Michael Elgin On Coming Up With ‘Unbreakable’ After Being Given List of ‘God Awful’ Nicknames By Jim Cornette in ROH

– Speaking with Chris Van Vliet for a recent interview, Michael Elgin discussed where his “Unbreakable” nickname came from. Elgin recalled how when he joined ROH, Jim Cornette didn’t like his “Canadian Crazy Horse” nickname and gave him a list of “god awful” nicknames, which led to him finding inspiration for the “Unbreakable” moniker.

Highlights from the discussion, and the full interview, are below:

On where his “Unbreakable” nickname came from: “Honestly, I was the Canadian Crazy Horse, and I went to Ring of Honor. And Jim Cornette didn’t like the nickname. And he was like, he had a list of nicknames and they were all s**ty.’ And I was like, ‘These suck. Let me think of something.’ And I just started thinking, ‘What would be cool, what would be cool.’ And I was flipping through the channels as I was thinking of names, and the movie Unbreakable was on. I was like, ‘Unbreakable. Wait, no that would be a pretty sweet nickname for pro wrestling. Let’s do that.'”

On the list of nicknames he was given: “I was forced to think of something quick, because like, ‘Well, you can’t be Canadian Crazy Horse, we need to give you something else.’ And here’s a list of nicknames.’ I was like, ‘This is –‘ … I can’t even remember [the names] but it was like, did you ever hear Stone Cold talking about that? The same thing and then his wife said ‘Stone Cold’ and he was like, ‘Oh, that’s much better than the bulls**t that they’re giving me.’ It was the exact same situation. They were just terrible. I wish I had the list somewhere, because it was God awful.”

On Cornette coming up with the list of names: “And I think, it’s not even that I don’t think he’s creative or was creative at that time. I just think it was one of those things, ‘We need to change his nickname, let’s just put a bunch of nicknames down.’ I think that’s just what happens in wrestling. I think if people actually sat and thought about those kind of nicknames they give people to pick from, they’re like ‘Oh, these suck.’ Even they would think they suck. But it’s a time crunch thing. ‘It’s Monday, and TV’s Friday, we need a new nickname by Friday. Let’s just write down whatever we see and pitch it to him and hopefully he likes one of them.’ But I really think if it was like, ‘Okay, we’ve got six months to come up with this’ and they look at that first draft, they’d be ‘What was I thinking because this is terrible.’ There’s no way people can actually think [these are good].”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.