Jeff Cobb says his WWE run fell short of what he had imagined as a fan, but that he has no interest in complaining about a job he had wanted since childhood.
Cobb spent just under a year in the company. He debuted at Backlash on May 10, 2025, interfering to help Jacob Fatu retain the United States Championship, worked as JC Mateo alongside Solo Sikoa’s group, and was released on May 2, 2026, in the same wave of cuts that took out Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, and Tama Tonga.
Speaking to Denise Salcedo at WrestleCon in Minneapolis, in an interview for Instinct Culture, Cobb said he grew up watching the World Wrestling Federation and treated getting there as the goal.
“So, I was like, ‘that’s what I got to do.’ So, you know, that’s my dream job.”
Reaching it did not match the picture he had built of it. Cobb was careful to frame that as a limit on his own expectations rather than a grievance, and pointed to how long WWE spent trying to sign him before he agreed.
“And it’s not everything that I thought it would be, but who am I to complain? It’s not my company. But being able to say I was sought after, saying no to them four times and then saying yes on the fifth, it’s a cool little notch on my belt to say that.”
Cobb had a long run in New Japan Pro-Wrestling before signing, where he was a three-time IWGP Tag Team Champion with United Empire and also held the NEVER Openweight and World Television titles. He left the promotion in April 2025, weeks before the WWE debut.
Asked how he looks back on the year, he separated the experience from the booking.
“I had a fun time while I was there. Could things have gone in a better direction? Of course. But my time there, my experiences, I’ll always cherish it.”
He was more direct about one specific creative decision. Cobb was repackaged with facepaint, which he said did not fit either him or the show he had been watching.
“When they said ‘switch to facepaint,’ I was like, did you guys watch the product? I didn’t paint my face in New Japan, but I’ll try. So I tried to make chicken salad out of chicken poop. So I did my best with it.”
The practical side was worse than the presentational one.
“Wrestling in facepaint was really hard. It hurt taking it off. My skin was so bad. It was horrible.”
Cobb’s last televised WWE appearance was the April 24 SmackDown, a tag match alongside Tama Tonga against Damian Priest and R-Truth.
