Joey Mercury

In 2004, Birch signed with WWE and was assigned to their developmental territory Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) in Louisville, Kentucky under the name Joey Mercury.Following his stint with WWE, Birch continued his wrestling career, appearing at several independent promotions, including competing at Ring of Honor events.[1][7] In late 2000, Matthews and York joined Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), and lost to Danny Doring and Roadkill at Anarchy Rulz.[9][10] They competed in ECW for approximately six months, until the promotion closed in January 2001 and were on the company's final pay-per-view Guilty as Charged, where they suffered a loss to Jerry Lynn and Cyrus.[11][12] After the closure of ECW, they returned to the independent circuit, where, on February 3, 2001, the Bad Street Boys defeated Rick Michaels and David Young to become the NWA World Tag Team Champions, a championship that they held for two weeks.[13][14][15] On April 14, 2003, prior to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)'s flagship television program, Raw, Matthews and York defeated Phil Brown and Pat Cusick in a dark match.[16] He continued wrestling dark matches and on supplementary programs Heat and Velocity, facing the likes of Lance Storm, Crowbar, Matt Hardy, Último Dragón and A-Train.[20][21] On April 17, 2004, he defeated Raven to win the championship, a title he retained until August 21 of that year, when he lost it to Christopher Daniels in a four-way elimination match, also involving A.J.[26] Afterwards, Matthews competed for Puerto Rico's World Wrestling Council (WWC), losing to Eddie Colón in September, and exchanging victories with Alex Montalvo in November.in a four-way match defeating the Mexicools, William Regal and Paul Burchill, and LOD,[33] but lost them to Mysterio and Batista two days before the Armageddon pay-per-view in December.[36][37] The legitimate reason for the team's sudden split was later revealed to be Mercury failing a WWE Wellness Policy drug test and being forced to serve a 30-day suspension.Mercury made a surprise return on the November 27, 2006 episode of Raw, temporarily reforming MNM with Nitro and Melina to take up the also recently reunited Hardys (Matt and Jeff) "open challenge" for December to Dismember.),[41][42][43] and in a fatal-four way ladder match for the WWE Tag Team Championship at December's Armageddon event, also involving London and Kendrick, and Dave Taylor and William Regal.After missing a few weeks, Mercury returned wearing a protective face mask and his injury was worked into the angle, with both he and Nitro attempting to injure the Hardys in various ways for revenge.[52] He made another appearance on September 29, reuniting with Christian York, in a losing effort against the AAW Tag Team Champions, The Motor City Machine Guns (Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley).[54][55] At TNA's Bound for Glory pay-per-view in October 2007, he competed in a dark match, where he teamed with Johnny Swinger in a losing effort to The Motor City Machineguns.[7] On January 25, 2008, Matthews returned to ROH as the newest member of Age of the Fall (AotF), where he partnered with Jimmy Jacobs in a losing effort against Roderick Strong and Rocky Romero of the No Remorse Corps.On the July 6 episode of Raw, Mercury was viciously beaten by Lesnar, who after destroying his and fellow J&J Security member Jamie Noble's prized Cadillac car, which had been gifted to them by Seth Rollins the week before, picked him up and tossed him onto the then unbroken windshield of it.