text: Kendrick received a rematch the following month at Victory Road, but was defeated again by Williams, this time in an Ultimate X submission match. On the September 2 edition of Impact!, Kendrick joined EV 2.0, a stable consisting of former Extreme Championship Wrestling performers. At Bound for Glory Kendrick interfered in a Lethal Lockdown match between EV 2.0 and Fortune and helped his team win the match between the two factions. At Turning Point EV 2.0 faced Fortune in a ten-man tag team match, where each member of EV 2.0 put their TNA careers on the line. Kendrick was taken out of the match immediately, after being attacked by Douglas Williams. In the end, EV 2.0 lost the match and Sabu was released from TNA.
  After the dissolution of EV 2.0, Kendrick spent months wrestling mainly house show matches, before returning to PPV on April 17, 2011, at Lockdown, where he wrestled in an eight-man X Division number one contender's Xscape match, where he outlasted six other men, before losing to Max Buck. On the edition of May 5 of Impact!, Kendrick came together with Amazing Red and Generation Me to battle for X Division's future, after the legitimate firing of Jay Lethal. On June 12 at Slammiversary IX, Kendrick failed in his attempt to win the X Division Championship from Abyss in a three-way match with Kazarian. On July 10 at Destination X, Kendrick defeated Abyss to win the TNA X Division Championship for the first time. On the edition of July 21 of Impact Wrestling, Kendrick made his first successful defense of the X Division Championship by defeating Alex Shelley, following outside interference from Austin Aries. The following week Kendrick successfully defended the title against Abyss in an Ultimate X match to end the feud.