Pro-wrestling star Mojo Rawley recently spoke with WhatCulture about a variety of subjects, which included the Hype Man talking about his pairing with Rob Gronkowski, and how there were plans for a SummerSlam tag team matchup featuring Gronk prior to the pandemic. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says there were potential pre-pandemic plans for him and Gronk to take on Miz and John Morrison at SummerSlam:
We were searching for that. I gotta think it was gonna be Miz and [John] Morrison. You know, but, we were also trying to find a tag partner for Jinder [Mahal] because we had that whole moment with him in the Battle Royal at [WrestleMania] 33 so, I think it was gonna be something to there if we could find the right partner for Jinder but, either of those guys would’ve been perfect because man, those guys are fantastic workers. They would’ve made Rob look like a million bucks and we had a good plan in place for that one.
Says WWE pitched him on wearing a mask instead of his blue face-paint:
They had the idea to do something with my face. They were like, ‘You come off too eloquent when you speak. You sound too intelligent. With your facial reactions, it’s hard for people not to get with you or emote with you’ which maybe the first thing I could see what he was saying but the second thing I didn’t really quite get. He’s like, ‘So we either wanna put you in a mask or we wanna do face paint.’ I was like, ‘Ah, face paint please. I don’t wanna be in a mask at all. Screw that.’
How the company told him he had to look out for himself:
Yeah, I did [face some animosity coming into WWE from another sport]. I remember when I was first recruited, the man recruiting me told me that, ‘Coming in from football and not earning your stripes within this industry, there’s gonna be a lot of people that are gonna take it for granted. You might have to fight to defend and protect yourself, they’re gonna be gunning for you, cheap shot-ing,’ all this and that. ‘They’re not gonna want you here’ and I completely understood that to be honest with you because I know for me, you know, we talked about the football thing. I was always a walk-on. The non-scholarship guy, the guy that had to earn their stripes on the team so when they’d sign these five-star recruits to come and get literally handed and gift wrapped every opportunity, I mean the same thing in the NFL too. It’s just like — you know, I never took it out against the guy but I certainly didn’t appreciate it from the system. It’s like I’m here and I’m doing everything right so I knew coming in it was gonna be situation where some guys aren’t gonna appreciate this. NXT wasn’t what it was. It was FCW, it was all homegrown talent, like career wrestlers, you know? Coming in as outsiders, even me, Baron Corbin and this other guy Brandon [Carter] that started in the NFL as well, we all kind of came in together. It’s kind of one of those things where they told us like, ‘You three need to stick together because they’re gonna be coming for you,’ so…
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling
)