Dean Muhtadi Recalls First Experiences With WWE, Winning Andre The Giant Battle Royal

The former Mojo Rawley recently looked back at the start of his time with WWE, working in developmental and more. Dean Muhtadi appeared on Stories With Brisco And Bradshaw and talked about his early experiences with the company; you can check out highlights below (courtesy of Wrestling Inc):

On working with William Regal during his first invite to Raw: “Regal was awesome. He actually kept it very simple that day. His big thing was, ‘Be authentic. Tell me your story. Tell me about yourself. Let’s see a little bit of energy. Put you into this. Don’t play wrestler, be a wrestler.’ I tried to maintain that as much as I could throughout my entire career.”

On working in FCW: “Right away, I was like, this is for me. In the ring, performing, wrestling, the practices — I loved it. And it was not easy. They were killing us.”

On being part of the first WWE Performance Center class: “That was a game changer. Everything was in-house. We had cold tubs and hot tubs, and there was actual rehab going on. It was like Candy Land in there, man. It was awesome.”

On when he knew he was winning the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal: “Maybe it was a week or two before. I had just started my solo, babyface run, and you know, they’re trying to take advantage again, trying to find the best way to deliver my energy to the crowd, which was something Vince always told me, he was like, ‘I really don’t know how to book you. I’m not sure what to do; we have everything we need but I really don’t know what to do with it.'”

On trying to promote the match: “They told me I was going to be winning the Andre, they had been kinda building to it. I was kind of on this undefeated run and I was the first to declare for the Andre that year. They called me into the office and they told me I was going to be winning and we were trying to find like the way we could hype it up the most, where are we going to go from here, and how can we take this battle royal that. I think at that point it was starting to become a pre-show kind of a thing already. We’re trying to find the ways to maximize it.”