Mariah May rejected a WWE contract after trying out with the company.
The English star recently became one of the biggest heels in AEW. She won the Owen Hart Foundation Cup, before brutally attacking her long-time friend, mentor and inspiration, Toni Storm.
She left the Aussie (who is actually British) in a bloodied mess, beating her with her own shoe to end AEW Dynamite.
This set up a huge match between the two at Wembley Stadium for All In 2024. However, that would have never been a possibility, if Mariah May had taken the chance to sign a WWE contract back in 2019.
Mariah May spoke to Chris Jericho on Talk is Jericho recently. She revealed that, just three matches into her career, she was offered the chance to sign for the WWE.
However, this was for the NXT UK brand, which eventually killed wrestling in the UK. They didn’t even have a performance centre in the UK, which meant she would not be improving much as a wrestler by signing the contract.
“I had like three matches, and they asked me to do a try-out, and I was like, ‘What?’ I thought it was for WWE, but then I think it actually was for NXT UK, which is different because I’m not sure I would have ever signed there. Whereas WWE, I would have signed to that early on because there’s a PC and you’re going to train and stuff.”
“So I had a try-out with them then, and actually, Sarah Stock gave me the advice to go and travel … They knew about me before and they’d spoken to me before. Then NXT UK happened and they’re like, ‘Come and try out for this.’ Then they said to travel more. They wanted me to get more experience because with NXT UK, they didn’t have a full-time PC. It was like once every two months or something.”
Luckily, Mariah May rejected the chance to sign for the WWE. She went on to move to Japan and work for Stardom. Her fantastic matches there caught the eye of Tony Khan, who signed her for AEW in 2023 to pair up with Tony Khan.
However, she did have some troubles on her way to AEW, after rejecting the WWE contract. Click the link to read about Mariah May accusing Sid Scala during the Speaking Out Movement.
