On being a dad:
“It’s good. We’re very lucky. She sleeps through the night. She’s almost seven months old now. Since she was five months old she slept from seven at night until about 6:30 in the morning. So can’t complain [laughs]. Everyone says that first year is super hard. I get it.”
On returning to WWE:
“I had a lot of faith that when I was released that I would end up back in WWE. I didn’t think it would be so soon. So when I got released, I remember Drew McIntyre messaging me and talking about his experience, and he said it took almost seven years before he got re-signed. He did a lot, obviously, in the UK scene and stuff like that. So I was planning maybe three or four years, maybe I could get a good run in Japan for a couple of years and then be back in WWE. But then it ended up being 16 or 17 months I was gone. Obviously things changed. Hunter was sort of back in charge again, and I was always a Hunter guy in NXT, and he reached out to me and ended up back.”
On his goal when he got released:
“I’ve always had a big passion for Japanese-style wrestling. When I started wrestling, I trained in the Inoki style of wrestling. The guy that trained me actually trained under Inoki, so I always had a big passion for that. And I thought, well, if I can’t do WWE, that’s where I’ll go. Then I ended up fitting really well and then I had a decision to make, whether to stay in Japan and continue to pursue that, or to come back to WWE. And I think for me, I’ve been a lifelong fan of WWE, I didn’t get to do things like be on a Monday Night Raw or be on SmackDown or the PLEs or pay-per-views, what they used to call them, so that sort of was the drawing force to bring me back. I still had a lot of moments, I think I needed to get ticked off.”
On what WWE is seeing in him now that maybe they didn’t before:
“I think Hunter always saw it. Obviously, I don’t think the other higher-ups saw it for whatever reason. I was babyface at the time. I’ve always said I work better as a heel, and I tried to push for that in NXT, and it didn’t happen. They wanted to keep me as babyface, which is fine. Now that I’m back, I’ve been able to be a heel, but I sort of still was on the back burner for the first year or so. I’m one of those guys that is almost like a match guy. I guess you can say you can throw me in there with a cruiserweight at someone like a Ricochet, and I’ll have like, a great match. Or I can go in there with someone like Braun Strowman to have a good match. They always know that they can get a good match out of me. But it’s those extra things that I think have elevated me in the last three months or so, which is attacking people, and all the backstage stuff and just some viral moments, which I’ve always wanted to do.”
On the 6 Tsunamis delivered to Seth Rollins:
“I think it was supposed to be significantly less. Then the way that it turned out with Hunter’s vision, is it just was more and more and more. It was one of those things where you’re listening to the audience, you can just feel a change in the audience, as I was doing it, hit the first two, they’re sort of booing. It looks like that’s it. Then I go out for the third one, people sort of like, what the hell’s going on here? Then I go up for the fourth one, they can’t comprehend what’s happening. And by the fifth one, they’re chanting for more. There’s like blood lust amongst the crowd for someone that they love as well. They love Seth Rollins. I was glad that it actually ended up working where after the sixth one I left, and they still started chanting and singing his music that he comes out to, so that also worked.”
On telling Seth more Tsunamis were coming:
“As it’s happening. So it’s one of those things like, yeah, he has to be willing to be there and I have to be willing to be able to do more. But it had definitely worked out and made for such a great moment in television. I think I had so much buzz around that, and then people online as well saying they haven’t seen something like that in WWE for so long, where you can take someone to just propel them in one night with just one segment. Not a match, nothing else, just that.”
On that being his defining moment:
“I think so for sure. I spoke with Hunter right afterwards and he said that’s a moment that will last forever, they can replay that as much as possible. For me, it’s nowhere near as good, because he’s one of the best ever, but it’s like Stone Cold at King of the Ring doing the 3:16 line, that promo, you instantly remember it, and you instantly remember a switch and his character and where it went from then. I’m hoping that people remember the 6 Tsunamis as something similar.”
On travel issues:
“When I was in NXT, and then when I first returned to WWE I was still in coach, and then I had to do some contract negotiations. Yeah, that’s legitimately the thing. I’m like, I don’t fit. Like, I need first class travel, which I have now. Thank God.”
On if he planned for the Braun Strowman segments to go viral:
“No, I don’t think so. I was excited to be able to work with Braun. I think there was a natural chemistry there, we have maybe touched one time before in the Andre the Giant battle royal last year. And I was like, Oh, we could do something there with me and him. But then it’s like, what do you do? And then Hunter obviously had great vision for things, came up with the car angle and everything. And then once we were filming that, it’s in the moment, I was like, Okay, this is gonna be cool. I think people were gonna really respond to this. And then it ended up being WWE’s most viral moment of the week. I think it got almost 13 million views across social media platforms. So it worked.”
On not being able to practise the segments:
“It’s one of those things. The car’s there and it’s like, if we practice it, we’re going to destroy the car. So it just has to be [there and then] and that’s also, was all one live take as well. Some people thought that maybe we stopped recording that earlier in the day or something, and then did the rest live? And I was like, No, that’s all one continuous thing, everything me and Braun’s done has been live.”
On how matches are different if the opponent is bigger:
“I think pacing is a little different. If it’s two big guys we can’t be running around doing stuff like that. Obviously, everything that we endure, every punch from someone that big is different to a punch from someone smaller, and I think that’s a problem. I’m not calling anyone out, but in our business now, a lot of people will sell things the same for every single person. So they will wrestle someone, say Akira Tozawa, who’s great, but I’m not going to sell for Akira Tozawa the same way I’d sell for Braun Strowman. But there are people in our business now because they’re so used to just to doing whatever the way they sell, yeah, that’s how they sell. And it’s like, no, you need to change your [style], every match should be different.”
On throwing a fan:
“Yeah, he had a Yeet shirt on [laughs]. I mean, I didn’t expect that one to be as viral as it is. That actually got the most views out of everything from that most recent match we did. I thought maybe going through the wall would be more viral, but it was hit with a fan getting thrown. I think because people just aren’t expecting it, again, yeah, you know he’s doing his train thing, and then out of nowhere, you just see some guy coming to screen.”
On the way Wade Barrett calls the Tsunami:
“Since he’s been back, he hasn’t been able to say it, I haven’t hit it since he’s been back. So yeah, he’s patiently waiting. The last two weeks he has been like tsunami? And I’m like, No soon enough.”
Did he tell you he was gonna say it like that?
“No. So I obviously told him what the finisher was back in NXT, and he was like, Yeah, I’m gonna think of a way to say it. And then he just instinctively just went with my motion, I guess, and it’s perfect. His voice, everything, and everyone wants him to say it like there’s nothing against Michael Cole, who is great. Everyone’s great. But everyone wants Wade to say it.”
On his WWE return being somewhat underwhelming:
“I think this sort of happens at times. Obviously, I’d been rehired, they want to use me. They don’t really know what to do with me. So they sort of just rush something, put you in something so you’re at least on TV, and they can start to establish you and stuff. But I think the best way to do things is to make him impactful. I did something similar to what I did with Seth in TNA when I went to Impact Wrestling, I attacked Josh Alexander on my first night. I only gave him three tsunamis. But it was enough to be like, Oh my God, this guy is an instant threat against one of the main guys here in TNA. Like, what’s he going to do? And I think that’s sort of what I should have done in my debut with WWE, but that’s out of my control.”
On there being no follow-up to his Andre The Giant Battle Royal win:
“I feel like people sort of, and hopefully not people within our company, but people sort of not disrespected the trophy, but like, it’s sort of like a throwaway match, and I wanted to win it and make sure that it wasn’t that. I was hoping that I could do more with the trophy, but I’d won it and then I didn’t see it the next week. I don’t know what they did with it but I said I wanted to carry it around for a couple of months and make it like a thing, but that didn’t happen. Andre the Giant is such a pivotal figure in wrestling, he became bigger than wrestling. You could go to Australia, where I’m from, and mention Andre the Giant in the 80s and people would know who he was, he was a worldwide name. So I feel like they need to sort of make that more of a thing than what it is.”
On his Mount Rushmore of wrestling:
“My top two of all time, Kenta Kobashi from Japan and Stone Cold Steve Austin, they’re always on there. Then the other two sort of fluctuate, but usually a third is Dusty Rhodes. I just was a huge fan of Dusty Rhodes. I feel like he could do everything, wrestle promo, everything. He also was another big guy that, yeah, people don’t realize, like he was 300 pounds and he was moving around in there, like, yeah.”
On the biggest thing he has learned from Paul Heyman:
“I think it’s how to present myself in the ring. I’ve always wrestled a certain way and for a big man, but there’s even more I can do with my size and to make myself look different. He’s always looking for something that’s different, that and just his promo work is ridiculous. I’ll go to him about a promo, and he’ll just cut a promo off of his head, and it’s like, the best promo I’ve ever heard.”
What is Bronson Reed grateful for?
“My daughter, my wife and wrestling fans.”
