On October 14, 2008, Rust made his first appearane for WWE, on its SmackDown brand as Ryan Taylor, where he was defeated by Big Show in an "I Quit" match. He made another appearance on the May 26, 2009 episode of ECW, where he teamed with Joey Munoz and was defeated by Vladimir Kozlov.
On December 2, 2020, WWE announced Taylor as a recruit to the WWE Performance Center. That same day, he made his debut on NXT, in a "Thatch-as-Thatch Can" segment with Timothy Thatcher as Thatcher’s student under the ring name Tyler Rust. Later on in the night, he was seen backstage talking to Malcolm Bivens. The following week on NXT, he attempted to interfere during Tommaso Ciampa's match with Cameron Grimes, but was attacked by Ciampa. He was once again approached by Malcolm Bivens backstage, who offered him his managerial services. He would work NXT during the first half of 2021 with Bivens as a heel, until June 22, when Rust and Bivens were revealed to be apart of The Diamond Mine stable along with Hideki Suzuki and Roderick Strong. However, on August 6, Rust was released from his WWE contract.