Former WWE Superstar PJ Black (a.k.a. Justin Gabriel) was recently a guest on the Pancakes & Powerslams podcast where he talked about his brief appearances on Total Divas. During the interview Gabriel revealed that producers asked him to do his planned breakup with JoJo Offerman on camera so they could use it in the episode. Gabriel named the age gap between he and JoJo as the reason that he decided to call things off:
“I didn’t want to be a part of [Total Divas] at all. They filmed some stuff, and I started talking to JoJo because I thought she was a pretty cool person,” Gabriel said. “I never realized she was so young, I think she was like 18 or 19 at the time. And we kind of went that route [to dating], and they were like, ‘Hey. Do you want to be on the show?’ I was like, ‘Yeah. Sure, what do I have to do?’ They said, ‘nothing, just go on dates,’ and we went on multiple dates.
“They’d take film, which never aired, by the way; we filmed so many cool things,, and I said to the producers, ‘I don’t think I can do this. Like, she’s 19, and I don’t think this is going to work. I’m a 30-year-old man.’ And he was like, ‘Ok. fair enough. Then you have to break up with her on TV.’ And that’s the scene they played.”
Gabriel then went on to say that he didn’t like the way he was perceived on the show during the breakup, as it was made out to be more of a spectacle where he was made out to be the villain:
“And what they did was make me look like this super womanizing heel, they edited everything to make me look like a bad guy. That’s not what happened at all. A lot of it is real, but it’s about 90 percent scripted. That I just couldn’t deal with,” he said. “If it’s a reality show, let me do and say whatever I want. Don’t tell me what to say and what to wear. It wasn’t very organic or spontaneous. So, after I broke up with her, I was like, ‘Yeah. I’m outta here.'”
You can listen to PJ Black’s full interview on the Pancakes & Powerslams podcast by clicking this link here.
H/T Wrestling Inc. for the transcriptions
