“Road Dogg” Brian James discussed the changes that have taken place in WWE now that Triple H is in charge of creative during an appearance he made on the Superstar Crossover podcast.
“I do think there’s already a feeling of creativity is alive again. A lot of times individual creativity was squelched, due to the creative desires of the studio, I’ll say, rather than say the creative writing team,” said Road Dogg. “So it stifled a lot of individual creativity, but I believe the conversation should be had with all who are wrestlers or creative about wrestling going forward, about how we can make it the best. I feel like that conversation wasn’t as welcomed under the last regime as it is under this regime, and I believe this regime just knows about collaboration.”
“Well, look, I think a lot of people get invested in their NXT character and I know this was not the question you asked, but I feel like that’s where I went in my head,” said James. “All these people come up, and they change their name, they change the character, and I feel that like it was problematic from the get-go. I was also blessed to be the Creative Director of Character Development down there in NXT, so a lot of those guys, I helped create the characters with their help, of course, it’s always a collaboration. Then they come up to the main roster and they get their names stripped and they go ‘Whoa, I can’t do that anymore.’ I think individually, it’s a weight lifted off people’s shoulders that they can sit there — look, they came up with this character because it was something they could sink their teeth into, and to have it stripped away when they come up to the main roster is gut-wrenching for them personally. I know that from just having conversations with several of them, it’s going to feel really good. Several people, several talents are going to prosper. Because we’re going to go back to old names, we’re going to go back to old characters, you’re going to see people get more comfortable with delivering their act because it’s closer to who they are. I think that’s where we’ll be going in the future.”
You can check out the complete interview below:
(h/t to Robert DeFelice for transcription)
