One of the most shocking names that was released from WWE last year was Nic Nemeth, formerly known as Dolph Ziggler. He recently shared his reasoning for why the Stamford-based promotion did not treat him like a main event star.
Recently, the former WWE Superstar was a special guest on the Wrestling Perspective podcast. During the interview, Nemeth shared his thoughts on why he was never a main eventer in WWE.
“So, I wanted to stand out and be different and also focus on selling. Because I thought everybody wasn’t really doing it. And someone who I love to hate, Randy Orton is very good at his job. And at the time he was a young… Really young guy, probably fighting for the World Title and everybody in the independents or OVW would watch him and go, ‘Okay. Short black hair. Black trunks. Stone-faced, act like a hard-ass, don’t sell anything and I am going to be the next Randy.
“And I went, ‘Screw that.’ I put my blonde hair in Pig Tails, pink trunks, when someone punched me, I flipped over the top rope and said, ‘I want to stand out. Because everyone was doing it this one way.’ So I think all those pieces also while I aam trying to learn how to wrestle made it stand out. To where, some people go, ‘Hey, you have a good psychology, hey you tell a good story. Hey, you could put a match together, hey if somebody gets hurt, you could take over.”
Nic Nemeth’s selling stood out because he took the finishers better than anyone
“I think it stood out the selling the most because one, people, no matter what they say, or what the story or what they believe. In the ring, there is still this in the back of your head where you want to look strong. Sometimes that is detrimental to the business. And I went above and beyond and said, ‘If it’s not my turn and it’s someone else’s, I want them to think that they are that much better because I helped five percent more than anybody else would have.’ And of course that did to a point where they go, ‘Man! we love watching you take Sheamus‘ finish and so you are going to take it 500 more times.’
“So that’s an upside and a downside. You get to nineteen and a half years. People start to realize how good you are and what you can do. But also if you take a finisher better than anybody else, that’s what we want to see on Monday Nights.”
Nic Nemeth on his early days in WWE
“So when I was first originally training, the timing is really weird. Real quick story of it. I got hired by WWE after my second tryout. And as I got in there, I am 5’11”, I was wrestling a 165-pound guy tops, I’m about 190 pounds. Three weeks after I get hired, WWE sends some agents to let everyone know that from here on out for the next few years, everybody has to be Six-foot-two, 225 pounds or something. And I’m like, ‘Hey am I? Do I still work here?’ [They’re like] ‘Yes, you are grandfathered in. You made it in.’ So, that was one piece of it.
“And then at that point, I was learning from Rick Rogers and Jim Cornette. Rick Rogers was very open about it. He got fired about 37 times while I was in and out of OVW. But also, he goes, ‘I’m teaching you all the ways of when you get fired from here. So you can have a living and make a living and be good at this everywhere else you go for the rest of your life.'”
WWE changed their style right as Nic Nemeth mastered their old style
“So I started learning the, ‘You want to let people in the upper deck know what’s happening to your arm.’ Like that all the way around. Memphis, old-school, let everybody know and then you do the WWE style. So as I had jumped into and embraced this way in, like, ‘I want to learn for five years and six months to catch up to everyone. Because I hadn’t done independence. So I am going hardcore in for six months. WWE then goes, ‘Totally new thing now. We are going reality-based and no more over-selling, no more anything. And I had already locked that into my brain a little bit,” Nic Nemeth said.
Do you think Nic Nemeth deserved to be a main event star in WWE?
