During a recent appearance on the “Out of Character” podcast, WWE broadcaster Mike Rome shared his experience conducting backstage interviews with Kevin Owens and other talents at the beginning of his WWE career.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his time as a backstage interviewer: “Honestly, I got to be there at a really cool time. I did a lot of stuff with [Chris] Jericho and Kevin Owens backstage. Big Show was still there, John Cena — those guys were still there when I was backstage, so I got to do some really cool interviews at that time. And I think that I was there at the right time.”
On doing interviews with Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens: “They’re going back and forth and Kevin starts yelling ‘George! George!’, and he’s looking at me and they’re like ‘I think you’re George.’ I was like ‘Oh, man.’ I’m 6’2, so when I’m backstage, I’m a lot shorter, and so I had to walk back into frame because there was no easy way for me to slide back into frame. There’s no easy way to do it, so I kind of side-walked into there. You can see me kind of leaning to the side. Kevin, he’s so brilliant. He’s going back and forth with Chris, and all of a sudden, he just looks at me, ‘Did you get taller?’”
On having to bite his tongue to keep from laughing: “And so, he starts just going in on me, they start stepping on the steps in Gorilla and he’s karate chopping and doing all this stuff. At this point, I’ve bitten holes in my tongue because doing backstages with them, it’s so hard not to laugh because you don’t know what they are going to say. You have no idea what’s coming out. They’re riffing and they’re going, and they’re flowing. These guys are two of the best and honestly, I walked out with a bleeding tongue that day.”
