Donovan Dijak Comments On His NXT Name, Says It Was ‘A Mouthful’

In an interview with Fightful, Donovan Dijak spoke about his original WWE NXT name, Dominik Dijakovic, and why he wasn’t a big fan of using it. He would eventually use the names T-Bar and Dijak in WWE as well.

He said: “When I first came into WWE in 2017, my last match on the indies was as Donovan Dijak, which by the way was a five star match at PWG with Keith Lee. I came into WWE and for whatever reason, I wasn’t on TV for six months. That was at a time when they were loading on Indie talent. I came in with Undisputed Era, Lio Rush, a bunch of people who were ahead in line. I kind of get put on the backburner for a little bit. Once I got on TV, they debuted me as Chris Dijak, which is my real name. I was standing in Full Sail and the tron was coming up. It flashed and said ‘Dijak.’ I was like, ‘Oh, just Dijak.’ It slid down and said ‘Chris,’ and I was like, ‘Ugh.’ My real name is Chris, but almost nobody calls me Chris. My wife and mom, that’s the end of the list. Almost everyone calls me Dijak, no one calls me Chris. This was at a time where, for whatever reason in NXT, you have to bide your time and really wait and make a bunch of pitches, and nothing happened quickly for me or for most people who weren’t like a Ring of Honor World Champion. I made a bunch of name pitches over the course of a year, which is a long time in the grand scheme of things when you’re barely on TV and you’re just at the Performance Center training ever day. Days just drag on. I’m 30 at this point, the prime of my career. ‘Let’s get this thing going, please.’ Finally, we settled on Dominik Dijakovic.“