Buddy Murphy is one of WWE’s top rising stars in 2019, a position that seemed unfathomable even a few short months ago. The King of the Ring competitor talked to CBS Sports about his current rise and how it’s timed perfectly with his career resurgence.
Everyone is jumping on the Buddy Murphy train now even though it was just, ‘This guy still works here? I thought he was released.’ It’s a big chip, and I’m out to prove to everyone that I’m real and I’m here to stay. The character of Buddy Murphy is me but with a huge chip on my shoulder, and I think over the next couple of months you are going to see what I’m truly about.
Although Murphy gained some success in the ring with Wesley Blake as a tag team, he didn’t always like how he was positioned in that tandem. “The [fans] didn’t know which one was Blake and which one was Murphy, and that irritated me, so it created this chip on my shoulder.” After the team dissolved, Murphy was rarely used on television, including one gap that lasted a full year. This hit the Australian-native badly. “It was a lot of soul searching. I was kind of running through the motions, and to be honest, counting the days left. You can only do so much.”
Buddy found his footing again at an NXT Live event against a new opponent, the brooding Allister Black. Buddy decided that he was just going to go out there and work as hard as he could because he had nothing left to lose. “I was like, ‘I’m going to die on my sword. I’m going to do what I do, and it’s going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but you might as well go out on your own sword.”
He stole the show for three nights on that tour, a performance which elevated him to 205 Live and his recent battles with Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan on SmackDown. “That was the starting point for what you see today. The love for wrestling is back in me, and I think you can see that by the quality that I want to produce. I want to be the best I can be and be known as one of the best in the world and for people to realize that I was always this from the beginning.”
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