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Heath Slater recently sat down with Kenny McIntosh from Inside The Ropes and discussed his time on Season 1 of NXT and being told he looked too much like Edge.
Exclusive: Former WWE Star Forced To Change Their Appearance As They “Looked Too Much Like Edge”
A contestant in the first season of NXT, also known as “The Game Show Era” of the brand, Heath Slater was one of 8 rookies called up from developmental to take part. Slater first recalled how he was informed he would be a part of the show and how the powers that be thought he looked too similar to Edge:
“Dr. Tom (Prichard) pulled eight of us in the room, and he had an email saying “we need your eight best down there that are ready for TV.” I was one of the eight. Next thing I know, they thought that I looked too much like Edge. My hair was long, I had the long coat, I had long tights with emblems on the side that resembled, but didn’t look like [Edge’s]. But they told me before I got called up to go to NXT that I need to cut my hair off, gotta go to trunks and all this stuff to where I’m like, are you just changing everything about me?
“I was a bad guy in developmental. They wanted me to be a good guy on television to the point that they were stripping from us everything that we’d done, and now we were going on this game show and being people that we don’t know how to be.”
Slater also spoke about his experiences on the show and how it became a running joke that they didn’t know what would happen week to week:
“But the way that it was explained to us was that it was going to be like a points bracket system. If you win, you get five points. If you lose, you get zero. If it’s a draw, you get one, stuff like that. But then again, it was nothing like that.
It became each week us going to TV not knowing what the hell we’re doing. Not knowing if it’s a match or a keg carry contest, or we’re having a tag match or an obstacle course. It became a running joke, to where each week I’d be like, “Gosh, you hear what we’re doing? We’re having a hot dog eating contest!” I feel like we were guinea pigs on television with a game show that they were trying to make good.”
