WWE Intercontinental Champion Big E. recently spoke with Peter Rosenberg on the Cheap Heat podcast at ESPN for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During his discussion with the frequent WWE pre-show panelist, the former member of The New Day sounded off on WWE calling up talents from NXT to the main roster, Apollo Crews improving his skills and his thoughts about the position Eddie Kingston was put in at the recent AEW Revolution 2021 pay-per-view.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the new interview.
On his thoughts on talents getting called up from NXT to the main roster: “What I liked about it is when I got called up, I had a bit of a mystique because no one knew who I was and I think as much as I enjoy NXT, I think one of the issues is when people come up from NXT, there’s the expectation that they’ll be used in a similar way and that they’ll have the same presentation and often times, I almost feel — not that people burn out but almost like you can have your best run in NXT and people think that it’s just supposed to go in this very linear way where you go straight from NXT and if you were hot in NXT then you’re gonna keep getting hotter and hotter on the main [roster]. It just doesn’t [work that way].”
On Apollo Crews’ improvement: “Despite our beef, I’ve gotta say tip of the hat to him [Apollo Crews] for stepping his game up. He’s a guy who could have easily just kind of been happy to be there and you kind of see slowly decline and you don’t see him on TV anymore and then he’s just kind of gone. He put the onus on himself to step up and in this business, man, you wanna face the best. It’s iron sharpens iron so I wanna see guys be at their very best, I wanna see them bring it, I wanna see them reinventing themselves, I wanna see people at their best and he’s a guy who always had the look, he always had — he looked like a million bucks. Man, he reminds me in a different way, not quite like Cesaro but in the same way like you’ve seen him do Lucha stuff and strength stuff in a similar vein. Dude, Apollo can do moonsaults, beautiful moonsaults effortlessly. The stuff he does in the ring, you expect a guy 50 pounds lighter than him to do and then he’ll show you his strength too so he’s such a cool and unique blend I think of kind of what a modern-day wrestler is so it’s cool to see him start to grow as a personality.”
On AEW putting Eddie Kingston in a difficult position at the AEW Revolution 2021 pay-per-view: “It is. He [Eddie Kingston] was put in a difficult position, I will say that. If you can’t see what’s going on around you, if your head is down, what are you supposed to do? Yeah, you don’t know. I don’t know. It is not like he looked up and saw — there’s not really room to improvise if you don’t know what’s going on around you.”
Check out the complete interview at ESPN.com. H/T to POST Wrestling for transcribing the above quotes.
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