Damian Priest discussed a wide range of topics during a recent interview on the Battleground podcast.
Here is what Priest had to say about being paired with Bad Bunny for a tag team match against The Miz and John Morrison at WrestleMania 37:
On Bad Bunny specifically asking to work with him: “I don’t know whose idea initially it was to pair us up. I do know that initially we were supposed to be paired. He came to the Performance Center and I met him there the week before the Royal Rumble. We hit it off immediately. We grew up in the same town in Puerto Rico and just our mindset of how we handle ourselves where people tell us that to make it, we had to change the way we speak, and change the way we dress, and conform to whatever. We never agreed with that. To succeed is to make it on your terms, not on somebody else’s. We had that in common, and then we were super fans of this business. We became instant friends. The day before the Royal Rumble, it got scrapped. I wasn’t supposed to be a part of it. Come the Royal Rumble, it was back on. I know for instance, Triple H said, ‘I don’t know why they told you that was going to change, but no, we’re still going to go with this because this is more realistic. It’s an actual thing that you’re friends.’ To go along with that, it was also Bad Bunny, where they told him they were going to switch it, and he actually spoke up and said, ‘No, I want to work with Priest.’ That’s actually really cool because if he would have said, ‘OK, yeah, I would rather work with somebody else’, they would have given him whatever he wanted, but he specifically said he wanted me to work with him.”
Damian Priest on what Bad Bunny did for WWE: “What he did for us, people can talk about celebrities when they come and promote and do stuff, the guy moved from Puerto Rico to Florida just to train during a pandemic. It wasn’t like he could go out and have fun in Florida and do different things. There was nothing to do. That was the thing, he wanted to put in the work and didn’t want to come here and be that celebrity that was just in and out. He wanted to make his fans proud, our fans proud, and his fandom proud. He’s a huge fan, so he understood the respect that needed to be put into this business to be successful. He did everything the right way and it showed. He deserved the moment he had and the respect he gained not just from his peers and us, but the fans alike.”
Damian Priest on anything he regrets not doing in NXT: “I mean, there’s a lot of guys that I wish I could have had the opportunity to work with. Obviously, that’s not saying that we were never going to work because it’s still WWE, right? Whether it happens here or I go back or whatever. But yeah, there are definitely more moments, there are definitely championships. I wanted to be the NXT Champion. You know, unfortunately, I didn’t get that opportunity. But again, you never know. Finn Balor’s done it, so I don’t see why not down the line if that opportunity presents itself. There’s no regrets with how I did things. Obviously, everything worked out it the way it should have. I got to have good experiences, I got to become North American Champion. I got to have great matches with a lot of incredible talent. So at the end of the day, it was still a successful and positive NXT run.”
H/T to 411 Wrestling
