10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Matt Bloom

3. He Was Actually Really Good In New Japan

The A-Train was derailed in March 2004 when Bloom suffered a torn rotator cuff, just two weeks after being drafted from Smackdown to Raw. He hung on until November before being released alongside several other talents including Rico, Test, Billy Gunn and others. After he recovered from his injury, Bloom resurfaced in All Japan Pro Wrestling in a stable with fellow WWE castoffs Chuck Palumbo, Johnny Stamboli and Taka Michinoku. After a couple of tours in All Japan, Bloom moved onto the much bigger and more professional New Japan, where he was pushed as a monster from the get-go. Working under the name Giant Bernard, Bloom won the New Japan Cup and bagged himself a match with IWGP Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar after only four months with the company. He lost the match but hovered around the title picture for a while and formed a dominating tandem with Tomko. Bloom continued to wrestle for New Japan full-time until his WWE return in 2012. In that time he grew as a worker and found himself in featured matches as well as enjoying two IWGP Tag Team Championship reigns. In WWE he may have been viewed as a joke and bombarded with 'shave your back' chants but in Japan he was seen as a highly-respected veteran and a good worker in his own right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVmQQNlV3mc