Before being a commentator for WWE’s flagship show, Corey Graves worked as an independent wrestler for years and eventually signed a developmental contract with the company in August 2011. He’d go on to win the FCW Tag Team Championships with Jake Carter and have feuds against The Wyatt Family, Seth Rollins, and others in NXT. Although Graves’ future looked promising, concussion issues led to him officially retiring from wrestling in 2014.
Then in February 2022, Graves confirmed during an interview with TMZ that WWE cleared him for in-ring competition. This led many to speculate whether Graves could lace up his boots for a special match at a major premium live event such as WrestleMania. While there is no word on when fans could see Graves wrestle again in WWE, the man himself has given some ideas during an interview with PopCulture.com on the type of match he’d like to wrestle, notably a mixed tag match with his wife, Carmella.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On working with NXT talent and a possible in-ring return: “I’ve recently started working with the NXT talent on helping develop characters and things of that nature, and I’ve really enjoyed it thus far. So I’m really looking forward to working with NXT a lot more as the year progresses. I’d like to remind everybody one more time that I have been cleared to compete and I can’t think of a better scenario for me to step back in the ring than alongside my beautiful wife.”
On working the RAW XXX show: “It’s easy to get caught up in the grind because WWE is this never-ending machine, and it’s always onto the next, onto the next town, next show next. But I actually took a few minutes in the afternoon at Raw 30. I was chatting with the Street Prophets about how sort of overwhelming it was when able to step back and realize, to your point, I remember watching the first episode of Monday Night Raw. I was obsessed with it such that I decided to follow it as a dream and make it my career in some capacity. Here we are 30 years down the line, and I am one of the voices of Monday Night Raw in a chair that many of my heroes have sat before. It’s something that’s easy to get lost in. You forget the magnitude of that moment, but I was sure to take a few minutes to sort of appreciate just the journey to get to that point.”
Graves is expected to be on commentary for this weekend’s Elimination Chamber pay-per-view event in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
