Big E is excited to scout former college athletes for WWE.
The former WWE Champion has a presence at WWE’s SummerSlam tryouts in Nashville this week while still recovering from a neck injury. In his downtime, Big E spoke with The Ringer about how this opportunity came about.
“It’s really cool to be behind the scenes. We’ll break for lunch and we’re having these conversations about who we like or what we liked about certain talent. It’s really interesting to see people—just to back track a little bit—Triple H called me a couple of weeks ago and said, ‘Is this something you might want to do? No pressure, not forcing you to come out.’ Any of those things, but I talked to James Kimball who has been awesome. He worked with UFC before, but he’s now with the company [Senior Vice President of WWE].
“And we talked about NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness). As a former college athlete, that is big because I’ve seen so many former college athletes come and go who left college and got their degree—some of them, some of them didn’t—but a lot of them left with nothing in their pockets. College football is generating so much money right now. There’s so much money in college sports right now, and I’m so glad to see athletes finally able to profit off of their name, image, and likeness. Anyways, I worked with James Kimball on that stuff. He’s involved with the tryout and Hunter called me about it as well.”
The former WWE Champion also discussed his respect for independent wrestlers, but he noted that he can’t personally speak to that experience given the way his journey to WWE unfolded.
“Again, one of the things I thought is that is if it was all indie talent, I don’t know if I would’ve said yes. Not because I have a lack of respect for indie talent—it’s the opposite—it’s just like I can’t really speak to that experience. I’ve never wrestled on the independents. So you have better eyes, there’s Norman Smiley, Steve Corino, you know, there’s so many of these men and women as coaches in NXT who have a better eye for that stuff. So I didn’t think I fit as well there. They told me the average age is 23 for the tryouts. I was 23 when in 2009 when I got signed as a former college athlete. So I just see myself in so many of these men and women who are trying out right now. And I just wanted to be here to help lend a hand, to help give advice, whatever it is, just to be here. And I was also just tired of being in the house! I just wanted to get out of the house a little bit.
In regards to some of the talent Big E has spotted, he stated, “There’s one cat who squats 900 pounds, there’s a 6’3″ woman. You just see all the accolades—four-time All-American, a three-year captain. It’s just so impressive.”
Related: Dwight Howard Makes Surprise Appearance, Cuts Promo At WWE SummerSlam Tryout
