In a recent interview with Raj Giri, former WWE Superstar Justin Gabriel talked about why he decided to leave WWE one week before Royal Rumble 2014, who was supposed to be revealed as the Bunny & more. Below are the highlights:
When you did appearances as The Bunny, was that always you or just once in a while?
“It started out as just a little character, then it kind of evolved from that. Then I’m like ‘If I’m not going to be this Dare Wolf character, let me make this Bunny really f-cking cool. Me and Adam Rose sat down and wrote out stories to make this bunny and evil bunny, because he wanted to be a heel so bad. We wanted to do like the Donnie Darko thing. We had an awesome mask made by the people who do The Walking Dead makeup, the same people who make Kane’s masks.
We had things filmed, and all of these ideas to turn this bunny into an evil, sadistic character. Adam Rose was going to be like a Marilyn Manson character. Everything got shot down. Each time I’d come up with something or Adam would come up with something, it’d get shot down. An idea that I thought was great and everyone thought as It’s more frustration, it gets disheartening. It makes you lose passion for what you’re doing.”
They put so much time into it and it went nowhere, it doesn’t make sense. Was there any kind of plan where it was going to go?
“They were just doing it week-to-week. I think they wanted it to end up being someone who was returning. Someone like Kurt Angle or Jeff Hardy, somebody cool like that. Anyone else on the roster, it wouldn’t have been cool. It wouldn’t have been a shock. I came up with an idea for the bunny to become really hardcore, he has dried blood all over him, sitting backstage grumpy smoking cigars. It’s like when people hit their all-time low.
The bunny should be going through ladders, tables, and coming close to winning championships, but doesn’t because he’s too f-cked up. Then maybe the bunny gets knocked out backstage, and a ref shows up and it’s Vince. That’s the only shock factor it could be, if it’s someone on the roster. Then Vince wakes up and just goes ‘I don’t know what happened. I put the suit on and I just blacked out.’ Everyone loved the idea, it just never came to fruition.”
On Quitting WWE Before Royal Rumble PPV:
“It was actually a week before the Royal Rumble. The Rumble was never even in my thoughts. I wasn’t told about it, didn’t know if I was in it or wasn’t in it, I had no idea. In my idea I was planning on holding off a month or two and not make any rash decisions. A bunch of things happened, it was a blur. I went to the building, then went skydiving, came back and nobody noticed I was gone. I was like ‘Okay, nobody notices, and this is four straight weeks I’m not being used on TV, or Superstars, or Main Event, or backstage or anything, I’m going home.’ So I went home, and someone called me and I just told them I quit. I said ‘I was going to tell you guys next week anyway, but since I have you on the phone, I quit.’ I have no hard feelings towards them. A lot of those guys are my friends. There are only so many spots for so many people. That was part of the deciding factor. You can only do so many things with so many people. That’s the weird thing, they have the Network, and so many hours on TV, how can they not give a spot to every single person on the roster? That’s on them, they aren’t even trying.”
