WWE SmackDown Star Rick Boogs recently appeared on WWE's After The Bell podcast, where he spoke about where his interest in pro wrestling came from and how he became interested in the WWE.
Rick Boogs said:
“I guess it would go back to college. I had a wrestling coach that wrestled at Oklahoma, and when he wrestled, he was roommates with Jack Swagger.” “I was a thicker individual on the program. I was a heavyweight and he told me, ‘You should think about doing WWE. I’ve got a buddy who’s doing it and is really successful.’”
“What do you do with amateur wrestling? You either go to the Olympics where you have to be the best in the world. And even if you’re the best in the world, how much money do you make after that? Olympic gold medalists are not getting rich unless you have amazing agents or something like that. I was thinking, well, maybe pursuing sports entertainment down the road but it was something that seemed far fetched.”
“Fast forward: I graduated, I’m a strength coach for a couple years. I’m working in sales for a couple years. I hate that. I’m going back and forth. I feel like I’ve hit a dead end, that my ceiling is very low. I start uploading YouTube videos, breaking my back, trying to do the most absurd lifts, trying to somehow break through in a fitness niche or something like that. I would have blown my back out a thousand different ways and I’d cut promos and get very intense and psyched up. I started building a following, and people would say you should try out for WWE. I would see these messages over and over again, and eventually, it’s like, I should. I remember my college wrestling coach and am reaching out to him to see if I could get a tryout. There was Tough Enough in 2014. I told my wife I think I’m going to tryout for that, and she was pregnant at the time, so she wouldn’t let me.”
“I feel like I’ve hit this terrible point. I reach out to my old wrestling coach, one thing leads to another, I’m talking to Gerry Briscoe and getting a little tryout. When I thought the tryout [for WWE] was going to be in September, I quit my job. The reason I quit my job is because you’ve got to be all in, right? I wanted to have the pressure of either I do this or I’m unemployed and provide nothing for my family and I’m screwing the family over big time.”
“I didn’t even know what to do. How to ever get ready for the tryout? All I knew was I was jobless and my family is hungry, right? Needless to say, I brought my A game. I didn’t gas out on any of the drills. We had a minute promo we had to cut. I didn’t prepare for it at all, I don’t know why.”
Rick Boogs then discussed pitching a character to the WWE named Art Von Boogs, which, in several ways, was similar to that of Dexter Lumis' character.
Rick Boogs said:
“I think that’s what it was, just taking the chains off.” “I’m just going to be wild. I was new with it all and I didn’t know how to approach it at first. Once I lost everything and had surgery and couldn’t train, it was like, maybe I’ll get released if I don’t become a character. What else can you do at that point? I figured I would go as big as I can with the character stuff. I was cutting wild promos, man. Art Von Boogs I pitched. I threw everything against the wall, every week I was coming up with something different.”
“I was a painter, the overalls and the jean overalls all stems from Art Von Boogs. A French beret, I was really about my doodles. Kind of like Dexter Lumis, he does a sketch but I was kind of the same idea. When I’d cut promos, I would draw the promos, I would draw the opponents, I would draw anything. And it was crazy drawings. That’s the thing, anyone can draw. I would connect the dots, draw half man, half chicken. I would have it all come full circle and I would explain it. I loved the Art Von Boogs gimmick, but I think they thought it was a little too out there.”
