Xavier Woods looks back on his brief run in TNA.

 

The New Day member signed with the promotion (now IMPACT) back in 2007 while he was still in college. Woods tells Mark Andrews on his My Love Letter To Wrestling podcast that AJ Styles was a big reason he got his foot in the door.

I was still in college when I got signed (to TNA/IMPACT Wrestling) so, my goal was to get signed before I graduated. That was what I was dead set on so I was wrestling all throughout college trying to get looked at and I got to do some stuff with TNA. Bound For Glory was like their WrestleMania and sight unseen, they just went off of A.J. (Styles) because I had trained with A.J. a little bit a couple months prior and they needed a guy to tag with Truth so A.J. was like, ‘Yeah, I got a guy’ and they let me come in, like I said, without even seeing any matches. They just trusted A.J. and I was on their opening match for Bound For Glory. No contract, no anything and so I did well enough and they offered me a deal and this was one of the hardest phone calls I ever had to make.

Woods later recalls a difficult conversation he had to have with Jeff Jarrett because he got offered a full-time contract but wanted to finish college first. He says that Jarrett was understanding and put him on a quarter schedule.

So it was to Jeff Jarrett and I was like, ‘Well, I wanna sign this so bad. This is what I want more than anything in the world but I have six months left in school and I have to graduate. That’s not a question, and if that takes it off the table, I completely understand but I have to graduate.’ He was like, ‘Oh, that’s fine. Could you do like a quarter schedule? And then we’ll just put you a full quarter when you graduate.’ I was like, ‘Uh, yeah, sure.’ He’s like, ‘Alright, cool’ and then I was in TNA while I was still in college so, I remember we were in the dorms or in our apartments and my debut was coming on and we’re watching and we’re freaking out and we’re just… all my friends in college and we’re like, ‘Yeah!’ It was crazy.

You can check out Woods’ full interview here.

(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)

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