Rick Boogs Discusses His Casting in the American Gladiators Reboot

Former WWE Superstar Rick Boogs (aka Eric Bugenhagen) recently joined Insight With Chris Van Vliet to discuss his WWE career, joining the cast of the American Gladiators reboot, and more. Below are some highlights from Insight:

Rick Boogs on His American Gladiators Casting

“I just found an email address for a casting director that was involved in that. Emailed them, ‘Hey, my name is Eric Bugenhagen. I hoist, heft, and heave mega loads.’ Sent some clips and stuff whatnot, told him what I’ve done in the past. They said, Okay, we’ll set you up with the Zoom call. So give me the Zoom call a couple of days later, and I don’t know what to expect. Luckily, I have the 20,000 hours of promo practice from the WWE Performance Center. If that Performance Center has done anything well, for me, I don’t know about anyone else, but grinding those promos in. Because I learned if you wanted to stand out in that business, you got to be different.”

On Blowing Them Away During His Zoom Call

“First and foremost, I know you gotta have a gimmick. You gotta be recognizable. ‘Who is this guy?’ One sentence: Who is he? So what I pitched was, I’m The Max. I’m The Maximum. Maximum entertainment value, maximum intensity, right? So I said, ‘I am The Maximum, aka The Max, you will call me The Max.’ They asked me a bunch of questions about where I’m from, if you had 30 seconds or whatever, you just whooped someone’s ass, what would you say? That kind of stuff. So I felt like it was grand slam home run. But then months go by, and I never hear back, and I’m like, wow, now I can see why WWE fired me. I just don’t have what it takes. But apparently, they were just extending. They wanted to be sure they had the cream of the crop.”

On Getting Called Back for an In-Person Tryout

“So I think it was a week or two [later]. It’s like, we got the in-person tryout. It’s gonna be push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups. There might be some wrestling. So all I did, because I’m a man of specificity, I understand the thing called specificity. Alright, normally I lift heavy barbells. Lots of deadlift variations. I’m like, for this, next couple of weeks, all I’m doing is push-ups, planks, sit-ups, and the wrestling part I had. So when I went to that tryout, if Amazon Prime is watching this, Amazon MGM, release the tryout footage. Release the footage. Please put it on YouTube or something like that. The Bull’s tryout, the first thing I did was as many push ups you can do in 60 seconds. I hit 100, or maybe it was 99. After the try-out, it was like you got the most push-ups. I weighed, I think it was 274 or something, 100 push-ups. Then we did pull-ups. I think I got 36 or 37, just put myself over. Sit-ups, I can’t remember, but I did okay with these gym class sit-ups. Hadn’t done those since gym class, PE, elementary school. The rope, climb up and down as fast as you can twice in a row. It’s a big rope too, and then a little tussling, like it was sumo wrestling stuff. I mean, I’m a Greco-Roman state champion.”

Rick Boogs appears in the reboot cast as the Gladiator, The Bull. The first season of the American Gladiators reboot, featuring Bugenhagen, is streaming now on Prime Video.