Former WWE star Aiden English was interviewed this week on the Fightful podcast.
He was on the show to talk about his “Wrestling With Whiskey” project, his time in FCW and NXT, thoughts on Triple H, The Vaudevillains, getting signed by WWE, the NXT tag team division, promo class and more.
Here are some highlights:
Aiden English discussed HHH in NXT: “Even back then, he was coming to Tampa to tell us, hey guys, here is where we are going to go. He was the one showing us the concepts for the Performance Center. He was leading us on the tours when we would go over there. He was there when we broke ground and all that kind of stuff. It is his baby. He wanted to take it from that FCW island unto itself into developmental. He was there at every TV and every TakeOver. So, while the production and the brand itself has grown, his involvement has grown and he was always there on the ground floor.”
English talked about the creation of the Vaudevillians gimmick: “The story I was told was that at NXT TV, HHH had seen Simon with his mustache. I give Simon credit. He would always show up for television looking good with a bow tie, waxed up mustache, and always on gimmick. Hunter saw him and said that is a unique look. He (HHH) said English has this performer, singer, dancer, entertainer character about him. He wondered if there was something we could do with us as a tag team. The next day, the coaches came up to us and said, this is the idea from the boss and that is to come up with a concept and we will talk to Dusty about it. Everyone kept talking about Vaudeville and old school stuff. I went home and thought, Vaudeville, and we are going to be bad guys, so Vaudevillians. That’s cheesy and funny. Let’s try it. They loved the name and each week we picked it up from there.”
Aiden felt his relationship with Rusev could have lasted longer: “Absolutely. We all thought so. We wanted to ride that thing until the wheels fell off. I really thought we could have had something. I said this before. I’m not going to besmirch them at all but I thought of it akin to a New Day type of thing, Like, here are these guys with a super over the top characters. They came in and were heels but they were so entertaining they became babyfaces and had longevity. While I thought, while not the same thing, here we are presented as these bad guys, but people are into our act. Maybe we could bounce back and forth as time goes on. I think there was longevity here. We both really wish it would have been able to have a longer life.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Fightful Pro Wrestling & MMA Podcast with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
