Dalton Castle Explains Why He Got “Sh*t On” At WWE Tryout

Dalton Castle made his name in Ring of Honor and remains a firm part of Tony Khan’s promotion but the star has recalled how he was met with a wall of negativity during a WWE tryout.

Castle currently finds himself splitting his time between Ring of Honor and AEW, with the former ROH World Champion and his Boys recently losing to the vicious Blackpool Combat Club on Dynamite. But the star’s career could have taken a very different trajectory if he’d worn something else to a WWE tryout.

Speaking to Amy Nemmity of Wrestle Joy. Dalton Castle recalled getting a tryout with WWE and how he felt he was doing really well and confident of landing a job in the company:

“It was probably 2013 or 2014, I started getting a lot more bookings and traveling on the road. I wasn’t doing the act that you see today, I was still Dalton Castle, I was still a peacock, but I wasn’t coming out in the jumpsuit with The Boys. I had tassels and a lot of color, but I didn’t really have a lot of direction in what I was doing. But because I was still functional in the ring and was still charismatic, I got the opportunity to try out with WWE.

“Being young, I was on the radio at the time, and I hated my job, and I got called down. At the time, I was like, ‘This is it, this is everything I’ve been working for’. I go down to WWE, I go to one of those 3-day tryouts at FCW. I felt like I was crushing it. I felt so good!”

However, problems came for Castle because of the attire he chose for the third day of the tryout and says that WWE Hall of Famer Dusty Rhodes was the only person running the tryout that had anything remotely positive to say to him:

“Day 3 was promo day, they said come as you want, come comfortable, come as you are. I wore flip-flops and went up, and I did my promo. Like, there’s no doubt in my mind that I didn’t crush it because I’m really good! Even then I was really good, I obviously got invited down.”

“They just dressed me down the second I stopped talking. They didn’t say one positive thing about the way I talked. They just sh*t on me for wearing flip-flops. Seven men that I looked up to, that I grew up watching and respecting, they were just running me down. I think the only person who didn’t say something mean and was just kind of nice, was Dusty Rhodes. That was something, that’s kind of nice.”

Dusty Rhodes was the figurehead of NXT in its early days and his son Cody Rhodes has recently discussed feeling jealous of the future stars of WWE that were coached by the late American Dream.