10 Wrestlers You Never Knew Had WWE Tryouts

By Lewis Howse / August 13, 2015

How do you make it to WWE? There are many ways, but the most traditional method is to attend a tryout. Nowadays, WWE will schedule and heavily promote their Performance Centre tryouts for months in advance. These usually take place over the course of several days and featured everything from indie guys to gymnasts and ex-football players. The WWE tryout camps are notoriously difficult and it is stressed that attendees must be in peak physical condition if they are to have any hope of getting a developmental deal. It's a tough process that weeds out the pretenders and (in theory) rewards those that really want it. This hasn't always been the way to try out for WWE, though. Before these notoriously hard training camps, WWE would usually just invite a wrestler (or manager) to a TV taping and have them work a dark (non-televised) match, if they believed that performer to be of the right standard. If you attended a WWE TV taping in the 2000s, odds were that some indie star or former WWE wrestler would just turn up, completely out of the blue, and wrestle a match solely for the benefit of the live crowd (and those scrutinising in the back). These days, the names of those attending tryouts are usually published online in advance, so you know exactly who's going to be there, trying to impress WWE officials. But there may be some familiar names from the past that you never knew had WWE tryouts.