Shelley speaks about his friendship with KUSHIDA.
The duo of Alex Shelley and KUSHIDA, collectively known as the Time Splitters, are two-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions, 2012 NJPW Super Junior Tag Tournament winners and they’ve had stints/runs in WWE, IMPACT Wrestling and on the independents.
Back in pre-pandemic 2020, Shelley and KUSHIDA competed on several WWE NXT house shows before making their NXT TV debut in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic.
As Shelley was doing a virtual signing with Captain’s Corner, he said if the pandemic didn’t happen, there may have been more of Time Splitters in WWE. He went on to say that he’s glad he’s gotten to do ‘Time Machine’ with KUSHIDA and Chris Sabin in IMPACT. Shelley said that’s the most fun for him and it’s his art.
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. 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.
Shelley is the reigning IMPACT World Champion and to read the latest involving Shelley on IMPACT programming, head over to this link.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Captain’s Corner with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
