Sheamus was on Corey Graves’ “After The Bell” podcast this week. Sheamus covered a bunch of topics including his return from injury, his early days in WWE and more.
Here are some highlights:
Sheamus addressed the controversial nature of the Sheamus-Jeff Hardy storyline: “There was a lot of backlash. A lot of people really hate me right now. At the end of the day, we are characters. My job is to be the most hated character ever and I thrive in that situation. When I first started, the aggression part of the ring has always been easy for me. I always felt the promos in the ring was where I wasn’t sure where I needed to be. I would trip over things I have to say because I have to get this promo out exactly right. It held me back quite a bit in my career. My look was so unique. I was a big Irish dude. When it came to the stick, that left a lot to be desired. When you talk about coming back with a passion, I knew there were certain things in my game I had to work on. When I was Cesaro and The Bar, we weren’t challenged in that situation. We shared promos together. There were certain things in my game that needed to be tightened up. One was my physique which I wasn’t happy with. I’m enjoying this stuff with Jeff because it has given my character a lot of opportunity to play with words and watch the reaction, especially on social media, to how much people hate me, the more I enjoy sticking a knife into Jeff.”
Sheamus explained the heat he got early on in WWE: “When I first started, HHH was there and he took me under his wing. We went on a tour of Australia. I didn’t know anybody. I was on SmackDown but got switched to a tour of RAW for a tour of Australia in 2009. He said, you don’t know anybody so if you want to go to the gym and work out, I can watch your matches and give you any feedback, and I was blown away. If you do that now, everybody in NXT does that now and there is not one peep said about it. They all go online. You see Finn Balor, Tomasso Ciampa and Adam Cole talk about HHH. I never went out there and pushed it out there. I went to the gym once or twice, maybe two or three times we had a workout and then apparently I was HHH’s workout buddy. I got blasted by everybody who was in contact with dirt sheets saying I was up HHH’s a** and I was a kiss a**. No matter what I did in the first couple years achievement wise, it was blacklisted and they said I only got that because he is up HHH’ a**. I was busting my bal** doing 5 or 6 shows a week. I was driving to shows I didn’t have to be just to go there and learn. I was going to FCW when I could have been sitting at home to keep learning. None of that mattered. The only thing people saw was I was a kiss a**. Right off the bat, it was boom! Especially when I won that title from John (Cena) at TLC. Bro, so many people were so mad. They were so mad saying who is this guy coming in here? Who is he? Where did he come from? I’ve been here 6 years. I’ve been here 8 years. I’ve never been WWE Champion. He is here for minutes and he is WWE Champ.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit After The Bell with Corey Graves with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
