PJ Black, formerly known as Justin Gabriel in WWE, recently spoke with Steve Fall for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, Black reflected on being part of the inaugural season of the NXT competition show that took place on SyFy back in 2010.
“At that time, it was cool because we just wanted to be on TV,” he said. “We were a bunch of rookies. Well, in the storyline. I had been wrestling for 10 years at that time. Honestly, I didn’t care what I was doing on TV. I was like, oh cool, I’m on TV, I’m on the road. That was my goal in life, to wrestle full-time.”
Black continued, “That game show went completely in a different direction. The original plan was for us to live in a house like the Ultimate Fighter and actually compete and do proper athletic challenges. But as the wrestling goes, time ran out, and on the day, they were like, ‘Oh, let’s write a show,’ and then they were like, ‘Oh, we don’t even have time to write a show.’ So we kind of free-styled pretty much everything. It was pretty much all on the fly.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
