When Tyler Bate made his WWE debut, he become known for his mustache, which quickly became a fan-favorite look. After changing his look up a bit, Bate explained his decision to ditch the iconic look.
Speaking to Metro, Bate joked that he simply wanted to be more handsome, and was never a fan of the mustache himself, despite how others loved it.
“I think I just wanted to be more handsome,” joked Bate. “I wanted to be more like – just handsome to a regular person! The mustache was working, it was fun, but I couldn’t honestly look in the mirror and say, “Yeah”. Like, it wasn’t a very handsome look. It was a fun look! Much more comfortable with the beard.”
Bate went on to explain that he grew the mustache out when he was just 16, and that it was more so a wrestling decision than a personal one.
“I was carrying it for a while. So I grew the mustache when I was 16 and then 20 would have been when I grew a beard out,” said Bate. “So yeah, I had just the mustache for four years. I would go to college with the mustache, everyone looked at me like I was insane!”
Bate also credited fellow British wrestling superstar Chris Brookes with the decision to grow it out, and joked that his mom “hated” the look, but his dad, as well as many fans across the United Kingdom, loved it.
“So I wanted to grow out just the mustache. And it was him,” Bate said of Brookes. “He was living with me at the time, It was him who egged me on to do it. So I had really fair hairs at the time, really fair blonde hairs. So I’ve got my sister’s eyeliner – or whatever you use for your eyelashes – and I had this jet black, like really fair haired mustache and I looked like Groucho Marx!
“People were chanting ‘Tyler’s mustache.’ I thought, ‘Maybe I’m onto something right now’”
