Heath recently appeared as a guest on the Stories With Briscoe & Bradshaw podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the former WWE Superstar and current IMPACT Wrestling performer spoke about the mindset talents had during the competition era of NXT, the competitors legitimately being unaware what was going on at the time and his take on how WWE handled the concept.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the appearance where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On what the mindset was for talent during the competition portion of NXT: “We were so scared too. Because it was like, ‘this might be yall’s last little chance to succeed, you are getting this push, you are getting this.’ Once you got released from NXT, not released but like out of the whole gameshow thing that they were doing, you were put back down to developmental thinking, ‘oh s–t, what’s going to happen?’ You didn’t know, they didn’t tell you nothing.”
On talent being unaware of what was happening: “They didn’t even tell us the games that we were doing. We would show up and the next thing you know, we’ve got an obstacle course that you’ve got to run. Then we got to be in front of the O2 Arena, which holds at least 50,000 people and it’s already sold out. We would be in the middle of the ring and they would say, ‘Alright Heath, you’ve got one minute — a promo about cereal.’ I am like, ‘Um, I like cereal, I eat it with milk,’ you know what I mean?”
On his take on WWE handling the concept: “In my way of thinking with the whole NXT thing, I don’t think they knew exactly what they wanted to do but they had a good idea. But thank god we knew what we were doing while we were out there so we didn’t look stupid. That was a fact. The only time we looked stupid was when we had to do the game stuff, you know? Because it was right on the fly, on television.”
Check out the complete interview at Apple.com. H/T to WrestlingInc.com for transcribing the above quotes.
