Tye Dillinger on the Origin of His Perfect 10 Gimmick, Dusty Rhodes Being Brutally Honest With Him Backstage

– On the latest E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness, Tye Dillinger revealed the origin of his “Perfect 10” gimmick. Dillinger revealed that the gimmick came from seeing progress reports that he wasn’t supposed to see from when he was in NXT before Matt Bloom was involved. Highlights are below:

On seeing progress reports about himself: “I ended up seeing — they did the reports on talent all the time. Every month, they did monthly reports. So these reports would be three or four pages long, they would be done by all the coaches. And they would just be the breakdown of how they felt, and then there would be numbers. There would be different categories: psychology, promo, attitude, you know. All those little things. And each coach would rank them what they thought from one to ten. And then the head coach would give their final opinion at the end and their final written bit. I ended up seeing some of these on myself specifically. And across the board you’re getting 9, 9.5, 9, 9. So okay, cool. I’m doing all right, you know. But when it came time for the head coach department I would get 5, 6, 5.5, things like that. And then the written part wouldn’t be any more flattering. And I remember thinking, I won’t say more because it infuriates me, but I just like, I’m on the chopping block because of this.”

On coming up with the Perfect 10 gimmick from that: “I remember being home, I think it was during a WrestleMania season maybe. But I wasn’t taken to WrestleMania that year. You took forty talent, and I wasn’t one of them. I remember being home, kind of talking with my best friend who is on the indies at the time, stuff like that. And just, venting my grievances, pissing, angry, yelling, all that kind of stuff. And I’m like, ‘There’s no one there that’s a 10. He’s probably giving this guy 10, this guy 10, and I’m getting 6’s and 5’s.’ And I’m going off and off and off. And finally I stop for a second, and I was calm and he said, ‘God, if there’s anybody that should be a ten, it should be you.’ And then he kind of just [said] like, ‘Sorry, man’ and he walked off for a second. And I don’t know why, I just kind of hung onto that sentence. And I didn’t grasp on anything for a few days. And that thing, that ten kept rolling, and rolling, and rolling. And yeah, how can I make this thing something, something from that. And I started thinking about it, and then I ended up formulating a concept of a perfect ten. And that’s what that all stemmed from. From pieces of paper I never should have seen.”

On pitching the gimmick: “Even when I went in to pitch it. I got all the coaches together, got them all in the conference room. And I sat down and Dusty Rhodes, who I love more than anything in this world, who had always been straight up with me. He looked at me and he said, ‘Baby, before you’re gonna pitch whatever you’re gonna pitch, I need you to know that right now, as of this moment, there is not a whisper of you ever going up to the main roster. I need you to know that right now.’ I went, ‘Oh s**t! I got this idea,’ you know. But that’s what I needed. And he was never gonna let me get way out here and get my hopes all the way up. He was gonna give me like, ‘This is the situation you’re in right now. You have a chance to change that, this is how you’re viewed.’ So I pitched the Perfect 10 thing and finally a few months later, I was allowed to actually start doing it.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.