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Butch says that knowing how his new character on the main roster would be received was "a pretty anxious, tense time."
The 28-year-old appeared on an episode of Out of Character released on Wednesday. During the discussion, he was asked about his transition from Pete Dunne to Butch after being called up to the main roster.
"I was just about to board the plane, I got a call saying the new name and a basic rundown of the vision. Then I spent the whole flight thinking to myself, 'How is this going to be received?' And knowing how it was going to be received, for the most part," he responded.
"Luckily I have a great network around me in wrestling. I was able to call William Regal, Shawn Michaels, get their opinion on it. The sort of overriding conclusion I came to was Pete Dunne the name, that isn't why people connect to me, people connect to me through what I do in the ring."
"There are a lot of people now that have really come around to the Butch character, whatever that means now, but there's a lot of people who liked the work that we did, especially now [that] I'm getting that time to go out there and wrestle."
"Knowing how that was going to be received, that was a pretty anxious, tense time. But the second it was out there, and then you get that wave of people saying, 'What's this? This is not what we wanted.'"
"If anything I took it as a huge positive because the fact that people were so upset by it at times, or concerned about it, worried about it, it shows how into what we've done in the past they were and I'm grateful for every single one of them."
Butch would also say that since he began portraying Butch on the main roster, he has been more popular with kids.
"What I will say, especially about the earlier Butch stuff, it's the first time in my career that when I meet people in the street they say, 'you're my kid's favorite wrestler.' It's always been before 'you're my favorite wrestler.'"
"That was nice to see that okay now I'm connecting with a completely different portion of the audience."
Butch was also asked about his relationship with Paul "Triple H" Levesque.
"I have full trust in him. That whole UK tournament and all that, the trust that he put in me to do that. To that point, he probably seen me have one tryout match - he probably had watched footage of me and stuff separately - but I hadn't even met him until the press conference which was a few weeks before the UK tournament, and then never worked with him until the UK tournament. He had full trust in me to go out there and have three or four matches that weekend, to be the ongoing story throughout that weekend, and to sort of build the UK title around me, myself and Tyler [Bate], Trent [Seven], Mark Andrews, others. The trust he put in me there, ever since then my full trust is in him. I try not to bother him too much but I know that he's there, I know that he's approachable."
Butch says transition to WWE main roster was 'a pretty anxious, tense time'
Butch appeared on Out of Character with Ryan Satin.
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