even John Laurinaitis was high on me too but, you know, things just don’t work out and sometimes you get cut. It’s okay, it’s a part of life. I knew what I was signing up for when I signed that contract. Like I said, I didn’t wanna live my WWE career in fear of getting released. I wanted to have fun so, it is what it is.”
He received a text from William Regal when he was let go and was told that if he never needed anything, just reach out.
“Even when I got released [from WWE], he [William Regal] shot me a text and he’s like, ‘Anytime you ever need me to watch some of your stuff, anytime you need anything, just reach out to me’ so, he’s always been very good to me.”
“I asked [if I could keep ‘Blake Christian’ in WWE]. But my real name is like that so they’re like, ‘Oh, we can’t own a real name.’ But, I did ask them. But yeah, it just didn’t work out.”
Quotes via POST Wrestling
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