Tom Pestock, formerly known as Baron Corbin in WWE, made an appearance on the latest episode of Insight With Chris Van Vliet to discuss a wide range of topics, including his WWE tenure.
Corbin detailed dealing with WWE creative and his belief that someone had it out for him.
“I felt like in my WWE career, I was in uncharted water. In a sense, I had gone to NXT reinvented myself, and put a lot of work into it, even though, like, I didn’t agree with some of it. I had a conversation with NXT. I was sat down. I’m gonna be polite. We talked about it, walking in. Bruce Prichard, I’m gonna be polite. He was like, you know, ‘It’s just not working. We want you to go down there, reinvent yourself, new moves, lose a little weight, blah, blah, blah.’ And I did, and I think it was not, maybe not meant for me to succeed as well as I did down there. But they’ve got such an amazing system there, with the talent they have, with the producers they have, and with the coaches they have and the writers. It’s impossible not to succeed down there, like impossible. And I think I killed it, and it couldn’t be denied. And I went back to the main roster, and I’m a very open, truthful person. I’m not capable of lying and or, you know, BSing about things, but like, when I got up there, I feel like someone was holding me down in the sense of like that wasn’t supposed to work, you know, because I would go out and do dark matches, or when I did wrestle on TV like the crowd was insane for me. It was the best reactions I’d had in years since I was the King or the Constable. Like, when I was getting all that heat, this was the opposite. I was getting people chaining my name. Like there were times in matches where Apollo would be getting beat up and, you know, he they’d be chanting my name, and he’d just look at me, he’s like, ‘You’re over.’ Like, it would be crazy. Every night it would be crazy. My reactions, and with no ego, I say, aside from maybe Cody, Randy, and Kevin were the best on the whole show every night on SmackDown, and that’s doing dark matches or doing TV like Berlin, we did that tag match like they were insane. And I would come back to the curtain, and Regal would always be like, ‘This is amazing. Like, the work is awesome.’ They love you. Road Dog would be like, ‘Corbin, you’re over in this town.’ And I’d like, ‘It’s every town, dude. Like, it’s not just, like, a one-off,’ like, and even, you know, one of the writers we were talking about, and they were like, how we want to change you, to heal. And I’m like, I don’t know, man, we’ve never done this baby face. They wanted me to be different. Like, what do we have? And then we went out there, and it was, I don’t remember what city it was, Arkansas or somewhere, and it was, it was, it was crazy. They blew the roof off for me. Like chanting my name in the match when I wasn’t even in the match. It’s like standing on the apron or whatever, cheer for everything. And I walked back, and Chad’s like, ‘I told him it’s the head writer Smackdown.’ He goes, ‘I told him that you should just walk back here and give us both the finger and walk off because the reaction was so good.’ And so I think that that was frustrating. So I’m like, man, there’s still something there, maybe unresolved, that I could get back and accomplish as that baby face with the cheering. And I think it made me hungrier to succeed being told, ‘Ah, man, we’re gonna go a different direction,’ like, after already being told, like, ‘Hey, we want to go change everything, and you do it and it’s successful.’ And it’s where it’s not, like, I’m very self-aware at the same time. Like, there were times with the JBL stuff, I think it could have worked if we done it differently, which we pitched several ideas. I mean, JBL is the man. Like, he’s unbelievable. What he is. He sent in amazing pitches, and they just died in the wind somewhere. But I’d stand out there and go, ‘Man, you could feel it’s not working. I’m not getting the reactions I want, or anything like that, to where, like six months ago, I’m telling you the reactions where everything was there.’ It was firing on all cylinders. I recreated everything like I was asked to do. I’ve always done everything that I’ve been asked to do, and then to be like, ‘We’re gonna go in a different direction.’ It’s like, what like that? That was frustrating because there’s nothing you can do at the end of the day. And I was talking to Randy about it, a lot of guys reached out, you know, you know, I’m sorry, you know. And guys you expect, like Seth and Finn and Kevin, and those dudes are amazing people. And, you know, Punk and Randy. But Randy’s like, ‘Dude, I honestly thought you were, like, gonna be here another 10 years.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t understand it.’ He’s like, ‘Do you mind if I talk to Hunter about it?’ I don’t know if he ever did, but he’s like, ‘Somebody doesn’t like you.’ And I’m like, ‘There’s nothing I can do to change that.’ I feel like I know who it is, and that’s beside the point. But they had power enough to either kill creative or whatever it was, and they got to go to bed with that at the end of the night. That’s on them.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Insight With Chris Van Vliet with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
