NXT star Enzo Amore recently spoke to the Chad Dukes Wrestling Show about being discovered by Triple H, how accessible Triple H is for the talent in NXT and other people in the WWE developmental system that he credits for his success.
Below are highlights of the interview:
On the NXT product and guys working both NXT and the main roster: “I never was in a wrestling ring before I stepped foot into a WWE ring, so I am a product of NXT. I trained under Bill DeMott. I did a lot of my promo work with Dusty Rhodes. Those two guys were so instrumental in my career, I feel like I never could just completely take that step out of NXT. I owe it to the fans, I owe it to the people around me, the trainers, the coaches. That’s what you see in our product, you see people who are hungry and those people who are coming back, pulling double duty, they’re hungry, they wanna compete. The NXT environment is so competitive.”
On being discovered by Triple H: “He had started training with my strength coach. From the age of 14 I had been training with Joe DeFranco from DeFranco’s Training Systems out of New Jersey, they do a lot of combine training. I had played college football, I had always lifted and was a huge fan of the sports entertainment business, more particularly the WWE. Huge fan of DX, Shawn Michaels and Triple H. One day I was working out at DeFranco’s gym and Joe came up to me and said, ‘I got a phone call from a guy named Paul Levesque, who wants me to train him.’ My jaw just hit the ground.
After about a year of him training with Hunter, I made a YouTube video… I was always training so basically I gave Joe a link to a YouTube page that had a compilation of me lifting, running, boxing, and then I cut a promo at the end of it on the Hudson River around the time the Jersey Shore was popular. Came at the Jersey Shore people’s necks, a little disrespect, hit em with a little 1-2 combo, the haymaker, pancaker, and badaboom, the realest guy in the room was born.
He showed it to Hunter and Hunter just gave me a tryout. He’s our boss and he’s very approachable out here at NXT. He gave me my first opportunity and I’ll never forget the words that he said to me when I met him, he simply said, ‘don’t screw this up.’ He probably wouldn’t remember it, but for me I hung onto those words, because that’s all he said.”
On how accessible Triple H is with NXT talents: “He is hands on as hands on gets. I’ve seen him step in the ring with guys, I’ve seen him go over promo material, I’ve seen him congratulate people when they’ve done something admirable. He’s extremely approachable, you can’t ask for a better boss. He’s somebody who you wanna work for.”
Check out the complete interview at ChadDukesWrestlingShow.com.
