Former WWE Tough Enough competitor Zamariah “ZZ” Loupe appeared on Developmentally Speaking to talk about a number of topics, including how there was a target on his back during his time in the company.
Loupe said, “When I first got to the WWE Performance Center, the day I walked in for the mini-camp before Tough Enough began, I had a target plastered on my back. Straight out of the gate. I didn’t know who Dusty Rhodes was, but apparently, the day that I got to the WWE Performance Center for the mini-camp tryout before Tough Enough aired, Dusty Rhodes went to the hospital, and he passed away while I was in the mini-camp. So many people there thought that I was trying to gimmick infringe Dusty. Dusty was a fun-loving guy from the south and told jokes and was happy and smiled a lot. Here I come, the day Dusty Rhodes passed, smiling and happy, and I have a little bit of an accent. People didn’t realize that I didn’t have a clue who that was when I got there and I wasn’t trying to replicate anybody. Then I learn. ‘Ah, I got you.’ It took a couple of months for people to realize that’s just who I was and I wasn’t trying to gimmick infringe on Dusty. What I learned through Dusty, even though I never got the chance to meet him, if I didn’t know anybody and I was in their shoes, I probably would have thought the same thing. That was the first big hurdle I had to get over before anything else.”
You can check out Loupe’s comments in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
