Between the 22 and 24 January 2016, Galloway and Johnny Gargano entered a three-day tournament to crown the inaugural Evolve Tag Team Champions. At Evolve 53, they defeated Catch Point (Drew Gulak and TJ Perkins), at Evolve 54 they defeated The Bravado Brothers and in the finals at Evolve 55, Galloway and Gargano defeated Chris Hero and Tommy End to win the tournament and championship. They lost the title to Drew Gulak and Tracy Williams on 2 April. Following the match Galloway went on a rant claiming he spent his entire title reign as Evolve champion bringing legitimacy to Evolve only for WWE and more specifically NXT to come and squash everything he did while also claiming the companies working relationship with WWE was compromising independent wrestling. Galloway then turned on Gargano, attacking him and Ethan Page. At EVOLVE 60, Galloway defeated Ethan Page. Over the following months, Galloway began aligning himself with other WWE stars starting with Ethan Carter III who debuted for the promotion at Evolve 61 attacking Johnny Gargano during his match with Galloway. Continuing the feud, Galloway and EC3 defeated Gargano and TJP in the street fight main-event to Evolve 62 with help from Chris Hero who joined their group and would then claim Cody Rhodes would be joining the group too. The following night at Evolve 63, Galloway defeated Ethan Page in an "Anything Goes" match.