Former tag team champion Anthony Bowens recently expressed his thoughts on reviving WWE’s Tough Enough in AEW under a new name.
In a recent social media update on X(formerly known as Twitter), Bowens pitched the idea to revive the concept of Tough Enough in AEW. He also opened up about how it would give extra content to Warner Bros Discovery.
Bowens also shared his interest in signing up as a judge or trainer for the concept.
“I want [AEW] to bring back OG Tough Enough but call it ‘Becoming The Elite’ or something like that. WBD would love the extra content! Sign me up as a judge/trainer [Tony Khan].”
Anthony Bowens once opened up about his character’s unfinished story in AEW
“Everything I did was purposeful and was meant to lead to something that never happened. People have stop pretending like they know everything,” he said. “Nah dude! Just informing him that his assumption of stubbornness is incorrect and based off of something he has no idea about. I can accept your opinion of me as a wrestler, whether you think I’m a 2 out of 10 or 7 out of 10, but that’s much different than having to listen to people say stupid shit like that for the last year. Have a good day!”
Despite running one of the most popular wrestling channels on YouTube, former Tough Enough winner Maven does not watch the current product.
Maven’s WWE run ended two decades ago, but he’s found new life as a YouTube content creator. He discussed that during a Monday appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show, noting that this provides a better living for him financially than wrestling ever did. Maven said he focuses his videos on evergreen topics instead of current-day happenings because it has a longer shelf life of earning potential. And watching wrestling is something that is just too hard for Maven because it makes him jealous.
Maven Huffman reveals why he can't watch wrestling:
"It's just too difficult. It'd be like watching the love of my life going on on the next date and telling me, 'Hey, this is my new boyfriend.'
I love wrestling. I love it. I love everything about it. I think it's truly one of… pic.twitter.com/0msXUjMXVr
“It’s too hard,” he said. “It’s just too difficult. It’d be like watching the love of my life, my ex, going on her next date. And telling me, ‘Hey, this is my new boyfriend. He’s great.’ It’s still too difficult.
“I love wrestling. I love it. I love everything about it. I think it’s truly one of the best forms of entertainment going, and I root for its success. I hope all the superstars — I hope the Cody Rhodes’, I hope the Seth’s, I hope The Usos’, I hope the MJF’s, I hope the Adam Page’s — I hope all those guys have careers I never dreamed of. I just can’t watch it. It’s just, I’m a human being, I get jealous. I watch them and a little bit of me is upset that I still can’t do it. That age, Father Time, has indeed done what Father Time does. And it’s just too tough. Yeah, it’s too hard.”
Maven said it’s been this way since 2005, though he did get up to speed for a few weeks when he had a WWE commentator tryout in 2020. He said he does not feel resentment toward wrestling and doesn’t blame anyone else for anything bad that’s ever happened to him, but there was a period of time where he had to distance himself from the business completely and wouldn’t take any bookings related to the industry.
Recently, Maven noted that he’s open to having another match but does not consider himself a pro wrestler anymore. He’s competed in occasional indie matches since 2015, with the most recent of those happening in 2024. Maven has said he might need to undergo surgery at some point for herniated discs that he’s dealing with.
“Tough Enough” started out as an unknown concept, taking people off the street and training them for nine weeks in a competition, leading to two of them getting a one year developmental contract with the WWF.
Although it was one of the real success stories of the year, many people, particularly within wrestling, felt, and still feel, the concept is ridiculous. Contracts are too hard to come by, especially now, and in nine weeks, how can it be fair they get a chance that people who have sacrificed for years and are even top quality and in some cases even proven performers will never get? Many in the WWF, both performers, office people, even those associated with the show, while praising the show itself and what the contestants stuck through, still, as a concept, at least the end result being the WWF contract, still have problems with that.
The 24-year-old was the female winner of the last incarnation of the show in June 2015, earning a $250,000 contract. She hadn’t been heard from much during her training at the WWE Performance Center, save for a promo and appearance in a six-woman tag match earlier this year.
PWS said Lee learned of the news Friday, but no reason was given. However, Squared Circle Sirens writer Casey Michael tweeted a picture from Facebook that shows Lee and NXT wrestler Wesley Blake announcing a pregnancy.
The Michigan native became a fan favorite throughout the competition, helping her survive five eliminations.
Fellow Tough Enough alum ZZ was released earlier this summer. Male winner Bronson Matthews (Josh Bredl) is still under contract as is Mandy Rose who finished as a runner-up to Lee. Rose has already been on Total Divas and recently made her NXT in-ring debut.
After endearing himself to some and frustrating others as part of the last season of WWE’s Tough Enough, Zamariah “ZZ” Loupe, along with two other NXT talents, have had their WWE dreams put on hold.
F4WOnline.com has confirmed that Loupe, Josh Woods, and Thomas Kingdon have been released by WWE
Loupe debuted as an 18-year-old on 2015’s reboot of the Tough Enough reality series. He initially endeared himself to a segment of the audience, but frustrated the show’s trainers and judges by showing poor conditioning and a suspect work ethic.
Though he ultimately finished as the runner-up to Josh Bredi, Loupe was signed by WWE and became a character on WWE Network’s Breaking Ground series. Loupe’s inexperience and occasional ineptitude, along with glimpses of his underdog personality, were again highlighted on that show.
Woods and Kingdon were fellow Performance Center trainees who had yet to make much of a mark in NXT.
Woods was an accomplished amateur wrestler at the University of Central Florida and had competed in amateur mixed martial arts before being signed by WWE. He was occasionally used on NXT live events and as an enhancement talent on NXT TV.
Kingdon was a former high school football player and competitive bodybuilder.
Key Takeaway: NXT heads down to Texas for a sold-out three city tour, while Josh tries to parlay his Tough Enough win into a WWE career.
Show Recap: The NXT tour of Texas provided the framework for an unusually focused edition of Breaking Ground this week. The entirety of the episode was split between getting to know Josh, who won Tough Enough this summer, and following the NXT veterans on their three-city Texas trip.
We meet Josh in the gym, where Jason Albert tells him he needs to take yoga because he’s in the rookie class. His big-money contract is briefly mentioned, and Albert tells him to get his banking and living situation set up and then it’s time to get to work. Later, Josh helps set up the ring at Full Sail for the NXT tapings and talks about having a huge desire to get in the ring. He says he has to trust in the coaches and their plan for him.
Later on, we join Josh at the grocery store. His wife and daughter call (via Facetime) and he talks about uprooting his family from Colorado so he can follow his dreams and how much it motivates him. He’s in the process of finding a place for them all to live so he can move them down to Florida. Later, we join Josh in promo class. He kind-of sucks, and delivers an awkward, meandering promo, trying to use his Tough Enough persona “the Yeti.” William Regal’s obviously disappointed (after 10 weeks on the mic in Tough Enough), advising him to be flexible and to ditch the Yeti thing. The coaches discuss Josh’s lack of progress in a meeting. At the end of the episode, Josh delivers a slightly better version of the same bad promo. Regal looks displeased. Josh doesn’t come across well, despite having a cute daughter.
The other two-thirds of the episode, focusing on the NXT shows in Houston, Austin and San Antonio, was really good. In Houston, they spent some time with Tyler Breeze and his history – he grew up on WWE and wanted to be a wrestler, but nearly got cut after years in developmental before falling into the Tyler Breeze character. He’s been in NXT for five years, and we get a montage of the 50+ wrestlers who have been called up from developmental since he’s been there. He’s hoping his call-up is coming soon and he seems really into his character, even staying in his persona backstage in Austin when Jason Jordan ribs him about wearing amateur wrestling boots. We hang out backstage as Sara Amato and Adam Pearce produce a show, paying a lot of attention to the Tyler Breeze/Samoa Joe match. Everyone praises Breeze’s match afterwards. There’s some downtime afterwards in Austin for the talent, so Baron Corbin goes to a bar to unwind and watch a band (but he has to deal with fans taking photos with him). Breeze and Tye Dillinger go looking for bats and find some under a bridge.
The segment in San Antonio spends a lot more time out of the ring. Breeze and Corbin argue about specific details of Texas history at the Alamo. Carmella and Colin Cassady, who seem to be a couple though it’s never stated, go to buy cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Apollo Crews’ sister visits him backstage and marvels at how far he’s come in his career – she says the last time she saw him, he was in Japan. Corbin’s cousin and nephew also visit. At the show, Carmella’s a little blown away that people cheer for her. Corbin loses to Joe (as Breeze did the previous night), and tells a story about his cousin texting him after the show to say his nephew wanted to beat up Samoa Joe because he was mad that he lost. After the show, everyone flies home – including Carmella with a spectacular (and complete in-character) leopard-print neck pillow.
Final Thoughts: If the goal of the first few episodes of Breaking Ground was to convince you that the NXT wrestlers that make it on TV are hard-working and that the Tough Enough guys are lazy and terrible, mission accomplished. The more time they spend on the up-and-coming NXT television performers – particularly Dana Brooke, Tyler Breeze and Apollo Crews – the more they come across as really likeable, enjoyable personas. Heck, Baron Corbin even seems like a relatable human even though he seems pretty obnoxious at times. But the time spent with ZZ (last week) and Josh (this week) seems wasted by comparison, and it waters the show down quite a bit.
If only the whole 30-ish minutes were solely devoted to the main NXT crew.
Wrestling Observer Live with Bryan Alvarez and Mike Sempervive returns today to talk all the news in wrestling and MMA including tons of thoughts on the debut of Tyler Breeze on Smackdown, potential Bryan & Vinny Show changes, former Tough Enough stars signed to the company, calls, emails, texts and more! A fun show as always so check it out~!
Tonight is the final episode of Tough Enough season 6. Either Sara Lee or Amanda, and ZZ or Josh will be awarded a $250,000 developmental contract with WWE. Amanda seemingly has no chance, as the one time she was in the bottom 3, she was the contestant with the lowest votes by a wide margin. She was saved because Miz thinks she’s attractive. Sara Lee on the other hand has dominated when it comes to getting fans votes. Between Josh and ZZ it could go either way, but Josh did surpass ZZ in votes last week. As the season went on it felt like ZZ gradually lost the support of the fans with his general laziness.
We start off with the remaining contestants discussing last week’s elimination. Amanda brings up the discussion from last week’s Tough Talk where she confronted Sara Lee about her sleeping with a wrestler. The contestants work with Chris Jericho to come up with their character and entrances. The men have built in characters already, with ZZ channeling his background as an alligator wrestler, and Josh being “The Yeti.” They reveal to the contestants that they will be wrestling Cesaro and Alicia Fox live during the finale.
Amanda vs. Alicia Fox is first. Amanda uses the character “Mandy Rose”. She says if she wins, she’s going to throw a giant party and everyone is invited. It’s a bit bizarre to watch a WWE match without commentary. Alicia ends up winning in a few minutes. The judges find the match a bit sloppy but are impressed with where she’s at with it being her first live match.
Next is Sara Lee who uses the name “Hope”. She says after their match Alicia Fox will only be a footnote in Hope’s career. Alicia Fox wins again, the judges thought she did well, but her entrance was dull. They open up the voting, which lasts through a commercial break, but the winner will be revealed at the end of the show.
ZZ vs. Cesaro is first for the men. His character is “the King of the Bayou” and he comes out wearing an alligator skin cape, with the head as a helmet. He said he’d gotten too good at wrestling alligator’s, so he was going to try his hand at wrestling people. Cesaro wins a very short match with a Crossface. The judges take issue with his entrance, and don’t think he could handle matches longer than 2 minutes.
Josh is introduced as “The Yeti”. He’s wearing some very interesting shorts, and doesn’t cut a very good promo. Miz calls him out on his outfit, but all the judges are impressed with his performance.
HHH is introduced to give the winners their contracts. Sara Lee wins with 64% of the vote with Amanda getting 36% of the vote. For the men, Josh wins with 70% of the vote with ZZ getting 30% of the vote.
It will be interesting to see which of the contestants are offered developmental contracts in the future. Chris Jericho stated that it won’t be the last we see of ZZ and Amanda, and I could certainly see them signing people like Patrick and Megan. What will be made out of Sara Lee and Josh will also be interesting to follow, considering the track record of past winners of the show.
Last week’s episode saw the competitors swim with alligators, take bumps off the top rope, and argue for entirely too much time. ZZ continued his trend of being the most entertaining thing on the show, but actually avoided the bottom three. Alex was eliminated after arrogantly declaring “Knowledge means nothing.”
This week’s guest WWE Superstar is Seth Rollins. Hopefully he contributes more than Roman Reigns’ 45 seconds of speaking from last week’s episode. The show opens up with an introduction for the judges, each judge speaking briefly about the show so far. We then cut to the reactions of the contestants after last week’s elimination. Dianna then decides to leave the show and is picked up by her fiancé at 2:00 a.m.
Billy Gunn wakes the contestants up at dawn for some exercise. He’s very upset with the fact that Dianna quit, asking if anyone else wants to go home. Seth Rollins makes his appearance for the first challenge, which will involve character building. Each contestants pick a card with a character theme such as “American Hero” and “Farmer’s Daughter”. Each contestant gathers props, which Seth Rollins offers advice on before he leaves. His appearance lasted longer than Roman Reigns, but it was equally pointless.
We go back to the live show, where the judges offer their thoughts on Dianna quitting the show. Paige is quite upset that their time was wasted on a quitter. Back at the barracks, Sara Lee is the first contestant to show off her character through a ring entrance. She takes the stage as Jayde the “Queen of Mean” (with a surprising lack of latex or a whip). The judges don’t really understand her character, saying her music is doing more for them than her performance. Patrick as the “Evil Intellectual”, carrying Lita’s dog as his minion impresses the judges. ZZ upsets the judges with an overly comedic entrance. Billy Gunn even says it’s insulting – I’m curious about what he thought of Santino.
Patrick wins the challenge on the men’s side, while Giorgia wins among the women. Lita notes this is the second week in a row both have won. They announce that there will still be an elimination even though Dianna went home. ZZ is frustrated because he feels misunderstood. Gabi recruits Sara Lee to be her ally. The two trash talk the other women. Patrick and Tanner get into an argument which escalates into a fight which is quickly broken up.
We go back to the live show for the elimination. The judges grill the contestants. Somehow Daniel Bryan’s question to Sara Lee about not appearing to be mean, turns to Paige and Hulk Hogan asking about ZZ’s bulge that he showed off in his entrance. This week the bottom three are, Daria as chosen by Daniel Bryan, Sara Lee as chosen by Paige, and ZZ as chosen by Hulk Hogan. It’s announced the contestants will get a second chance to do their ring entrance before the vote. Sara Lee comes across as a bit meaner, ZZ plays to the crowd, and Daria improves drastically in the eyes of the judges.
Each contestant then gets 30 seconds to plead their case. This time, they actually started the voting after the contestants plead their case, as opposed to before like in week’s past. They also take time to ask the other contestants who they think should go home before the votes come in. The judges decline to use their one save. ZZ got 52% of the vote, Sara Lee got 34% of the vote, and with 14% of the vote Daria is eliminated. Daria speaks briefly on the outpour of support she got from the LGBT community after she came out on the show.
