During a recent appearance on the “Tagging In” podcast, Ridge Holland (Luke Menzies) claimed WWE never truly got behind the Brawling Brutes despite the faction organically getting over, and that Sheamus remained the focus as an alternative of raising the entire group. He said,
“I’m grateful for the opportunities. We had a good time, like on the road and stuff, it was good. It was an excellent learning experience. But I feel being young and probably not experienced in that environment, I wasn’t superb at advocating for myself. These guys which can be politicking. I even have little doubt that Sheamus was keeping himself strong throughout the group. He was definitely the focus, whereas it must have been that he was bringing us, me and Pete, each up. That’s what it must have been, raising the tide to lift all ships. But we had some big matches but I just never felt like they were fully bought in. We managed to get ourselves over organically, and from that, Sheamus had one of the vital organic babyface runs of his profession. I just never felt they capitalized on it. I don’t think we were ever a priority. Then once we got ourselves over, it’s almost like for those who get yourself over regardless of the booking, they don’t really need you to try this. It’s like, it needs to be their idea. They must be on top of things. For those who recover from because they need you to and so they put the machine behind you, you’re off to the races. But for those who recover from, it’s obviously not within the plan for those who’re not within the plan. They did give us some grace by putting us in big matches, but I just think there was loads more that we could have done and progressed.”
During a recent appearance on the “Wrestling Life Online” podcast, Ridge Holland (Luke Menzies) admitted his WWE run left him physically worse off than a 12-year skilled rugby profession ever did.
You possibly can take a look at some highlights from the podcast below:
On his WWE run: “I never had any neck issues from rugby and even at my early days wrestling but obviously as you go on… I had a freak injury in NXT where I blew each my legs out. Then I broke my nose on the principal roster and had various things that kept popping up. But I might say I’ve got hurt a hell of loads more in skilled wrestling and doing something that’s, quote unquote, fake than I ever did playing skilled rugby for 12 years. So yeah, work that one out.”
On how WWE messed with him after Big E’s injury: “I remember the week after we were imagined to exit for a segment on SmackDown. Vince [McMahon] arranged for me to chop an apology promo just before we were about to go outlast. Now, I don’t know if this was a test. Pretty poor taste. But we were about to exit for our segment. It was live. I remember him counting me down. It was identical to an apology thing, and I didn’t know what I used to be going to say. I used to be just going to be as real as I could, speak from the center. It went like 10, 9, 8, and it got to five, 4… then I saw Vince, Bruce just go like nah. They cut it on the last minute, the last second. Then we just went out for the segment, and I believed from then on, I never felt the identical way concerning the company. I believed that they simply did that to mess with me.”
On almost losing trust in himself: “When the accident happened, we got here to the back and Brock [Lesnar] was sitting next to Vince [McMahon]. There was other top stars there and you desire to work with these guys. It’s like ‘Well, that’s my likelihood of working with these guys gone because they ain’t going to trust me.’ I almost didn’t trust myself again within the ring and I feel that affected my performances as well.”
On WWE scrapping controversial Ilja Dragunov injury angle: “That was my idea. … I believed it’s a gimmick. I believed, why not? It’s right there in front of us. Why not use it? I used to be okay using it. The thought was that I used to be stepping into there attempting to prove myself as a babyface and attempting to redeem myself. It was at all times like a redemption storyline. But then things kept going improper almost like my profession, and that I used to be going to maintain hurting people by accident. Then the character turn could be, ‘Perhaps I’m imagined to do that. Do I like this? Perhaps I do. Actually, I do.’ That’s where the heel turn would have come. They were all for it, after which after the thing happened with Ilja [Dragunov] – It did rather well on social media, there was a whole lot of buzz about it and Ilja did an excellent job – Shawn [Michaels] pulled me, and he said, ‘Look we’ve had word from top that it’s slightly bit too near the bone, so we’re going to must call you off.’”