Sabu was a recent guest on Total Engagement with Matt Koon. The ECW original spoke about staying silent as an on-air character, saying it wasn’t a gimmick because he is very uncomfortable when it comes to speaking in public:
“It hurt me that I didn’t talk a lot, but it wasn’t a gimmick. I’m shy and I can’t really speak in public. Right now I’m even starting to get nervous. When I was a kid, I watched all the wrestlers come out yelling and screaming with my mom, and she turned to me and said: “You should never do that.” So I never did, I promised her.
It hurt me, everyone wanted me to talk and I didn’t. People thought I was holding up my gimmick, but I wasn’t. I was shitting my pants at the thought of talking. I’d rather jump off a building than talk. It hurt me, but I was willing to take it.”
The topic of WWE’s infamous ECW December to Dismember pay-per-view came up, and Sabu explained why he was pulled from the event after being booked in the Extreme Elimination Chamber match in the main event of the show. Sabu says he was initially told he could keep his persona made famous in the original ECW, but differences over a lengthy promo led to him being removed from the match due to an on-air injury:
“They didn’t tell me anything. Stephanie had a three-paragraph promo for me to memorize. I wouldn’t do it, they asked me to do it live on the Monday before the show. The next day, they had me out with an injury and the show went on without me.
When they brought me in, they promised me that they’d keep me just as I was in ECW, but they lied. After about three months, they kept asking me to cut promos. Paragraphs of things I would never say, and I would always cut them down to just a few words.
When people ask me if I was in WWE, I always say no. I hate it when they say “ECW/WWE star”. I don’t consider myself ever there, I stopped by and didn’t stick around.”
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