During the SummerSlam 1992 watch party, Finn Balor talked about the process of painting his body for his “Demon King” persona and what former WWE Superstar Karl Anderson thought about the gimmick.
Painting up his body: “The paint was kind of like a weird idea. It was just supposed — it was supposed to be a once-off. I had been working like babyface, straight squeaky clean babyface, for like six and a half years in Japan, and they asked me, ‘Do you want to turn heel?’ So I figured, okay, I’ll take everything away that they recognize from me as a babyface. So, [Jushin Thunder] Liger had already worn the bodysuit, and I didn’t really want to change my body too much so I thought, why don’t I just cover it all in black paint? The idea was that the babyface, [Kota] Ibushi, would be wrestling against this shadow in the ring.”
What Karl Anderson thought about the idea: “So, it was at Tokyo Dome, a big building, I’m like far away. So, it looks like the babyface is wrestling like a shadow. That was where the concept of the idea came from. The more I played with it, I found like a really good painter to kind of collaborate with in Tokyo, and we came up with like that first Demon character. It was supposed to be a once-off, and I thought — I’ll never forget, I told Machine Gun Karl Anderson like a month before it happened, ‘Hey, dude. I’m going to cover myself head-to-toe in paint for the Tokyo Dome,’ and he said, ‘Dog, you’re gonna look stupid. Everyone’s gonna laugh at you. The paint’s gonna go everywhere. You’re gonna look like an idiot.’ So, I always remember that one.”
