IMPACT world champion Alex Shelley recently joined Captain’s Corner for a virtual signing, where the 20-year veteran spoke on a number of different topics, including his thoughts on teaming with KUSHIDA.
The duo formed the team known as the Time Splitters and are former multi-time tag champions together. Shelley recalls getting paired with KUSHIDA the moment he signed with New Japan back in 2012.
Oh, I love the Time Splitters. We started in 2012. So I left TNA in 2012, went to New Japan. I was under contract for three years and the first thing I did was start teaming with KUSHIDA and we had met him before because he trained in Canada at the same school we trained at. He was a few years after us so first time face-to-face meeting with 2008 and then he finished his excursion which a lot of the Japanese wrestlers do to gain some seasoning so he went back to Japan. When he got back, I remember watching some of his matches for a smaller company that TAJIRI owned and oh my God, he looked just like the Motor City Machine Guns. Just like us. If you mash both of us (Shelley & Chris Sabin) together, you got this and he wrestled the part too but he was always really, really good.
Shelley later says that the Time Splitters would have been featured in WWE a lot more if the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t happened.
So we became best friends, I was best man at his wedding. He was there for me for a lot of different parts of my life and stayed in touch and there was almost a point in 2019, ‘20, before the pandemic where if the pandemic hadn’t happened, you might’ve saw Time Splitters in WWE a lot more. But because that happened and things worked out the way they did, we got Time Splitters elsewhere, in GCW, some independents and IMPACT. Most importantly, we got Time Machine in IMPACT too which to me is like the most fun. That is my favorite thing to do. How lucky am I to have him and KUSHIDA and we all work together really, really, really well so those are really, really special matches for me. Not to discount anything here (IMPACT World Title) but at the same time, my art is with Time Machine in a lot of ways.
The Time Splitters competed in the 2020 Dusty Rhodes tag team tournament in NXT, but were eliminated in the first round by the Grizzled Young Veterans. You can check out Shelley’s full talkback on Captain’s Corner here.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)