Life isn’t always what you expect it to be…just ask Dolph Ziggler.
The former World Heavyweight Champion recently appeared on Ryan Satin’s ‘Out Of Character’ podcast and went in-depth about how he was originally supposed to be Kurt Angle’s protégé in WWE.
Some fans might remember that Ziggler (Nick Nemeth) first appeared on WWE TV as Chavo Guerrero’s “caddy” when he began portraying a character named Kerwin White in September 2005. The angle was soon dropped after Eddie Guerrero’s death later that year, and Nemeth was taken off of television. Ziggler would then spend some time in OVW before coming back to RAW but it wasn’t the protege gimmick he was originally told. He explained that plans were quickly changed, which landed him a cheerleading gig as part of the now-infamous Spirit Squad.
“I was told, ‘you’re going to be Kurt Angle’s protégé because you’re an awesome collegiate wrestler, you’re a badass, you work hard, you’re picking it up almost as fast as he did’ but then they go ‘you’re a cheerleader, what do you think about that?’ and my stomach dropped and I felt sick. Like, this isn’t character work, I thought at the time, you get ONE shot in this business and I somehow got this far and my one shot is going to be a cheerleader. I was like there’s no way I pictured in my head that one year from now a cheerleader is in the main event of WrestleMania fighting for a world title, if anything the cheerleaders are gonna be dumped into a box and sent back to OVW. So, I guess I’m pretty fast at learning.”
The Spirit Squad was revisited a few years ago when they were brought back to WWE TV in October 2016 for Dolph Ziggler’s feud with The Miz. Kenny (Kenny Dykstra / Kenn Doane) and Mike Mondo (Mikey) worked a few tag team matches during this stretch, including an unsuccessful tag team title match against Heath Slater and Rhyno, before leaving TV in December.
Dolph Ziggler would go on to describe to Satin what it was like working in a program with Triple H and Shawn Michaels early on in his career among several topics.
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