Former WWE star Apollo Crews (Uhaa Nation), recently spoke with Chris Van Vliet. She spoke on how TNA contacted him while he was still under his 90-day no-compete clause with WWE and how he was against the Nigerian accent.
On being contacted by TNA while still under a 90-day non-compete clause with WWE:
“TNA had reached out to WWE because I was still within that 90-day release period of non compete where I technically couldn’t wrestle for anybody else. But TNA got in contact with WWE, and I think it was Moose, may have been the first one to call me and told me that TNA was looking to bring me in for Slammiversary, and my first thought was like, ‘Man, I’m in my 90 days. No way that’s gonna happen.’ I kind of brushed it off, and at the time I was at, we were on our drive at one of the resorts, kind of just taking a staycation…And shortly after that, Ali had called me and presented the same idea, and was like, ‘I think they’re trying to get me and you to work at Slammiversary. And he asked me, he’s like, ‘Now the issue is, would you be okay losing?’ And I was at the time I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to wrestle because this was not even a month after the release…“I still was trying to figure things out how I felt about wrestling and all that, and my response to him was like, ‘I spent my whole career losing at WWE. The first thing outside of WWE that I don’t want to do is lose’. And he respected my answer. He was like, ‘I completely respect that. I would have said the same thing.’”
On why he was against using the Nigerian accent:
“I grew up in Africa, down in Kenya, for a good amount of my life, but I didn’t have a lot of Nigerian…my dad is traditional, but I didn’t know much about Nigeria growing up. The language wasn’t spoken to us. We had been there a few times, but it wasn’t something like, ‘You guys have to learn this culture.’ I thought it would be interesting for me to go back and understand and learn Nigerian culture and bring the fans along for the ride. I pitched the idea and apparently the first thing Vince said was, ‘Is he going to have an accent?’ That wasn’t something I was planning on doing. The idea that I had was to not portray it in this kind of way. I was strongly against it at first because it didn’t make sense to me. As a kid, I had a lot of Nigerian-American friends, so we would imitate our parents and do that accent a lot. My brother and sister would put on the accent to imitate my dad, but by no means did I think I would be doing it on TV in front of millions. I felt strongly about it; I went and spoke to Vince and pleaded my case against it. Obviously, I was talked into it. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it 100%. I used a lot of what my dad was like growing up, and I was able to immerse myself in this character. Some people loved it, some people hated it, but people were talking about. Overnight, I became- I don’t know if it was a Prince or what it was- but I became this character with an accent and did a 360 on the character…The first promo, I was going to do my normal accent now; he wanted me to do one line with an accent. Ten minutes before the show started, they told me he wanted me to do the whole thing with the accent. I was like, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ Ten minutes before. That’s what a lot of people will never understand. The things that go on right before you go out the curtain. People don’t understand it unless they are in the situation. I’m not the only person that’s happened to, but it was ten minutes before.”
All quotes are from Insight with Chris Van Vliet. Crews also speaks on why he went by just ‘Apollo’ for a short period of time, winning the WWE United States Title and more!
You can watch the full interview below:
The post Former WWE star Apollo Crews talks on TNA appearance, being against using Nigerian accent in WWE appeared first on WWE News, WWE Results, AEW News, AEW Results.
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