Murphy was supposed to have a different ring name altogether

Buddy Murphy’s ring name often finds its way into the wrestling news. It started when he lost his first name. Then he kinda sorta got his first name back, but maybe not really?

On today’s episode of Corey Graves After the Bell podcast, Murphy explained that he was never supposed to be named ‘Buddy Murphy’ to begin with. When it was time to pick a name in WWE, he pitched a bunch of ideas to Byron Saxton via email. But they somehow got scrambled up in transmission. WWE then gave him a list of names to choose from:

“So obviously, we pitch names, and I wanted to use ‘Matt’ so bad. But as you know, there was a lot of Matt’s. Using the name Matt was like the forbidden fruit…and then when they called me into the office they said, ‘These are your names,’ and I look at the names. And I’m like, ‘Okay, well, there’s one clear winner here.’ …I said, ‘It’s this one,’ and it was ‘Jag Cooper.’

So then Bill [DeMott] would pull in Norman [Smiley] and he goes, ‘Introduce yourself.’ I say, ‘Gooday, I’m Jag Cooper.’ And [Norman] goes, ‘Jack?’ I’m like, ‘No, Jag’. Because of my accent…

Bill would just start pulling in all the coaches, and I would have to introduce myself as all these names. And then it came down to, ‘Gooday, I’m Buddy Murphy’ …and then it basically came down to an autograph [between] Jag Cooper and Buddy Murphy. And my real name is Matt, so I have a nice ‘M’. And ‘B’ is easy to do it in autograph form. But to do J-A-G in capitals, like that’s tough man. So it all came down to an autograph.”

So Murphy was supposed to be named Jag Cooper, but autograph difficulties and his Australian accent forced him to go with Buddy Murphy instead.

I think it’s also worth noting how Murphy states that the name ‘Matt’ was off the table during the naming process. It’s like he was looking right into Matt Riddle’s future.

Do you think Jag Cooper would have been a better ring name than Buddy Murphy?

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