The Revolt, formerly known as The Revival, made an appearance on Talk is Jericho where they talked about various topics including their meeting with Vince McMahon where they were pitched the idea of doing a comedy tag team gimmick and their WWE release.
Here are the highlights:
The meeting:
“We had been trying for a while to get a meeting with Vince ,but we knew it would be unlikely because the FOX transition and XFL were extremely hectic. He was busy,” Dash Wilder recalled on Talk Is Jericho. “Part of our negotiation was we wanted to talk to him and air our grievances face-to-face. We had never talked man-to-man-to-man to say ‘this is exactly why we don’t want to stay.’ It kept getting delayed and then we were told it might not happen. We were ringside, putting a match together, and [Mark] Carano texted us to say ‘meeting in Vince’s office. ASAP.’ We went straight to Vince’s office, he handed us these big foldouts, and the first page was us as we are now, you open it up and there were multiple versions of their vision for us. The pictures have leaked, they’re 100% legit, they were handed to us by Vince himself.”
Being pitched the new gimmick:
“Vince hands us these (photos), I’ll put my hand on the bible and tell you, I laughed out loud in front of everybody. It was me, [Dawson], Vince, Bruce Prichard, and Carano. They were all serious and started telling us why it would be a good idea. They talked about the Ucey Hot and back shaving stuff where we showed we can do more than be serious, straight-faced ass-kickers. We could show different sides and different levels of charisma, which we never got a chance to do, even though we asked a lot. We told them straight up, and I think this was when they realized we weren’t bluffing or trying to negotiate a higher number, we looked at them as said, ‘Here is the deal, these are not good. But we will do this until our contracts expire. We’ll do whatever you want. We’ll give 100% and have fun with it. But when our contracts expire, we’re not re-signing. There’s no way we’re staying past June.’ That was Friday at SmackDown. On Wednesday, we got a phone call saying we were pulled from everything,” said Wilder. “The numbers that have been reported contract-wise, $750,000 a year or whatever, it was higher than that. It was more than that for us to do the clown, Cat in the Hat, Flava Flav stuff. We said, ‘we’ll do this until our contracts expire, but we’re not re-signing for any amount of money unless it’s way up there.'”
Their reactions:
“When they first described it, it was ‘we’re doing this out of spite. Tag teams don’t get the respect they deserve and they have to be a comedy act to get TV time,’ which is true. Most tag teams who get TV time do comedy and if you’re more serious, you’re considered not charismatic. So it’s us taking the piss out of how we perceived the division being disrespected. It’s not terrible when it’s on paper. I don’t know how it would have been executed as the weeks roll on, but us doing (the angle) out of spite to be upset about how tag team wrestling is disrespected, I was okay with it. We could have had fun with it and probably made decent money. I don’t know if there’s a long shelf life or if we’d be above super-low card comedy.”
H/T to Fightful
