Powerhouse Will Hobbs Talks WWE Contacting Him After AEW Appearance

Team Taz's Powerhouse Will Hobbs was on a recent episode of the AEW Unrestricted podcast where he talked about how he signed with AEW as well as growing up down the road from the legendary Cow Palace. He discussed meeting AEW EVP Cody Rhodes one time as well as wrestling at a place he grew up going to as a kid.

"I first met Cody at The Cow Palace," Hobbs recalled. "We did a show at the Cow Palace. He did a big cage match there. Just the fact that I grew up going to this building, then I got to perform in this building, that's pretty dope."

Hobbs came out of All Pro Wrestling out in California. He discussed training there as well as other places including Booker T's Reality of Wrestling and training with former WWE ECW Champion Ezekiel Jackson.

"One of my dad's good friends actually used to wrestle at APW," Hobbs noted. "I don't know if you've seen the movie 'Beyond the Mat' but you remember the guy that was throwing the guy off the balcony? That was my dad's good friend. I grew up going to those little independent shows out there. I hooked up and trained up with Ezekiel Jackson.

"I ended up doing some training with him in 2016 to currently of this year. We were doing some training, and I went down to Texas and did some training down in LA. I hit him (Booker T) up. I saw, I believe it was on Twitter or Facebook, their open invitation, and me and my old tag partner went out there, did some things and picked up a lot of knowledge. So that was pretty cool."

Back in 2016, Hobbs wrestled a dark match against Baron Corbin on SmackDown. He said he received a tryout but was told that there was nothing for him at the time. He said "the carrot dangling in front of me" when describing his talks with WWE, and he revealed that WWE had contacted him after he appeared on AEW.

"That was with Baron Corbin. That was in San Jose, California so just maybe 30 minutes from here, from where I am," Hobbs said. "Did that whole thing [and] had a tryout. The tryout was good. Well, that was a long story, but I'll give you the short story.

"They said we didn't have anything for you right now, and then just years later, getting the carrot dangling in front of me, pretty much told him FU. Right when I appeared up on AEW, 'hey, remember me?' The way I was raised, I don't got time for that s**t."

Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone asked Hobbs how he got his name and whether the name came from the "Fast and Furious" franchise. Hobbs said it partially did, and it also came from his last name that is close to "Hobbs".

"So my actual last name isn't Hobbs. It's close to that," Hobbs noted. "I have people going up calling me Hobbs. I'm a big Spider-Man fan, and I used to have people call me 'Will Hobble-Goblin'. I'm a whole fan of the whole 'Fast and Furious' franchise. I do like the name 'Powerhouse Hobbs now'."

Later after signing with AEW, Hobbs got a slight name change when "Powerhouse" was added. He revealed that it was AEW President Tony Khan that added that to his name.

"T.K., he's like, 'You're a powerhouse,'" Hobbs revealed. "I'm like, 'Cool, well, there you go.' I throw people around."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit AEW Unrestricted with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.