Je’Von Evans was supposed to be surprised by Randy Orton. He already knew, because a colleague showed him the announcement backstage before he had even had his match.
Evans told the story on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, and named the man responsible.
“So honestly, they tried to like surprise me, but I knew before it was gonna happen, and I’ll tell you why.”
The first clue came days earlier, in a class at the Performance Center.
“Before the match announcement, maybe like a couple days, we had like promo class at NXT, and I’m talking to the writer, and I’m like, hey, do I get new gear for this show? And he was like, yeah, we’re working on something. All right, cool. Say less.”
The second came on the night, from Orton himself.
“And then we had, it was me and Cedric versus No Quarter Catch Crew, I believe, and before the match Randy Orton follows me on Instagram, and I’m like, oh fire. All right, that’s cool, that’s cool.”
The third gave it away entirely, and Evans was in two minds about identifying who did it.
“And then I’m about to go out and I’m not gonna say their name, because they’re probably, actually it already happened, right? They’re not gonna get in trouble.”
Then he said it anyway.
“Harlan Lewis. He’s like, yo, did you see this post? And I’m like, what post? He thought you were going against Randy Orton. And this was before the match. I’m like, I am. He shows me the post, and I’m like, okay, that’s fire, whatever.”
By the time WWE got to the reveal, he had already read it.
“And then I go have the match, and then the ref is like, hey, stay in here, just react to whatever’s on the screen. I was like, all right, cool. And then I look at the screen. It’s the post that I saw before the match.”
“So it was very Harlan Lewis is your fault, and you’re probably gonna get hit for it.”
Whatever it cost him in surprise, the match itself is one of the more significant nights of his career so far, and his account of it has nothing to do with the result.
“He taught me so much in that match, and I feel like we just kind of connected off the rip.”
Evans and Terry Taylor spent a while before the show trying to find Orton, and walked past him.
“This is when he like just came back, so he’s like yoked. He’s walking, and we’re like at the stage. We’re like, bro, where’s Randy? He has like a hoodie on, but he’s like so yoked. We didn’t even recognize him. And then he turns around, oh, Je’Von. I’m like, dude, bro, you look like the Hulk.”
“Off the rip, it was just a connection, and being able to learn from him was such an insane moment. I will always remember just being in the ring with him and communicating and talking with him about the match, before the match and after the match. I met his family after the match. It was cool. It was insane.”
There was one moment in it he could not watch. A spot involving a spin did not come off the way either man expected.
“He was like, you do like the spinny thing, and I’m thinking, you just spin out, catch it. I was like, yeah, I was thinking the same thing. But position-wise, we didn’t try it before the show.”
“It took me a while to watch that match because of that. I didn’t watch that match for months.”
He has since come round to it.
“It’s cool to look at it and be like, that was just a real moment. Everything in wrestling is not pretty. We’re still fighting at the end of the day. Now I can look back at the moment and say, dang, I learned from that.”
Evans is 21 and one of the most talked-about younger wrestlers on the WWE roster, having come up through NXT alongside Oba Femi and Trick Williams before joining the main roster in January. He has spent this year on Raw, and has been in a program with Big Cass since Cass returned on the August 3 show in Des Moines and attacked him after a win over Ethan Page. It was Cass’ first WWE appearance since his release in June 2018.
