Jeff Cobb, now part of Unbound Co. in NJPW, reflected on the first time he turned down WWE, right after his AEW Dynamite debut on February 12, 2020.
Cobb appeared on Tuesday’s episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, where he opened up about it. He said WWE started calling him the day after his Dynamite debut, when he attacked Jon Moxley, to see if he was available. But Cobb was signed to a one-year deal with NJPW, which he said usually only offered deals of that length.
Cobb recalled that he turned down WWE shortly after, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The first time was when I made my AEW Dynamite debut when I just came and beat up Jon Moxley, and the very next day I started getting phone calls like, ‘Are you available?’ I told you this every November, ‘Hey, January is usually when I’m free. But I already committed to New Japan.’”
“So I just told them, ‘Hey, listen, I had signed a deal with New Japan for a year because they usually only do one-year deals.’ So yeah, I said, ‘Well, I’d sign for a year,’ and then the pandemic hit. So I just said no, and that was the first time. Was February 2020, I believe.”
Cobb said it was only the first of three times he turned down WWE before he eventually signed with the company. The last time, he had a three-year deal with NJPW.
Cobb’s contracts were up in January in both 2020 and 2025. His Ring of Honor deal expired on January 1, 2020, 42 days before his Dynamite debut. His NJPW contract expired at the end of January 2025, a little over three months before his WWE debut at Backlash.
Cobb signed with WWE more than five years after the first time he said no, but he was released in the cuts that followed WrestleMania 42, less than a year after his Backlash debut.
Cobb returned to NJPW in August and will team with Chihiro Hashimoto against Shingo Takagi and Natsupoi on November 20 at Bound for Unbound at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo.