IMPACT world champion Moose recently appeared on the Juice Pro Wrestling podcast to discuss his first promo as champion from a few weeks back, which saw the Wrestling God make references to top talents from AEW and WWE. When asked about the promo Moose clarifies that he wasn’t taking shots at those aforementioned talents, but was putting them over. Highlights are below.
Knew that he didn’t want to cut the same generic world champion promo, and knew that getting the internet’s attention was important:
They told me I would have three minutes to cut a promo and to think about what I wanted to say and that it was good because it was my first time talking as champion. I could have cut the typical bullshit promo about being a fighting champion. Everything I thought about saying, I was just saying stuff that champions before me had said. What could I say that would make a statement? In today’s era of wrestling, social media is where it’s at because social media runs the world. In my mind, I had to cut a promo that was going to have the internet buzzing and it was going to be controversial without being controversial or saying anything bad about anybody. I grabbed my paper and sat for 20 minutes and it was kind of like writing a rap song. As I was done I was like, ‘Holy shit, this could be really fucking good.’ Before I thought about saying it, I wanted to make sure I had the clearance to say it. I gotta get a paycheck. I told the writers and they fucking loved it.
Says he wasn’t taking any shots at people in WWE or AEW, but was putting them over:
If you hear the promo, everyone was like I shot at WWE or AEW. I never took a shot at anybody. I never said one bad thing about anybody. If anything, I put them all over. I just said I’m better than all of them. I hate to put this guy over, but Don Callis used to work with me on my promos and he would tell me, ‘one thing you don’t want to do is put anybody down in your promos. Put them over and then when you put yourself over, you seem greater than all of them.’ I used that in my mind as a reference when I was writing this promo. I put them all over because they are all legendary and I think they’re the best in this business, I just think I’m the greatest of all time. At the end of the day, I put myself and IMPACT over as a whole. A lot of people I mentioned, I’m good friends with or associates with. I think they are all great. I just put myself up there with them. When I wrote the promo, I didn’t think it was going to get the clout and praise and mentions that it got.
On the response to the promo:
I got my phone blowing up from people that work everywhere. People that work at AEW, WWE, everybody was like, ‘That was a hell of a fucking promo.’ In my mind, I needed to make a statement. I made a statement. I had everyone hitting me up about this promo. If you look at the views it got with IMPACT, I don’t think anything they put on Twitter has gotten more than 100,000 views. This is up to 300,000 views. Hopefully, it goes down as big of a promo as Steiner Math and Jay Lethal’s ‘woo off’ with Ric Flair. I hope it goes down in history as one of the most epic promos in IMPACT history. There were a couple mentions I saw that were like, ‘Moose talks so slow, he put me to sleep.’ That’s my fucking character. Obviously, I don’t talk that menacing and slow in real life. My character is methodical like No Country For Old Men. That’s kind of what my character is based on, he talks slow and menacing so you can understand every word. It’s not appealing to some fans who think, ‘he’s stupid and talks slow.’ Suck my butt. More people hit me up about that promo than actually congratulated me for winning the title, which was big for me.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
