WWE star MVP was a recent guest on the Say Less with Kaz And Lowkey’ podcast with former writer Kazeem Famuyide to talk all things pro-wrestling. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Says he doesn’t want to reboot the Nation of Domination but create something new:
No, no, short answer is no, because I’ve been hearing the chatter and I’ve been seeing that and I don’t wanna do the new anything. The Nation was done, it was awesome in the time that it was done. It was needed, stars were made. I don’t wanna rehash something else, I wanna bring something new, and I don’t necessarily, in our approach to The Hurt Business, me and Bobby, as you know are legitimate friends away from wrestling. We boys. Shelton is one of my closest friends. I just like making money with my friends, you know what I’m saying? And I see young, talented guys — I asked to worked with Apollo. I said, ‘Give me him, let me work with him. I know we can get it out of him.’ He’s got it, he’s tremendously talented. He just needs a little coaxing, he just needs a little help, some understanding and me and Apollo, we’ll work on things together, we’ll have conversations before certain segments and he’s coachable. That’s why he’s been successful. Now I’ve always wanted to work with Ricochet. Ricochet has been one of my favorite dudes for years. I used to tell him, ‘If you could talk like you wrestle, you’d be a millionaire.’ I used to tell him that all the time and now, unfortunately I also tell him all the time now, ‘At this stage of my career, I can’t have the kind of match that I’d like to have with you, but we can still have a great match just because of my veteranship and understanding of how things go’ but, I have no interest in rehashing the Nation of Domination and while I do wanna present myself and Bobby and Shelton as strong black role models, successful, we’re businessmen. We’re not trying to make a statement on race. We’re trying to just make a statement, and in our case, what we’re trying to do, it’s not about black or white, it’s about gold and green, and at that point, I love the fact that there are young men of color that can watch us and go, ‘Oh, I wanna be like them’ because when I was a kid, I used to wanna be like Rocky Johnson and Tony Atlas. ‘Man, when I grow up, I wanna look like that. I wanna be like them.’
On lifting up black talents in wrestling:
I hear some of the social media chatter about uplifting black talents in wrestling and you have some people that say, ‘Oh they don’t do anything with black talent,’ and then certain black talent will win a championship and then those same people go, ‘You’re just giving them that because of whatever.’ But dude, how do you want it man? You want black champions and black talents uplifted but then when they do, your response is, ‘Oh well you’re just doing this because of’ blah, blah, blah. I don’t give a f*ck why they’re doing it, they’re doing it and let’s have more of that, and to [Paul] Heyman’s credit, if you ask him, ‘Aye man, how come you had all these people of color in these positions?’ His answer straight up was, ‘Man, I looked at the hand I’m dealt and I played my best cards. I didn’t go with people of color, I went with the best talented people that I could use in those situations.
Full interview can be found here. (H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)
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