Marina Shafir and Arturo Ruas Were Originally Supposed To Be in Diamond Mine

After initially leaving NXT back in April, Roderick Strong returned on June 22nd as the leader of Diamond Mine with Malcolm Bivens, Tyler Rust, and Hachiman.

During an appearance on the Meep Meep podcast, Roderick Strong confirmed that Marina Shafir was planned to be part of the group, with them even having gone as far as to make custom gear made for everyone involved, including Shafir and Arturo Ruas, who was also supposed to be part of the group.

Both Ruas and Shafir were released from WWE on June 25th, thus never got to debut in the group.

"I actually got those made for everybody. It's important. I got custom pads and gloves made, we just haven't seen them. We haven't been able to show any of that stuff yet. I'm just thankful that I know a guy in Florida, he runs shows called Combat MMA. His name is Mitchell and I said, 'Is there any way you can help me out with this?' He had given Troy these small gloves and they were custom combat gloves and I was like, 'Do you know someone who can do that?' He like hooked it up. They came from overseas, but he put a rush on it to make sure we had it in time and we were lucky. Then there's a guy who runs Retro Grappler Shop and he knows Mitchell. We got linked up. I had actually gotten Undisputed Era rash guards made because we were always training together and I had no rash guard. Then I was like, 'Obviously I have to get some made for (Diamond Mine).' It was a cool commemorative thing to have and I got my son one and it has his name. I got my wife [Marina Shafir] one and I got Adrian (Jaoude) [Arturo Ruas] one. It didn't end up working out, things happened the way they did. At least it's something they can remember and use."