On April 26, 2006, Graves and CM Punk lost a dark match to The Gymini prior to a SmackDown taping. On June 6, 2006, he teamed with Jon Bolen in a loss to Jamie Noble and Kid Kash. Graves appeared on an episode of WWE Heat that was taped on August 6, 2006, losing to Val Venis. He also appeared on the August 10, 2007 episode of SmackDown!, where he was easily squashed by Mark Henry.
On May 17, 2012, Graves and Jake Carter appeared at the inaugural installment of WWE NXT tapings at Full Sail University, where they defeated C.J. Parker and Nick Rogers. Graves made his singles debut on NXT by defeating Oliver Grey via submission on the November 14 episode. Following a submission victory over Yoshi Tatsu in December, Graves attacked the NXT Champion Seth Rollins, and was awarded a title match on the January 2, 2013 episode of NXT. Graves failed to capture the championship despite winning via disqualification following interference from Rollins' associates in The Shield. Three weeks later Graves returned to NXT by confronting NXT Commissioner, Dusty Rhodes for not getting another NXT Championship Title shot and for not being in the NXT Tag Team Championship Tournament and later on that night Graves defeated his former tag team partner, Jake Carter and afterwards declared anarchy on NXT. Graves later participated in a tournament to determine who from NXT would compete at the Royal Rumble. Graves was defeated and eliminated by Adrian Neville. On the February 13th edition of NXT Graves defeated Alex Riley to end their small feud.
On the May 15 episode of NXT, Graves was confronted by Bray Wyatt backstage, leading to a match between the two on the next episode; Wyatt won after interference from the Wyatt Family. On the May 29 episode of NXT, Graves competed in an 18-man battle royal to determine the number one contender to the NXT Championship, where he along with Kassius Ohno were eliminated by Wyatt. Graves and Ohno later challenged Luke Harper and Erick Rowan for the NXT Tag Team Championship, but were defeated after Wyatt interfered. Graves and Ohno were then told to back up Adrian Neville in his fights against the Wyatts by William Regal. On the following week, Graves teamed up with Ohno and Neville to went up against Wyatt, Harper, and Rowan but were unsuccessful. On June 20, he teamed with Adrian Neville to defeat The Wyatt Family for the NXT Tag Team Championships. On September 12, 2013, they lost the titles to The Ascension. After failing to regain the titles from The Ascension, Graves attacked Neville thus turning heel once again. They traded victories, before Graves suffered a concussion, rendering him temporarily inactive. He returned in January 2014, to enter a feud with Sami Zayn. Graves would then suffer a second concussion before taking an absence from television for the better part of the year.
Graves returned on the NXT Takeover: R Evolution pre-show on December 11, where he announced his official in-ring retirement due to his concussion issues. He also announced that he would join NXT's commentary team, with his duties beginning at the event. He was also offered a two-year contract by Triple H, which still gives him a shot at becoming a guest commentator for Raw, SmackDown or pay-per-views. He was added to the pre-show panel on Raw alongside Alex Riley and Scott Stanford in early 2015.
Graves also hosted "Culture Shock With Corey Graves", a WWE Network original series.
Following the 2016 WWE Draft, it was announced that Graves would be joining the Raw commentary team. On July 25, on the first post brand split edition of Raw, Graves began serving as a color commentator alongside Michael Cole and Byron Saxton.
External links[]
- Corey Graves on Pro Wrestling Fandom
- Corey Graves on Official WWE Wiki