Maven Recalls His Early Days in WWE After Winning Tough Enough, If WWE Wanted To See If They Could Run Him Out

Former WWE Superstar and original Tough Enough winner Maven Huffman joined Insight With Chris Van Vliet for a new interview. Maven spoke about his early days in WWE after winning the first season of Tough Enough, if WWE wanted to see if they could run him out, and more. Below are some highlights from Insight:

Maven on His First Six Months in WWE

“Here’s what I think it was. I think it was, we’re going to see if we can run you out. We’re going to find out. Do you love the business, do you respect the business, or are you going to easily be ran out of the business? Because wrestling is tough. It’s hard to be on the road, it’s hard to be in pain, it’s hard to be away from your family, and if you don’t have just something on the inside that makes you be able to be okay with living uncomfortable, be okay with pain, you’re not gonna last. It’s just the WWE’s way and wrestlers’ way of just mixing out the people that think they want to be there, as opposed to the people who truly want to make a go of it. There were countless, muscled-up guys that would come in, roided out freaks, look phenomenal, that thought they wanted to wrestle, and they would put them in the ring. You find out really quickly, when someone’s in there for six minutes, you’re making them just move, then they’re gasping for air, you find out really quickly who wants to wrestle and who doesn’t.”

On the Match Where He Finally Felt Like a Wrestler

“It was years. It wasn’t immediate. I did a couple of house shows, a couple of weeks of house shows with Bob Holly. I did three weeks, Orton did eight, and after every match with Bob, he’s back behind the curtain waiting for me to bitch, and every time I went back there, [I said] ‘Thank you. Is there anything I can do better?’ That’s the way to get the respect of the boys. Because I have no doubt in my mind, they sent him out, ‘See what the kid’s got.’ And if you complain, that’s not the job for you. If you can get through Bob Holly, okay, that’s one rung of the ladder that you’ve climbed. That’s one step of just not being the Tough Enough kid. Okay, maybe that was when I saw okay, I belong.”

On How Much His YouTube Channel Changed His Life and Career

“I promise, not more than you love you guys. Here’s why. I get emotional about this. Years ago, five years ago, I was getting up every morning at 6 am, rushing to take my dogs out, getting on a 6:36 train, two hours to work, working all day, two hours to get home, getting home at 7:30. I knew I had something, but I just didn’t know how to get that something out. When we started the YouTube channel, there were no promises. Zach didn’t tell me, ‘Yeah, this is going to be X amount and we’re going to make X amount of dollars, or this is going to get this many views.’ He just said, ‘Let’s take a chance.’ And now man, I don’t do a damn thing during the day I don’t want to do now, and that is because of you guys. Thank you. I don’t know if I deserve it, but I’ll damn take it.”