You may recall that Real1 (formerly Enzo Amore) infamously crashed WWE Survivor Series 2018 and appeared in the audience. Real1 was released from the company a year earlier after being accused of sexual assault, though the charges were later dropped due to insufficient evidence.
During a recent appearance on the “DDP Snake Pit” podcast, Real1 spoke about the infamous publicity stunt at Survivor Series and his reasoning for doing it.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his reason for doing the stunt: “It had to be done to set up what I was going to do. Like, I had — at that point I’m angry, at that point I don’t want to go back to WWE. And at that point I’m in the nZo brand now, I’m in the Real1 brand. And the way I was thinking about it was like, ‘Hey man, I got a following on social media.’ You guys didn’t have this in 1998, so if somebody got fired in ’98 and they had a following what would they do? So okay, I’m my own brand now, and I gotta look out for number one. So if I show up to Survivor Series, that will book this character, this Brian Pillman character that I’m creating, back into wrestling. ‘Off his rocker, no one knows what he’s gonna do.’ And that, to me, is money. That’s where people will watch. They’ll watch because they don’t know what’s going to happen. They don’t know what’s going to be said, and they believe that it’s real.”
On killing off his chances with WWE: “Yeah, which I planned on doing. I was burning a bridge on fire at that point.”
On being advised not to do it: “In my mind — I was told by advisors, me and you have similar advisors so I’m not going to say his name. But he told me, ‘Don’t do that. Do not buy a ticket to Survivor Series, put on a wig, show up in the second row, and stand up on your seat. You’re an idiot.’ And I said, ‘Look, I’m really not trying to go back, okay? I’m trying to make a name for myself, but I want to still wrestle and I want to create a character that’s off his hinges that people will watch.”
“So I go to a Survivor series and what happened there that made me trend #1 in the world was a vision I had, was, ‘WWE is not going to put this on camera.’ So when they don’t put it on camera, all the videos of me in the crowd are going to go viral. And if you’re at home and you’re watching the crowd, and they’re looking at something? What are you gonna do? You’re gonna go on your phone and you’re gonna type in to see what what is the crowd reacting to that they’re not showing on camera. And now all of a sudden, #1 trend in the world, right?”
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