During an appearance on Talk Is Jericho, Suge D, better known as Pineapple Pete in AEW, discussed his inability to cut a promo during his WWE tryout and how he’s attempted to redeem himself in that regard during his AEW run. Here’s what he had to say:
I feel like, at the end of the day, you have to show two sides to things because yeah, I’m a bit of I’m a bit of a jokester. I’m a bit of a prankster. You ask around. They’ll tell you. They hate it, but it is what it is. That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t think about things, and I try to be very deep in my thoughts when I have time and whatnot. Even here sometimes, I’m just sitting on the arena steps, and I’m just kind of to myself unless somebody comes to me because I’m usually very deep in thought. When I went to that WWE tryout, that was around the time that they did promos, they would film your promo. They look it over. They critique it etc. etc.
I went, and one of my really really really good friends told me, ‘hey, when you get in that promo room, do not cut a wrestling promo. Be real with them. Tell them what’s on your mind, etc. etc. I got so scared that if I told them who I really was and what I was about and what I stand for, that it wasn’t going to resonate, so I did wrestling promo one-on-one this and that, a bunch of buzzwords and it sucked and I knew it sucked. What hurt most was you’re sitting at that panel of people, and one of them at the time would look at independent talent. So he’s looking at it, he’s like, ‘man, I was just expecting more.’ It’s like damn.
You want to do a redo, but you can’t, so when I was told ‘hey, this is about to happen. They’re about to give you a promo. You’re going to get some footage that’s going to show on ‘Road to,’ and you’re going to get this.’ I was like, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get this again. Again, it’s that swinging, so it’s like do you want to be remembered for faking it, or do you want to just go out there and give them a real and even if you don’t come back again, at least they know what you stood for what you’re about. So I gave them everything I possibly could as verbal as humanly possible.
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Credit: Talk Is Jericho. H/T WrestlingInc.