WWE Hall of Famer Rikishi was this week’s guest on The Chad Dukes Wrestling Show to talk about his appearance Saturday. September 24th in Joppa, MD at MCW Pro Wrestling’s Tribute to the Legends Convention, Rusev, his sons’ The Usos recent heel turn, the WWE Brand Split, Roman Reigns and more.
The show is available weekly as a podcast on iTunes, Play.it, and http://chaddukeswrestlingshow.
On the Uso’s recent turn:
“Change is good. The boys have been there for six years, they rapidly broke into people’s homes, and Uso became a household face and name and so forth, and after a while, it’s just time for a change. I think from what I’ve seen, I love the new look, I love the change that’s going on, but let’s just hope they stay in the loop, and let them do what they do. [The Usos] both love performing out there, they love getting out there, I know that they give it one hundred ten percent. So my advice to them, whatever position that you’re in, go out there and you win the fans out there. You’re out there to perform, you’re out there to entertain, whatever position that you’re put in, be it a heel or a babyface, go out there steal the show. To me, the way I see now, yeah, they turned heel, but you can kind of feel it, people really don’t want to hate that, and that’s because of all the love and respect the fans had for the Usos. I feel that they all know these two go out there and they put it on the line each and every night, like every other performer out there.”
On the brand split:
“From the boys’ standpoint, those that are still locked up in the performance center fighting for a way to come up, I think it’s good. It opens up a lot of opportunity for a lot of guys to work up to the top main event spot. When you only have RAW and so forth, there’s only so many people that you can put on there. Everything’s opened up, you have RAW with three hours, now you got SmackDown doing their own thing, and now let’s not overlook NXT. To me personally, I love the NXT brand. I love to see the new guys coming up, guys that we don’t know about the fans have never seen. Just to see the guys, how hard the passion, the drive, that they want to work hard to be able to get up to the main rosters, it’s so exciting to me to watch that brand of NXT. It’s a good thing for everybody that’s on the roster and even those that are trying to work up to the roster. Now you have a lot more opportunity.”
On Roman Reigns:
“I think with Roman it’s just one of those things where the fans, some of them like him, some of them don’t, some of them feel like he’s been pushed too fast, and some of them feel like because he’s related, he’s got a silver platter handed to him, but hey the business is exactly that. They don’t know exactly the person behind the scenes. Roman is a good father, he’s a good son, very humble type of person, he’s definitely an athlete if they Google him and follow his background, and he looks the part. Look at the dude. Roman, he looks like money and if anybody knows Vince McMahon, Vince McMahon is all about money and is all about putting the right person to be in that position. It’s just a lot on Roman shoulders, he’s got all that weight carrying on his shoulders and still he goes out there to give it one hundred ten percent each and every night. Me knowing him, no matter if there are things that he might be hurt about, as far as in his body, he’ll never show it. He’ll still go out there and do one hundred and ten percent because there’s just what Samoans do.”
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
