When it comes to signing up the next generation of WWE Superstars, the team Shawn Michaels, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, and company have put together is boarderline second to none.
Now granted, they don't find everybody and have had to get creative in bringing in talents over the past few years as a result, from signing Jade Cargill to the TNA partnership with NXT to get Joe Hendry into the mix, but when you look at the shining new pillars of professional wrestling with the least amount of experience, as of the top “young” stars, from Bron Breakker to Tiffany Stratton and Trick Williams all came through the PC, instead of spending years on the indies honing their craft.
And yet, when it comes to the “Bounty Hunter” Bryan Keith, who actually came up in Booker T's wrestling school, WWE showed no interest at all in his services, even though, as he explained to Chris Jericho on Talk is Jericho, the promotion would have been his ideal landing spot.
“No, nothing. I’ve been at Booker’s for a long time. I did extra work and things like that, but nothing like, ‘Hey, come in, and we’ll take a look at you and things like that.’ I watched WWE all the time as a kid. I’m a WWF kid, I never even watched WCW growing up,” Bryan Keith told Chris Jericho via Fightful.
“But I feel like whenever I got older, I gravitated towards the Japanese style of professional wrestling, so in my head, I literally wanted to go to Japan. WWE or TNA and all these other places, it wasn’t the goal. I’d work for them. At the time, if they were giving it, I was gonna see what’s up. But in my head, I was like, ‘Japan, japan, Japan.’ I remember my parents being like, ‘How? How the hell do you think you’re gonna get on the other side of the world and do that?’ Actually, at the beginning of this year, I went for the first time for two weeks. DDT brought me out, and I wrestled out there.”
Is it surprising to learn that Keith didn't get any interest from NXT? Yes, Booker theoretically could have put a good word for him, but considering his age – he'll turn 33 in September – maybe the promotion simply felt he was too old to be a fresh new prospect in NXT. Fortunately, Tony Khan was fine with that and as a result, the “Learning Tree” has found its “Bad Apple.”
Booker T is proud of Bryan Keith regardless of AEW vs. WWE
Discussing Keith's decision to sign with AEW earlier this year after a few standout performances as an independent addition to the show, Booker T explained on his Hall of Fame podcast how he came up with the “Bounty Hunter” character and why he's excited to see Keith find a home after years of hard work.
“I'm proud of him. [I] want to give everybody a little nugget right here about ‘The Bounty Hunter.' It was a character that I created sitting in my office one day, and I told Bryan Keith I wanted him to be a black bounty hunter, you know what I mean? He's always looking to cash in,” Booker T explained on his Hall of Fame podcast.
“That's what I thought about when I thought about Bryan Keith. This guy could be … the fastest gun in the west, and he had the fastest kicks in the south. … I give Bryan Keith all the praise. I give him all the accolades. I didn't do anything but motivate him.”
Initially beginning his career in Texas at Reality of Wrestling in 2013, Keith bounced around the indies while also teaching classes at ROW, working events all over the world for any promotion who would bring him in for a show. Eventually finding a niche in AEW as a wrestler for hire, Keith eventually signed a contract to join the promotion in a more serious manner and now finds himself a weekly fixture of “TV Time” each week, with his “Bad Apple” lines getting him over with casual and hardcore fans alike. Even if he's currently preoccupied in a Jericho storyline, when that inevitably fizzles out, Keith will be very well positioned to shine into the future, as he now has the pedigree, experience, and versatility to become the sort of star NXT never believed him to be, as otherwise, he'd be wrestling Hendry, Williams, and “All Ego” Ethan Page on Tuesday nights from the Performance Center.
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