Royce Keys appeared on NotSam Wrestling Live! to promote WrestleMania 42 Weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada.
During the appearance, the former AEW star known as Powerhouse Hobbs spoke about the reaction to his Royal Rumble debut in WWE, top executives telling him to stay off of social media and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On asking to do dark matches in WWE and being told to ignore social media by top executives: “It got under my skin for a hot second [the social media reaction to his Royal Rumble debut]. Then I had Hunter, I had Bobby Roode, and I had Cody (Rhodes), Randy (Orton), I had a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t let that sh*t bother you’ because they don’t know what you’re doing. It got out there that I did some dark matches but, I asked Hunter and he agreed if I could do these darks. Who wouldn’t wanna wrestle in front of a live crowd? Open up the show, get everybody ready, get it going, in two different cities a week. I did Raw and SmackDown every week until my debut. I put that GIF out with the dude with the seasoning. We was cooking… For Paul to be like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it. You wanna get after it.’ Like, ‘Hell yeah, I wanna get after it.’ I’m here. I’m not content with just being here. I wanna f’n work. I’m with it, I’m with the grind. I been grinding my whole life, so, let’s do it.”
On how he feels that after the video package and his official TV debut he has arrived now in WWE: “Yeah, man, that whole package — I believe another one’s gonna air — I feel it’s definitely gonna help for the people who don’t know anything about me. It took a lot for me to open up, and tell a little bit about my life because I kind of — I’m very private and kind of keep things to myself… It is (an emotional story). It’s unfortunate how things happened but, I think my belief is, you know, I was built for it.”
