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During the latest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, WWE’s Big talks on his new book, his WWE Title run and the original pitch for the New Day.
On his new book:
“I think they would have been difficult if I started writing the book a few years ago, but not really. I’ve really been excited about this. Sterling K. Brown talks about being naked with your clothes on. That idea of being so transparent and open and honest, and honest with yourself as well. So, for me, the last few years, the thing that’s excited me is I want to make art, or shows, or books, or series, whatever it is, I want to make things that are raw, that are honest, that are open, because I think a lot of times when you see someone who has attained something in life, when you see someone who’s on TV or doing certain things, you think they are free of problems or free of cares. But I shared a locker room with so many people, I think there’s so many people who gravitate to pro wrestling because there’s this hole inside of them that they’re trying to fill, and I talk a lot in the book about that hole I was trying to fill. I think a lot of us deal with imposter syndrome, a lot of us quietly fight our own mind, so I wanted to just kind of shine more light on this myth that so many people have about people who are public figures and thinking that life is easy or smooth. That’s not to say that I want you to say, ‘Oh, woe is the guy who is making millions of dollars.’ That’s not the point, but I think when we can understand that the human experience is so universal, and that whatever walk of life you come from, that so many of us experience so many of the same struggles, maybe some of us on TV are better at masking them, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the same fights or similar fights. So, I just thought the more I could be open and honest, the more I would be able to connect with people who are struggling right now.
…a lot of that, it’s a journey. I think being able to better understand myself and my own mind was certainly a journey, and I’m so grateful for therapy in college. It was one of those things where I didn’t grow up in a household where therapy was something that was pushed. It was a man doesn’t show his feelings, he keeps everything bottled inside, he doesn’t cry about what he’s going through, so I had to unlearn a lot of that. I was forced to go to therapy at the age of 19, and I was so fortunate to have an incredible man in Marvin Sims, who, unfortunately, is no longer with us. But he was someone who just took his time with me, and I don’t think I’d be alive if it wasn’t for him. So, it was therapy. I needed medication at the time. I talk about being on a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, an antidepressant, and an antipsychotic in college. It was that, but for me, man, I really beat the drum so much. If you follow me on Instagram at all, for the most part, you probably see a lot of stuff from Headspace, but I’m a big believer in meditation. That was the app that I used, and it just helped me. I think meditation really can help anyone. One, it’s just allowed me to be so much more present, instead of me worrying about the future. I had so many injuries in college, I tore both my ACLs, I broke my right patella, tore my left pec, all in two and a half years. Every time I had an injury, I got back on the treadmill of overthinking, and my depression got worse and worse and worse. But meditation really just allowed me to deal with a lot of the ups and downs of life. I felt that before, my depression controlled me. I would have to deal with its ups and downs, and its ebbs and flows. But meditation just really allowed me to be at a point where I was able to kind of withstand anything that came my way, it really just gave me such a strong foundation for my mental health. Where, okay, bad things are gonna happen, that’s life. So I’m so grateful, because if it wasn’t for finding meditation during the pandemic, I don’t think I would have handled the injury well. I think I would have spiraled, because I had so many things being thrown at me. One doctor was talking about putting me in a halo, where they drill into your skull, and that was a possibility at one point. They drill the screws into your skull to attach this halo that I would be in for three months. Another option that was discussed was fusing my C1 and C2, and one doctor told me effectively I would be disabled because I would not have the ability to rotate my neck enough to be able to drive, so there was that. I get to the hospital as well, and they told me you were just this close to stroke or paralysis or even death. So I think years before, if I didn’t have the mental tools, I think I would have plummeted. My mental health would have been in a very, very bad place. But I’m so grateful to have had the tools now to be able to deal with all those ups and downs.”
On his run as WWE Champion:
“Yeah, man. I had a friend of mine who I’m now super proud of. He’s in LA. He used to work in social media for WWE, Anthony, but he’s doing his acting thing right now and doing well. But we used to have this thing, because we were both kind of quietly struggling with our mental health at the time, and he used to refer to me as the sad clown, because he was one of the few people who knew what I was going through and experiencing. We would also have this joke, and it was a dark joke. But his little thing was, ‘As soon as I retire, within 48 hours, put me on suicide watch.’ Because for me the thought was I always have this constant distraction of travel, of doing shows, you don’t really have time to sit with your mind. But I had that. But when all that stopped, my fear, and I had a real fear of when all that’s over, and you’re home alone, there’s no running from yourself anymore, now you have to really confront your mind and what you’re going through. So for the longest time, I had a real fear that if this came to an end, I don’t know how I would be. I don’t know what would be next for me. I don’t know if I would immediately plummet back to everything I’d struggled with.
But yeah, going from having the title, dropping it. We had that Day One PLE in Atlanta, losing to Brock, which initially that was supposed to be me and Seth. It’s supposed to be a singles match, but then Kevin Owens got added to it to become a triple threat. Then Vince, at the time, loved Bobby, so Bobby gets added to it, becomes a four-way. Then, at the time, I don’t know if you remember, Roman gets COVID, allegedly, who knows? But that was the rumor, he got COVID, so he couldn’t be there. So Brock needed a match, so he gets added to our match, and what was supposed to be a singles between me and Seth becomes a five-way, where Brock beats me for the title. But that’s the business, and honestly, the fact alone that I got to be world champion, a guy like me, is pretty incredible. It wasn’t the run that I wanted by any means, but I’m grateful that I got it.
But to go from that, to having certain Raws where I felt like I was probably in five or six segments, and then I would have to do the dark match, I’m doing pre-tapes, and there’s a lot on your back. Going from that to immediately being thrust back into, and look, I love the boys, I love The New Day. But to go from, hey, you’re on the show alone, I think they were on SmackDown at the time, I was on Raw, to immediately be like, okay, the idea of you even trying to fight back or get another opportunity, we’re not doing that. Get back to the tag team, it was demoralizing, but the wrestling business is filled with ups and downs and ebbs and flows, and I think a lot of talent get too caught up in kind of the ebbs and flows. You have to be able to ride that wave. So for me the idea was always to fight back, but it was disheartening to be thrust back into a tag team, and then it wasn’t long after that where I get dunked on my head and my career is over. So yeah, a lot of life changes in a couple of months, but more than anything, I’m just so grateful that I had the tools with meditation to be able to deal with it all.”
What the original pitch was for The New Day:
“So the original pitch was for us to be the new Nation of Domination. So it was me. I don’t know if you remember Abraham Washington. So Abe Washington had a talk show on WWECW where Tony Atlas was his sidekick. All he would do was just laugh from time to time. But I’m telling you, people didn’t get to see the best of Abe. Abe is one of the best talkers I’ve ever been around. He would come into FCW, and he would cut these promos for Dusty. We would usually have these hard outs. You have a minute, maybe give you a minute and a half. Alex Riley and Abe Washington were the two guys who had an exception to just go. People didn’t get to see the best of Alex Riley as a promo, either. Dude was just incredible on the mic, but Abe was also just a masterful talker. So we were in FCW, it was me, Byron Saxton was still an active wrestler at the time. It was me, Saxton, Woods, and Abe. We all talked, but Abe was kind of positioned as the leader, and we had this group, and Abe was very much someone who unfortunately liked to push the envelope a little bit too much. I’m not going to talk about the reason he got fired, you could look that up. But he’s someone who always liked to kind of to put his foot over the line and see how far we could push things.
We originally called the group the Clan, and it stood for Citizens Liberation of American Nationalism. It was supposed to be this militant black group, much in the vein of the Nation of Domination. We all grew up loving The Nation, and we wanted to do something in that vein. That group initially, it was initially the Clan, then we became The Plan, because the office said we’re not doing that. So we exchanged citizens for people, so that was it. We came out in white and red, so that very first suit that you see Woods come out in, that was like his old stuff from when we were pitching The Plan in FCW, so we never got to do that on FCW TV. We did a few weeks of that, and then eventually the office in FCW said it’s dead, you guys can’t do this anymore, move on.
But Woods, at the time, talks about having the worst debut of all time, because he comes up as R-Truth’s friend on the main roster, and almost right away, he’s kind of getting squashed. But he comes up to me, it was Extreme Rules of 2014 and he and Truth had a handicap match with Rusev. They both get killed, really, Woods gets killed within, I feel like a few seconds, and he was done for. Then Truth gets squashed right after. That same day I dropped the IC title to Bad News Barrett, who was red hot at the time. The death nail, I think, as a babyface is when you go out and when they don’t care at all. But to have fans when I’m blowing my comeback and they’re booing, they’re booing everything, they don’t want to see me. I was also a very boring character was kind of dead in the water. Barrett was a lot of fun. So that same day, Woods is dead in the water. I’m dead in the water. Kofi is a guy who has had five, six years into his main roster run, already a guy you know is going to be good, but kind of just seen as by the office as a good hand. So we kind of get to Kofi later, but Woods goes in and pitches the writers that day, pitches them this idea of doing a new Nation of Domination. They essentially laugh him out of the room, and he comes up to me after my match. I dropped the title, and he said, ‘Hey, what do you think about starting this group, kind of similar to what we did in FCW?’ I said, ‘I got nothing else, man.’ I always respected Woods as someone who was a very, very creative guy, just someone who was always pitching, always thinking outside the box. So I thought, man, you know what, he’s someone who I think has a ton of ideas. Let’s give it a shot.
Honestly, that same day, I was told by creative, I was told by Road Dogg, ‘Look, we like you, but we got nothing for you. Essentially, we need you to go into pre-tapes and just try stuff.’ I went into pre-tapes that same day, after I don’t know if it was before or after talking to Woods, and we just tried stuff, and just tried a bunch of deliveries, and actually the last thing I ended up trying was, I grew up in the church, I grew up actually doing some preaching as a teenager myself in my dad’s church. So that oratory style was always very natural for me. I never wanted to do anything sacrilegious or blasphemous, so I always kind of avoided that, but I just thought there could be a way to do this in a way that’s not offensive to people who believe or Christians. I’m not trying to do anything that upsets people. So I just kind of went into pre-tapes and started doing the ‘next week, I’m about to grab the title…’ I feel like I can just riff and just do it. The great thing with that delivery is it’s always easy if you lose your place. It’s very easy to have a moment to repeat and give yourself a moment to come and kind of come up with something.
So that style of promo and delivery was something very natural for me. So just knowing that the office really had nothing for me, that Woods was in need of something. I just said, ‘Let’s do this, man. Let’s give it a shot.’ Woods first came up with the idea of adding Kofi. I love Kofi. We interacted a little. He and I both trained at Cena’s gym, so I’d see him in Tampa from time to time. But my fear is they would never let him turn heel, and I thought for us to work as a group, we needed to be heels. So, from there, I don’t know if I fought it as much. I was just like, I don’t know, but eventually I get on board, and I say, okay, let’s talk to Kofi. Interestingly, Kofi, at the time, was kind of not really having the best time wrestling, and it was interesting, he even himself, he was thinking, “Maybe I want to retire early, maybe I want to be done. I kind of feel like I’ve kind of hit my glass ceiling. I think I’m good. But eventually we were kind of floored with how excited he was at the idea, and he was in, so we just kind of went from there, and we ended up spending months and months pitching that militant group. We actually got to be on TV.
We were in South Florida when Woods comes out in that white and red suit and tells us we’re no longer going to be glad-handing and kissing babies and shaking hands, and we’re going to take what we want, and we did that for about a week. That idea was shelved, and then we had to go back to re-pitching, but eventually we got to be The New Day that people knew and loved. But it was months and months and months of pitching. The three of us were on house shows together. We didn’t have a name, but we got to work on chemistry, but we very quickly realized we have something here. We see the business the same, we want the same for each other. We never wanted one leader. We always liked the idea of all three of us being viewed in the same plane, and we just had so much fun together, so we knew it’s worth dying on this hill for, because we all were in desperate, we were all searching for something.”
Big E also talks on his injury, big meaty men slapping meat and more!
All quotes are courtesy of Insight with Chris Van Vliet.
You can watch the full interview with Big E below.
The post Big E talks on his new book, winning the WWE Title, The original pitch for New Day appeared first on WWE News, WWE Results, AEW News, AEW Results.
Okumaya devam et...
On his new book:
“I think they would have been difficult if I started writing the book a few years ago, but not really. I’ve really been excited about this. Sterling K. Brown talks about being naked with your clothes on. That idea of being so transparent and open and honest, and honest with yourself as well. So, for me, the last few years, the thing that’s excited me is I want to make art, or shows, or books, or series, whatever it is, I want to make things that are raw, that are honest, that are open, because I think a lot of times when you see someone who has attained something in life, when you see someone who’s on TV or doing certain things, you think they are free of problems or free of cares. But I shared a locker room with so many people, I think there’s so many people who gravitate to pro wrestling because there’s this hole inside of them that they’re trying to fill, and I talk a lot in the book about that hole I was trying to fill. I think a lot of us deal with imposter syndrome, a lot of us quietly fight our own mind, so I wanted to just kind of shine more light on this myth that so many people have about people who are public figures and thinking that life is easy or smooth. That’s not to say that I want you to say, ‘Oh, woe is the guy who is making millions of dollars.’ That’s not the point, but I think when we can understand that the human experience is so universal, and that whatever walk of life you come from, that so many of us experience so many of the same struggles, maybe some of us on TV are better at masking them, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the same fights or similar fights. So, I just thought the more I could be open and honest, the more I would be able to connect with people who are struggling right now.
…a lot of that, it’s a journey. I think being able to better understand myself and my own mind was certainly a journey, and I’m so grateful for therapy in college. It was one of those things where I didn’t grow up in a household where therapy was something that was pushed. It was a man doesn’t show his feelings, he keeps everything bottled inside, he doesn’t cry about what he’s going through, so I had to unlearn a lot of that. I was forced to go to therapy at the age of 19, and I was so fortunate to have an incredible man in Marvin Sims, who, unfortunately, is no longer with us. But he was someone who just took his time with me, and I don’t think I’d be alive if it wasn’t for him. So, it was therapy. I needed medication at the time. I talk about being on a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, an antidepressant, and an antipsychotic in college. It was that, but for me, man, I really beat the drum so much. If you follow me on Instagram at all, for the most part, you probably see a lot of stuff from Headspace, but I’m a big believer in meditation. That was the app that I used, and it just helped me. I think meditation really can help anyone. One, it’s just allowed me to be so much more present, instead of me worrying about the future. I had so many injuries in college, I tore both my ACLs, I broke my right patella, tore my left pec, all in two and a half years. Every time I had an injury, I got back on the treadmill of overthinking, and my depression got worse and worse and worse. But meditation really just allowed me to deal with a lot of the ups and downs of life. I felt that before, my depression controlled me. I would have to deal with its ups and downs, and its ebbs and flows. But meditation just really allowed me to be at a point where I was able to kind of withstand anything that came my way, it really just gave me such a strong foundation for my mental health. Where, okay, bad things are gonna happen, that’s life. So I’m so grateful, because if it wasn’t for finding meditation during the pandemic, I don’t think I would have handled the injury well. I think I would have spiraled, because I had so many things being thrown at me. One doctor was talking about putting me in a halo, where they drill into your skull, and that was a possibility at one point. They drill the screws into your skull to attach this halo that I would be in for three months. Another option that was discussed was fusing my C1 and C2, and one doctor told me effectively I would be disabled because I would not have the ability to rotate my neck enough to be able to drive, so there was that. I get to the hospital as well, and they told me you were just this close to stroke or paralysis or even death. So I think years before, if I didn’t have the mental tools, I think I would have plummeted. My mental health would have been in a very, very bad place. But I’m so grateful to have had the tools now to be able to deal with all those ups and downs.”
On his run as WWE Champion:
“Yeah, man. I had a friend of mine who I’m now super proud of. He’s in LA. He used to work in social media for WWE, Anthony, but he’s doing his acting thing right now and doing well. But we used to have this thing, because we were both kind of quietly struggling with our mental health at the time, and he used to refer to me as the sad clown, because he was one of the few people who knew what I was going through and experiencing. We would also have this joke, and it was a dark joke. But his little thing was, ‘As soon as I retire, within 48 hours, put me on suicide watch.’ Because for me the thought was I always have this constant distraction of travel, of doing shows, you don’t really have time to sit with your mind. But I had that. But when all that stopped, my fear, and I had a real fear of when all that’s over, and you’re home alone, there’s no running from yourself anymore, now you have to really confront your mind and what you’re going through. So for the longest time, I had a real fear that if this came to an end, I don’t know how I would be. I don’t know what would be next for me. I don’t know if I would immediately plummet back to everything I’d struggled with.
But yeah, going from having the title, dropping it. We had that Day One PLE in Atlanta, losing to Brock, which initially that was supposed to be me and Seth. It’s supposed to be a singles match, but then Kevin Owens got added to it to become a triple threat. Then Vince, at the time, loved Bobby, so Bobby gets added to it, becomes a four-way. Then, at the time, I don’t know if you remember, Roman gets COVID, allegedly, who knows? But that was the rumor, he got COVID, so he couldn’t be there. So Brock needed a match, so he gets added to our match, and what was supposed to be a singles between me and Seth becomes a five-way, where Brock beats me for the title. But that’s the business, and honestly, the fact alone that I got to be world champion, a guy like me, is pretty incredible. It wasn’t the run that I wanted by any means, but I’m grateful that I got it.
But to go from that, to having certain Raws where I felt like I was probably in five or six segments, and then I would have to do the dark match, I’m doing pre-tapes, and there’s a lot on your back. Going from that to immediately being thrust back into, and look, I love the boys, I love The New Day. But to go from, hey, you’re on the show alone, I think they were on SmackDown at the time, I was on Raw, to immediately be like, okay, the idea of you even trying to fight back or get another opportunity, we’re not doing that. Get back to the tag team, it was demoralizing, but the wrestling business is filled with ups and downs and ebbs and flows, and I think a lot of talent get too caught up in kind of the ebbs and flows. You have to be able to ride that wave. So for me the idea was always to fight back, but it was disheartening to be thrust back into a tag team, and then it wasn’t long after that where I get dunked on my head and my career is over. So yeah, a lot of life changes in a couple of months, but more than anything, I’m just so grateful that I had the tools with meditation to be able to deal with it all.”
What the original pitch was for The New Day:
“So the original pitch was for us to be the new Nation of Domination. So it was me. I don’t know if you remember Abraham Washington. So Abe Washington had a talk show on WWECW where Tony Atlas was his sidekick. All he would do was just laugh from time to time. But I’m telling you, people didn’t get to see the best of Abe. Abe is one of the best talkers I’ve ever been around. He would come into FCW, and he would cut these promos for Dusty. We would usually have these hard outs. You have a minute, maybe give you a minute and a half. Alex Riley and Abe Washington were the two guys who had an exception to just go. People didn’t get to see the best of Alex Riley as a promo, either. Dude was just incredible on the mic, but Abe was also just a masterful talker. So we were in FCW, it was me, Byron Saxton was still an active wrestler at the time. It was me, Saxton, Woods, and Abe. We all talked, but Abe was kind of positioned as the leader, and we had this group, and Abe was very much someone who unfortunately liked to push the envelope a little bit too much. I’m not going to talk about the reason he got fired, you could look that up. But he’s someone who always liked to kind of to put his foot over the line and see how far we could push things.
We originally called the group the Clan, and it stood for Citizens Liberation of American Nationalism. It was supposed to be this militant black group, much in the vein of the Nation of Domination. We all grew up loving The Nation, and we wanted to do something in that vein. That group initially, it was initially the Clan, then we became The Plan, because the office said we’re not doing that. So we exchanged citizens for people, so that was it. We came out in white and red, so that very first suit that you see Woods come out in, that was like his old stuff from when we were pitching The Plan in FCW, so we never got to do that on FCW TV. We did a few weeks of that, and then eventually the office in FCW said it’s dead, you guys can’t do this anymore, move on.
But Woods, at the time, talks about having the worst debut of all time, because he comes up as R-Truth’s friend on the main roster, and almost right away, he’s kind of getting squashed. But he comes up to me, it was Extreme Rules of 2014 and he and Truth had a handicap match with Rusev. They both get killed, really, Woods gets killed within, I feel like a few seconds, and he was done for. Then Truth gets squashed right after. That same day I dropped the IC title to Bad News Barrett, who was red hot at the time. The death nail, I think, as a babyface is when you go out and when they don’t care at all. But to have fans when I’m blowing my comeback and they’re booing, they’re booing everything, they don’t want to see me. I was also a very boring character was kind of dead in the water. Barrett was a lot of fun. So that same day, Woods is dead in the water. I’m dead in the water. Kofi is a guy who has had five, six years into his main roster run, already a guy you know is going to be good, but kind of just seen as by the office as a good hand. So we kind of get to Kofi later, but Woods goes in and pitches the writers that day, pitches them this idea of doing a new Nation of Domination. They essentially laugh him out of the room, and he comes up to me after my match. I dropped the title, and he said, ‘Hey, what do you think about starting this group, kind of similar to what we did in FCW?’ I said, ‘I got nothing else, man.’ I always respected Woods as someone who was a very, very creative guy, just someone who was always pitching, always thinking outside the box. So I thought, man, you know what, he’s someone who I think has a ton of ideas. Let’s give it a shot.
Honestly, that same day, I was told by creative, I was told by Road Dogg, ‘Look, we like you, but we got nothing for you. Essentially, we need you to go into pre-tapes and just try stuff.’ I went into pre-tapes that same day, after I don’t know if it was before or after talking to Woods, and we just tried stuff, and just tried a bunch of deliveries, and actually the last thing I ended up trying was, I grew up in the church, I grew up actually doing some preaching as a teenager myself in my dad’s church. So that oratory style was always very natural for me. I never wanted to do anything sacrilegious or blasphemous, so I always kind of avoided that, but I just thought there could be a way to do this in a way that’s not offensive to people who believe or Christians. I’m not trying to do anything that upsets people. So I just kind of went into pre-tapes and started doing the ‘next week, I’m about to grab the title…’ I feel like I can just riff and just do it. The great thing with that delivery is it’s always easy if you lose your place. It’s very easy to have a moment to repeat and give yourself a moment to come and kind of come up with something.
So that style of promo and delivery was something very natural for me. So just knowing that the office really had nothing for me, that Woods was in need of something. I just said, ‘Let’s do this, man. Let’s give it a shot.’ Woods first came up with the idea of adding Kofi. I love Kofi. We interacted a little. He and I both trained at Cena’s gym, so I’d see him in Tampa from time to time. But my fear is they would never let him turn heel, and I thought for us to work as a group, we needed to be heels. So, from there, I don’t know if I fought it as much. I was just like, I don’t know, but eventually I get on board, and I say, okay, let’s talk to Kofi. Interestingly, Kofi, at the time, was kind of not really having the best time wrestling, and it was interesting, he even himself, he was thinking, “Maybe I want to retire early, maybe I want to be done. I kind of feel like I’ve kind of hit my glass ceiling. I think I’m good. But eventually we were kind of floored with how excited he was at the idea, and he was in, so we just kind of went from there, and we ended up spending months and months pitching that militant group. We actually got to be on TV.
We were in South Florida when Woods comes out in that white and red suit and tells us we’re no longer going to be glad-handing and kissing babies and shaking hands, and we’re going to take what we want, and we did that for about a week. That idea was shelved, and then we had to go back to re-pitching, but eventually we got to be The New Day that people knew and loved. But it was months and months and months of pitching. The three of us were on house shows together. We didn’t have a name, but we got to work on chemistry, but we very quickly realized we have something here. We see the business the same, we want the same for each other. We never wanted one leader. We always liked the idea of all three of us being viewed in the same plane, and we just had so much fun together, so we knew it’s worth dying on this hill for, because we all were in desperate, we were all searching for something.”
Big E also talks on his injury, big meaty men slapping meat and more!
All quotes are courtesy of Insight with Chris Van Vliet.
You can watch the full interview with Big E below.
The post Big E talks on his new book, winning the WWE Title, The original pitch for New Day appeared first on WWE News, WWE Results, AEW News, AEW Results.
Okumaya devam et...