Post Wrestling’s Andrew Thompson conducted an interview with Australian wrestling star Shane Haste (Thorne), where the former RETRIBUTION member discussed his days working in NXT, specifically his feud against AOP. He later opens up about still being in the WWE 2K22 video game despite being cut before the game’s release. Highlights, including a full video interview, is below.
Wishes he stuck to his guns in NXT rather than just being a company man:
I look back at it with pretty fond memories [his run in NXT]. I try to forget all the negative stuff because once you get stuck on the negative, you just get dragged into the dark side. Things that I would have liked [to do was stick] to my guns a little bit more, especially knowing now how thriving the pro wrestling world is. I’m like damn, I really should’ve died on my sword more and been willing to, I don’t know, get fired over things. We were very — me and Mikey [Nicholls] made a career of ourselves before that by doing what the company wanted. We’re company men, we’re good workers, we’re good hands. We did — you ask us to do something, we’ll go do that better than what you think can be done and in Australia and Japan, that got rewarded in the right ways. I found that in NXT, they have ideas and you just go with it and sometimes that can be a detriment because not all ideas are great ideas. We had been proven in Japan that as ourselves, we were good and we were successful. When you go there, they wanna have their hands on it a lot more. They want more control, which I’m like, you know what? Billion-dollar company, you gotta know what you’re doing and so, we let them. Some things I’m like, ‘Eh, I don’t know’ but I’m like, ‘All right, we’ll do it. I’ll trust what you’re saying first’ and then obviously, I’m not a multi-time world champion millionaire so, it didn’t quite work out that way [Haste laughed]. You know, I’m doing fine.
On working with AOP in NXT:
Well there’s that thing of saving it for the right moments [Haste & Nicholls displaying their power and athleticism in NXT]. That was a good payoff, especially with the AOP guys [at TakeOver: Toronto 2016] because we worked them so much and they were getting told, ‘Don’t get picked up, don’t get bumped,’ all this stuff so we — I remember once, they were like we weren’t allowed to duck a clothesline from them because it made them look stupid for them to swing a clothesline and me to duck it and give him something and they wanted to do stuff and they wanted to take stuff too so that TakeOver match and even the next year’s Dusty Cup then, they were more than happy to get bumped and lifted and things like that and because we hadn’t done it every single match, it did mean more. So there is that side of [it] and the other side of [it] is other people they were wrestling were doing it every single match with them and they were like, ‘Well if they’re bumping them,’ picking them up and stuff like that every single match, then of course people are gonna see that and go, ‘Yeah! Every single time.’
On Making the WWE 2K22 roster despite no longer being with the company:
It’s just the way that they work. Everybody gets so mad at the talent roster [for WWE video games] and [gives them] sh*t for it because it’s really 2K21. It’s last year’s roster. They can’t predict the future of the roster, you know what I mean? So of course it’s gonna be the older roster. I think Shane Thorne’s been in every single one [WWE video game] since 2017 I believe. So, people looking out for me there. I think there’s 20 or something people in this game that aren’t with the company anymore. But like [I] said, it’s 2021’s roster. It’s fun, it’s fun. It just makes for a fun situation, you know what I mean?