Heath Slater On Who He Originally Pitched for 3MB, When He Found Out Who Would Be In It

Heath Slater recently looked back at his 3MB group with Drew McIntyre & Jinder Mahal and revealed his original pitch for members in a new interview. Slater was a guest on Such Good Shoot and talked about the formation of the group; you can check out some highlights below per Wrestling Inc:

On Vince McMahon’s original plans for the gimmick: “He wanted me to be the one man band. No, it was the one man rock band. The one man southern rock band. The one man country band, or I don’t know, he had me doing so much stuff to where I was like, ‘Man, can I just be the one man band?’”

On pitching members for the group: “I ran with it, ran with with for a while. Then it wasn’t going nowhere and ran its course. I was like, ‘Come on. I need a band now. I’ve been a one man band. Let me have a band.’ They’re just like, ‘Oh, who are you thinking?’ I pitch [Dean] Ambrose, Fandango, and EC3. And this is before any of them are on TV. Fandango and EC3 were on NXT season three or something. So I pitch for those three. And then they were like, ‘Okay, let me get back with you.’”

On when he found out who would be joining him in the group: “This is Michael Hayes the whole time I’m talking with. The month goes by — nothing. You know, like, ‘Hey, baby, what the hell, man? I need this band!’ I’m like, ‘Alright, well, who’s in the band?’ He responded, ‘Jinder [Mahal] and Drew [McIntyre].’ I said, ‘That sounds like a bad joke, man: a Scotsman, an Indian, and a redneck walks into a bar.’ Well, when he told me that I first said, ‘Drew’s gonna be pissed, man.’ Because Drew always wants to be that badass, serious dude, you know? He legit is. Yeah, he wants to be that dude and him in 3MB is just was literally like one of those things. And Jinder is that guy that’ll be like, ‘Alright, man, let’s go, let’s try this.’ Drew, on the other hand was more like pulling teeth a little bit. But we finally got him comfortable. And he said, ‘Well, I was wanted to be a rock star and a wrestler. So I might as well do both.’”

On the group setting the stage for other three-man teams: “We were the first three man group, then New Day, then Shield. We started that s***. You know, they copied us. It was also just like how it all ended — we had a calendar. We were booked three months, every week. We got our calendars again, booked three months out, and then they got fired. And we’re like, ‘The hell? What happened?’ Jinder gets fired. He calls me. Drew gets fired. He calls me I’m like, ‘Guys, I’m next. let me call you back.’ Never got it. So literally, I called [Former Senior Director of Talent Relations] Mark Carrano and said, ‘Dude, you forget to call me?’”