Road Dogg Says Performances Will Be More ‘Comfortable’ Following Recent Character Changes

WWE

The effects of the WWE regime change back in July are still being felt among the WWE roster since Triple H took over the company following the retirement of Vince McMahon.

Over the past few months, various stars on the roster have found themselves reverting back to their previous characters, most recently with Max Dupri returning to his former LA Knight persona on this week’s episode of SmackDown.

WWE Hall of Famer Road Dogg was another person who was brought back to the company after being let go by the previous regime, and he spoke to Josh Martinez on Superstar Crossover about the changes in the company since the change in regime.

He said:

“I do think there’s already a feeling of creativity is alive again. A lot of times individual creativity was squelched, due to the creative desires of the studio, I’ll say, rather than say the creative writing team. So it stifled a lot of individual creativity, but I believe the conversation should be had with all who are wrestlers or creative about wrestling going forward, about how we can make it the best. I feel like that conversation wasn’t as welcomed under the last regime as it is under this regime, and I believe this regime just knows about collaboration.”

Road Dogg continued on, noting how he believes that the performances of the WWE talent on the show will be more comfortable now that more people are returning to their previous gimmicks from NXT.

He said:

“Well, look, I think a lot of people get invested in their NXT character and I know this was not the question you asked, but I feel like that’s where I went in my head. All these people come up, and they change their name, they change the character, and I feel that like it was problematic from the get-go. I was also blessed to be the Creative Director of Character Development down there in NXT, so a lot of those guys, I helped create the characters with their help, of course, it’s always a collaboration. But then they come up to the main roster and they get their names stripped and they go ‘Whoa, I can’t do that anymore.’ I think individually, it’s a weight lifted off people’s shoulders that they can sit there — look, they came up with this character because it was something they could sink their teeth into, and to have it stripped away when they come up to the main roster is gut-wrenching for them personally. I know that from just having conversations with several of them, it’s going to feel really good. Several people, several talents are going to prosper. Because we’re going to go back to old names, we’re going to go back to old characters, you’re going to see people get more comfortable with delivering their act because it’s closer to who they are. I think that’s where we’ll be going in the future.”

The changes have seen multiple WWE stars, such as Tommaso Ciampa, Austin Theory and Matt Riddle, receive their full names back after they were previously shortened by the old regime.

transcription via Fightful

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• Character Change
• Triple H
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