Jeff Cobb’s time as JC Mateo in WWE ended in May 2026 when he was released from the company less than a year after making his debut at the WWE Backlash 2025 Premium Live Event. Cobb had been on WWE’s radar for some time before he eventually agreed a deal with the company in the spring of 2025, and during a recent interview with Denise Salcedo, Cobb revealed the reasons he turned WWE down on three separate occasions.
“Well the first time I said no because I didn’t want to move to Florida. The second time I said no was because I just signed with New Japan. The third time I said no was because I had a FaceTime call with Canyon Ceman and it was an interesting call because he was in a hotel room and he was sitting on his bed in line a t-shirt and shorts and I thought that was the funniest thing. I wanted to take a screenshot or it but I wasn’t sure if I did that he would notice like ‘Hey, did you take a screenshot of what we’re doing?’ So I didn’t want to do that, but it was so funny that—it was so funny I had to say no to that.”
Cobb explained that at the fourth time of asking, William Regal informed Cobb that Paul “Triple H” Levesque wanted to call him, but instead, Levesque chose to FaceTime him. Cobb believed that if someone like Triple H wanted to take time out of his busy schedule to FaceTime him, maybe it’s worth hearing him out. “He’s like ‘Listen, you’re not getting any younger, so you might as well come in now,’ and I was like ‘Well you know what? He’s going to want me at this age, I don’t think he’s going to want me in two years from now.’ So I was like, now’s the time, let’s do it, let’s take a leap of faith.”
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