• Former WWE Champion Says The Company Wanted Him To Be A Commentator Originally
During an interview on Off The Beat with Brian Baumgartner, former 2-time WWE Champion The Miz revealed that WWE Officials originally wanted him to become a Commentator, not a wrestler.
Below is what Miz said:
“I’ll never forget, they were like, ‘You impressed us so much that maybe there is something for you here.’
They brought me up to Connecticut to commentate. Joey Styles brought me up with Todd Grisham and Michael Cole, they brought me up and I had to do a take of commentating. They told me, ‘we might bring you in as a commentator or interviewer.’
It was the first time I said, ‘but I want to be a WWE Superstar.’ They didn’t look at me like a WWE Superstar, they looked at me as a personality.
I saw something different, ‘I love what you guys do and you do a great job, but I want to be bigger than The Rock and bigger than [Hulk] Hogan. I want to be a superstar.’ ‘Alright, okay.’
They gave me a developmental deal to go down and they didn’t think I was going to be much of anything, to be honest, you could kind of tell, ‘let’s see what we got here.’
They gave me this developmental contract and I was like, ‘I’m making more than this doing Real World and The Challenge. I’m not taking a paycut to do this.’ I had to think about that.
Are we looking at this as a career move? Sometimes, you have to take less because you see the big picture. That’s what I did. I took less money to go there, train, and prove everyone wrong.”
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• Old School Wrestling Veteran Celebrates His Birthday
Old School Attitude Era Veteran “Mr. Águila” Essa Ríos (Real name: José Delgado Saldaña) turns 45 today.
Mr. Águila wrestled Taka Michinoku for the Light Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 14 in Boston in a losing effort, but won the championship 3 years later when he wrestled as Essa Ríos, by defeating Gillberg during an episode of WWF Sunday Night HEAT.
He has since returned to his home country of Mexico, where he had successful runs in CMLL and AAA.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ESSA RIOS!
