James Ellsworth Has His Own Indie Wrestling ‘Wish List’ And It’s Perfect

Perhaps you remember back when Cody Rhodes was granted his release by WWE, and he celebrated the occasion by tweeting out a wish list of opponents and moments he wanted to experience on the indie circuit. You probably remember. Still! Here that is, for reference. This will be important in a moment.

Rhodes blew through those in a couple of months. And now almost all the people on that list are in WWE! That’s pretty wild. Anyway, the latest person to join Cody in “not working for WWE anymore” is James Ellsworth, whose whirlwind year in WWE came to an end a couple of weeks ago, but not before he spent the entire European tour getting his ass handed to him by the entire Smackdown women’s division.

Ellsworth’s swan song on WWE television was finally being granted a match against Becky Lynch, which was the first WWE intergender match in absolutely ages. Lynch and Ellsworth had been angling for a match against each other on social media for literal months, so it was a great gesture extended to the epitome of a good employee for his final hurrah with the company.

So now that Ellsworth is suddenly one of the biggest-name free agents on the indies (after barely being known outside of his local promotions before being a Braun Strowman punching bag), he’s free to intergender-wrestle his little heart out. And in a superb, sublime homage to Cody, it looks like he’s intending to do just that.

OKAY SO the first thing we need to address is that James Ellsworth fundamentally does not understand how checklists work, since he made a check box next to Lynch’s name and then crossed her name out. That makes me genuinely furious, but I’m going to move on, because the rest of it is so good.

It’s a veritable who’s-who of women on the indies against whom Ellsworth is probably going to have phenomenal and hilarious matches, and I cannot wait to pay money to see one of them in person. And although there are some notable omissions like Viper and Jazzy Gabert, Ellsworth also probably doesn’t want to get shoot murdered in his first months as a hot property.

Well done, James. I wish nothing but the best for you.