During a recent appearance on “The New Day: Feel the Power” podcast, RJ City commented on his tryout with WWE, singing during his promo, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his experience at a WWE tryout nearly a decade ago: “For context, this was maybe eight or nine-ish years ago, my understanding is it was one of the first of the modern tryouts that we know today. But it happened before they were cameras and shirts, and I didn’t get a shirt. I’m a little upset about it, It was me. Sasha Banks, Sami Zayn. Elias, coach Sara was there, a variety of different people, and then I was this weird person who, I don’t know, maybe somebody saw an episode of ‘Splatalot!’ and they said, ‘Hey, maybe we need a Viking,’ who knows?’ You are incredibly sweet and supportive and your role at this time was to film the promos on promo day you were up high and I thought it was hilarious. So I’m kind of laying low you know, you do your drills, you’re nice. You don’t want to sing Ethel Merman out of turn, Only when asked. So I’m laying low, everything’s fine. Everyone promos, I wouldn’t even call them promos very much. This is my life story, which is great. If you have a life story. I happen to have really no life story, just these stupid things that I do. So I said, ‘Well, this is my moment. Let’s have a nice time.’”
On deciding to cut a promo where he sang The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song and interacting with Perry Saturn: ‘The first thing I did was cut a promo about how I tore my cuticle the week before and I almost canceled this whole tryout because I was in so much pain. That was the first thing I did and then they said, ‘Can you do anything else maybe from your TV show? I said, ‘Well, I do improv on the TV show so I could improvise.’ So I’m improvising. I said, ‘Cameraman, could you follow me down and I sat on the ring apron and you did a nice, I’m sure the footage is somewhere, you did a nice pan down. As I was talking, I looked over and there was a table, a long table, it was like an extreme American Idol. One of the people there was Perry Saturn. You know, Perry, I’m sure he did not enjoy Ethel Merman. I’m just hazarding a guess. A very serious man [who] has the tattoo pencil on or whatever. I just looked over at him. I said, ‘Excuse me, Perry, can I see the back of your hands a moment. He went, showed me the back of his hands and I said, ‘Ah, I just wanted to see the ‘Rings of Saturn. ‘The air became so heavy. Such weight in the room and a couple of people got it and enjoyed it and a couple I think were mainly confused. Then I turned to the head trainer at the time and I sang him the theme from Mary Tyler Moore and that was my big finale. That was my shot. Not quite sure what happened.”
(h/t – Fightful)
