‘Road Dogg’ Brian James did an interview with Liam Alexander-Stewart of Inside The Ropes where he spoke about a wide range of topics. Here are the highlights:
Road Dogg Reveals His Favorite Triple H Story:
” I think what I’m going to say is my ‘favourite story is…While I was at the worst part of my life and I was trying to trying to crawl back out of that hole, when I wasn’t completely out of the hole yet. He called me and said, ‘hey, do you want to come back?’ So he has looked out for me since day one. He always has and I’ve always looked out for him as well. We’ve been friends for 30 years. He picked me up when I was down prior to that as well, I was just one of the guys he would carry to their room. So he’s got a special place in my heart and always will.
During that very pivotal time in my life, he was there for me and look, several , I’ll say four people were there for me and and he was one of them. So that that means the world to me. He took care of me for many years and then me and him used to try to calm each other down when we wouldn’t get our way creatively and we’d say to each other, ‘This is just phony baloney wrestling, man. It’s just men wrestling,’ you know, ‘wrestling around in their underwear.’
So we would try to make light of it and tell each other ‘Remember, keep your feet on the ground, bro.’ So more than just a story about him doing something funny to me and me doing something funny to him. The story is a 30 year, three decade friendship. I’ve been with him longer than I’ve been with my wife, and that’s the truth. Billy [Gunn], Jeff [Jarrett] and Ron [Killing] is the same way.
Triple H is a special guy. He is a special guy to me for a lot of reasons. Look, also, when I came back and inducted my father into the Hall of Fame, one of my favourite things was I had been sober a year, and it was that Hell in the Cell match with him and Undertaker.
When ‘Taker had the Hells Gate on and that that sledgehammer was right there and he was crawling for it with his hand. I was on the edge of my seat and I’m sitting in the top in a booth in a clubhouse and I was marking out, and that’s after me knowing the dude for 20 years at the time and being in matches with him. But still to see them and to see that and to see it with clear eyes for the first time, it almost made me fall in love with wrestling again.”
Road Dogg Names Which NXT Star Is The Total Package:
“There are several of them and look, one’s the champion right now, Bron Brekker and it’s not because I love his family. It’s because he’s an incredible athlete, an incredible human being. Look, nine times out of ten and people say, I’m a WWE apologist and whatever, but nine times out of ten, Vince will ask you, Hey, this kid’s good, huh? Yes, sir. What kind of person is he? So that matters and this kid is that and he is the total package, literally.
There’s another, a young lady, Nikita Lyons. I think she’s got a ton of charisma. She can rap, dance, work a little, too. I think she’s getting better at her in-ring work, which that’s why she’s there and that’s what she’s doing. She’s very young. I think she has a huge upside. She also has a huge backside. Oh, okay. I couldn’t help that! [Laughs]”
Road Dogg Discusses Why He Was Released/ Being Released For Being A Triple H Guy:
“So, look, in every conspiracy theory, there’s a wrinkle of truth, right? So I don’t think that’s the case. I think what they did, it’s business. So because I have been on the business side of this business for the past ten years, I look at it differently than I would have looked at it from ‘the boys’ perspective.
Look, the fact that they cut me and my brother and 13 others that day…from a business decision, you just saved yourself probably $5-10 million in a year. You know what I mean? So from a business perspective, ‘Hey, we got to trim some fat down there.’ Now, if by trimming that fat, my name came into play because I was a Hunter guy. I can’t speak to that and I don’t think that would be the case.
I think it would be, ‘We got to get rid of a bunch of people’. These are the people that are making the most money, to be quite honest with you, but how else do we trim the fat? Vince and I spoke after that via text and it’s all gravy, I thanked him for the ten years of life experience and ten years’ worth of pay.”
Road Dogg Reveals The Secret Behind DX’s Success:
“I actually think, truth be told, I think it was tolerance on their [WWE’s] behalf, on the office’s behalf. They really let us do whatever we wanted to do and just tell us to kind of not take it too far. Several times we did [take it too far] and we were told about it and scolded about it. But they really let us go. So I guess leniency or, you know, they trusted us to not take it too far and we spoiled that trust several times.”
“No [nothing was shut down]. Everything we wanted to do, we did. They took a lot of the scenarios they wrote us into when it was Russo writing, and then they would kind of let us act our way out of them, you know what I mean? So we would know what the skit was about or we would know who we’re supposed to be talking about, the bullet points and then they roll cameras.
Look, you said you had individual talents and stuff. I think it was just the classic ‘the sum is greater than the individual’ and I felt that way. I know Hunter kind of outgrew DX and became his own entity and his own brand within himself and that’s cool. But at that time, I felt like it was for young, hungry guys that wanted the ball and Vince was giving it to us.”
