By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Bronson Reed
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
On his WWE return: “I had a lot of faith that when I was released I would end up back in WWE. I didn’t think it would be so soon. So when I got released, I remember Drew McIntyre messaging me and talking about his experience, and he said it took almost seven years before he got re-signed. He did a lot, obviously, in the UK scene and stuff like that. So I was planning maybe three or four years, maybe I could get a good run in Japan for a couple of years and then be back in WWE. But then it ended up being 16 or 17 months I was gone. Obviously, things changed. Hunter [Paul Levesque] was sort of back in charge again, I was always a Hunter guy in NXT, and he reached out to me and ended up back.”
On hitting six Tsunamis on Seth Rollins: “No [laughs], I think it was supposed to be significantly less. Then the way that it turned out with Hunter’s vision, is it just was more and more and more. It was one of those things where you’re listening to the audience, you can just feel a change in the audience as I was doing it, hit the first two, they’re sort of booing. It looks like that’s it. Then I go out for the third one and people are sort of like what the hell’s going on here? Then I go up for the fourth one, they can’t comprehend what’s happening. And by the fifth one, they’re chanting for more. There’s blood lust amongst the crowd for someone that they love as well. They love Seth Rollins. I was glad that it actually ended up working where after the sixth one, I left, and they still started chanting and singing his music that he comes out to, so that also worked.”
On when he told Seth Rollins more Tsunamis were coming: “As it’s happening. So it’s one of those things like, yeah, he has to be willing to be there and I have to be willing to be able to do more. But it had definitely worked out and made for such a great moment in television. I think I had so much buzz around that, and then people online as well saying they haven’t seen something like that in WWE for so long where you can take someone to just propel them in one night with just one segment. Not a match, nothing else, just brutality.”
Whether he was expecting to go viral with Braun Strowman: “No, I didn’t think so. I was excited to be able to work with Braun. I think there was a natural chemistry there, we have maybe touched one time before in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal last year. And I was like, Oh, we could do something there with me and him. But then it’s like, what do you do? And then Hunter obviously had great vision for things, came up with the car angle and everything. And then once we were filming that, it’s in the moment, I was like, Okay, this is gonna be cool. I think people were gonna really respond to this. Then it ended up being WWE’s most viral moment of the week, I think it got almost 13 million views across social media platforms. So it worked.”
On destroying a car: “No you can’t [practice it], it’s one of those things. The car’s there and it’s like if we practice it, we’re going to destroy the car. So it just has to be [there and then] and that also was all one live take as well. Some people thought that maybe we stopped recording that earlier in the day or something and then did the rest live. And I was like no, that’s all one continuous thing, everything me and Braun’s done has been live.”
Be the first to comment