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Former WWE star PJ Black (aka Justin Gabriel) recently joined PWMania.com for an exclusive in-depth interview. During the discussion, Black opened up about his new look, pitching his new character to WWE, discussions with AEW, his recent IMPACT Wrestling appearance, and much more. You can read the entire interview by clicking here.
His new look:
“I didn’t plan on growing this beard during lockdowns, I kind of just grew a little goatee unto a point. And it just started growing and growing…I even cut a bit off every week. And I was like this will work for this new character that I’m trying to launch. This Dr. Darewolf / shaman character, which I have not yet…fully pulled the trigger on, but I’ve dropped some hints on it. So it kind of works. So let’s see where it goes.”
His recent IMPACT Wrestling appearance:
“Yeah, I’ve been very selective on taking bookings, I took the IMPACT booking because it seemed like fun. It was just the end of the tournament. You know, I love wrestling and tournaments because you get to wrestle multiple people. There’s a few guys in that tournament, I really, really wanted to wrestle. My favorite thing in wrestling is working with people I’ve never worked with before, so that to me, that’s awesome. I’ve been very selective about taking bookings. But I’m trying to fill it up for the summer. I’m working on this new character, and I just haven’t fully pulled the trigger on it yet. I’ve been working on some vignettes. I’ve sent it to all the big companies out there and they all like it. But it’s you know, how the business is going right now and how the economy is going right now. So, you know, even if someone doesn’t want to run with it, I will just run with it on the indies. You know, we have social media and wonderful platforms like this, you can push certain characters and narratives and storylines, if you will. So well, we don’t really need big companies anymore. It will be nice to work there again. But it’s not something I have my hopes set on. I just really want to show people this character that I’ve created is like, like a shaman/ Darewolf character. Once you see it, you’ll know exactly what I mean. It’s kind of hard for me to put into words, it’s more of a visual character.”
Pitching his new character to WWE and AEW:
“I mean, never say never [with the] WWE. I did show them this new character I’ve been working on and I sent them the package. I sent it to all the writers, the producers and everyone I know that works there. And you know, it’s kind of mixed reviews. Everyone’s like, interesting. I really want to see what’s next. Some people’s some people were like, Wow, there’s so much we could do with it. Because there’s so many layers to unpack. Some of the AEW people were just like, “ah, yeah, this is cool, but can you just be Darewolf?” And I was like, Yeah, I can do that, too. So we’ll see what happens. I haven’t really had any, like, solid offers or anything like that. But like I said, it would be nice, but I mean, I’m not going to wait around for that before I pull the trigger on this character. So we’ll see. We’ll see it. I mean, it’s a very interesting time in wrestling right now. There’s so many companies and great talents all over the world. So I think it’s a really exciting time. This is what I like about wrestling. You know, like if it evolves and if you don’t have depth, then you get left behind. And then you’ll see guys like Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio has been around forever and ever and ever, and they just kind of like adapt and go. So I’m trying to not be like Chris Jericho, but kind of just adapt to the time reinventing myself playing a new character, like just bringing some new new things to the table that I think will be fresh and exciting.”
Black also commented on his future, his base jumping accidents, defeating John Cena, Ryback’s outbursts, and more. You can check out the complete interview at this link.
