Elijah Burke Recalls the Origins Of His ‘Pope’ Name

Elijah Burke has been using the moniker of The Pope since his TNA days, and he recently discussed how the name actually originated in WWE. Burke spoke with WrestlingNewsCo for a new interviea and talked about how the name came from his days writing as a columnist on WWE.com. You can see the highlights below, per Wrestling Inc:

On when he first started thinking about the name: “I often times referred to myself as the guiding light, your paragon of virtue, your host of hosts [in his WWE column]. And I would refer to the people that responded to me in such a large amount … They would respond to me, and I decided to call them my congregation. Since I was calling them that, I was thinking, ‘Shoot, who am I to them? What can I call myself if they’re my congregation?'”

On the name coming from that: “There had never been a Black Pope. And thus the name and Black Pope was born.”