Rocky Romero made an appearance on AEW Unrestricted to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, Romero explained why wears an eye patch while wrestling:
“There’s a rapper called Slick Rick from the 80s and early 90s. I don’t know why, but maybe somebody in a song was talking about Slick Rick and I thought it would be cool if I add an eye patch, but I’ll do something cool like, I’ll put my face on it or I’ll put like a really cool design on it or something. So then I came up with the ideas of having different eye patches for different outfits. Then I started to think like this is going to be an easy merch thing. You know, because everybody’s selling T-shirts. Everybody’s selling hats. Nobody’s selling custom eye patches.
“That was kind of the inspiration for merchandise. Then it became fun because I was designing eye patches for different situations. I just kind of stuck with it. Now I’ve simplified it a little bit more. I’ve just got like one or two eye patches. But I don’t know, I think it’s just a really cool look coming to the ring and making it a part of the entrance gear. There’s no story. I didn’t get blinded in one eye or something.”
“I think I did Dark or something and Mark Henry was on commentary. I don’t know if he started to make up the story. When I walked to the back, he said, ‘I didn’t know what to say about your eye patch, so I just made up a story. What’s the story with the eye patch?’ I said, ‘I just wanted to sell merch and make money.’”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription