NXT UK Champion Pete Dunne was the latest guest on E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness. Dunne opened up about his time in WWE and his long reign as NXT UK Champion, the emergence of the NXT UK brand and more. Highlights appear below.
(Transcription Credit: Michael McClead, WrestleZone)
On Making Successful Changes In His Career:
The people that were coming out of Britain that were staring to make a name were people like Will Ospreay, people like Mark Andrews that could do things that I couldn’t really do and it was sitting down and realizing, ‘OK, I’ve got to change things around. I’ve got to find something that other people aren’t doing without relying on those kind of moves.’ The things I was trying to do at times with the high flying stuff really was a step by step process of figuring out – I’ve been doing this since I was 12 years old – since back then and struggling my whole way up and going to Japan and finding who I am and then eventually when I was trying to break out a little bit and going, ‘OK, I’ve got to be different than the people that are already breaking out.’ It really was a case of sitting down and thinking to myself, ‘How are we gonna do this?’ And little by little by going back to my roots and wrestling more of a British style and little by little piecing it together and then eventually finding myself at Madison Square Garden with nine of the other lads from NXT and having the pride of being in that position….really is a special feeling.
On The Inception Of ‘Bruiserweight’:
Honestly that one was a bit of a joke to start with. So, I was in the process of stripping everything back. I was like, ‘I’m just gonna wear plain black gear and I’m just gonna go out and wrestle a British style and figure it out as I go.’ I ended up on a tour of China. I was there for 5 weeks, which is a surreal experience in itself. Some night we were wrestling in front of two people. Some nights it was 20 people, some nights 200 people. That was as big as it got, but we were wrestling every single day and there was a guy there called John Skyler and we found ourselves in a tag team and we needed a name. It was at the time there was a buzz about 205 and the cruiserweights came in. It was a joke. We called ourselves The Bruiserweights and put it on social media and never expected anything more to come of it. Like I said, it was maybe in front of 10 people. When I came back to the UK a promoter who runs RevPro messaged around and said, ‘I’m really interested in this Bruiserweight thing you’ve been doing.’ I went to the booking. It was a great platform, so I went along with it and said, ‘I guess people like it,’ so I went along with it and the rest is history.
On His Wrestling Influences:
Originally when I first got into wrestling I was a big fan of early Ring of Honor era and the independents; Bryan Danielson [Daniel Bryan], Low Ki, AJ Styles was a huge one. I guess that’s where the occasional bit of high flying I do comes from. As I got further in my career, I started imitating that stuff, but I did a seminar with Finlay and he got me up in the ring and he threw me around and he moved me around. I couldn’t believe it. It was such a step up from what I thought pro wrestling was. To even be in the ring for 2-3 minutes in a seminar, I didn’t have a choice. He was moving me around and throwing me around in a way that I had never felt before. From that point on, I was on a bit of a mission and I went and watched as many videos of him as I could and tried to study how he was doing things and sorta tried it out on show to show around the country. He was a massive influence. Then I went from there embracing the British roots of people like Regal and watching a lot of World of Sport tapes and then sorta mixing the two and the independent style as well.
On WWE’s Fulfilling Early Promises & The Benefit Of Having Time:
We were promised from day one that something would happen. They just said they didn’t know when and they didn’t know what it was gonna be exactly and it was still a long time after it happened, but I feel like that match definitely helped cement it, especially for worldwide wrestling fans that hadn’t seen us and fans in the US that had been introduced to that tournament – it made them feel like it was something they wanted to see and legitimized the title a little bit more. We were told from day one by Regal and Triple H….the plan was for this to be a full time show….I’m really glad for the way it happened because had it happened on the back of the first tournament we might have worked harder to come in and be something unique, but flash forward to two years later we have more confidence and more of a following. Every chance we had to appear on a TakeOver and be a part of NXT, weekly programming in the US, or doing RAW, or live events, once again it felt like a right time for the show to be airing. Right off the bat, maybe it wasn’t the right time.
On His WWE Dream Opponent:
The one that would be sort of a dream match with me would be Brock Lesnar. I think that would be a really interesting mix of styles, especially with his size and stuff he generally wouldn’t work with people my size especially wrestling the style I do. I think that would be really interesting one for people to watch. AJ Styles is a massive one for me obviously. He is someone I’ve always wanted to wrestle. Rey Mysterio is up there too, but then aside from that even in the NXT brand there are so many people I still haven’t had a chance to work with. I had to do one or two matches with Matt Riddle on the independents and I look to wrestle Matt Riddle on NXT and put out some interesting stuff people haven’t seen before.
Readers may listen to Edge & Christian‘s interview with Pete Dunne below:
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