MVP Recalls His Frustrations Trying To Get Hired by WWE, the Origin of His Character

– During a recent edition of his Marking Out podcast, AEW’s MVP recalled his frustration when initially trying to get hired by WWE. Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

MVP on his frustrations before he was hired by WWE: “When I got hired by WWE, I invented MVP. As a matter of fact, I had a number of tryouts and got booked as an extra a number of times. One day, my frustration got to a point where I was like, ‘To hell with this.’ I went to the Vice President of Talent Relations, who was John Laurinaitis at that time. I went, ‘Johnny, you got a minute?’ ‘What is it, kid?’ ‘Can I get 30 seconds?’ ‘Okay, you got 30 seconds.’ I said, ‘Tell me what the f*** I gotta do to get hired. You tell me what you want. You tell me what you want for me and I’ll give it to you.'”

On how John Laurinaitis was initially taken aback by his comments: “Initially, he was taken aback like, ‘Who are you talking to?’ But he saw it was coming from a passionate place. He said, ‘Kid, we like characters. Give us a character that you can do that we don’t already have, and get back to me,’ and he walked off. I remember feeling like, ‘That wasn’t the answer I was looking for. Tell me specifically,’ but he gave me the answer.”

MVP on working as a bodyguard at the time: “At the time, I was working at South Beach, doing bodyguard work. I used to see these professional athletes show up to the club, and I would see Hall of Fame legends like Shaq [Shaquille O’Neal], Dr. J [Julius Erving], and Barry Sanders. I would see these sports Gods show up and they were so humble and cool. Then, I would see these third-round draft picks show up with an entourage of people, ‘Do you know who I am?’ Sometimes, it was kind of embarrassing. There was no shortage of footage of athletes being extravagant and boisterous. Ron Artest going into the stands, Allen Iverson with ‘Practice?’ That had never been done in pro wrestling.”

On using those experiences to create his MVP character: “It was a relatively new phenomenon, and I took my experiences from South Beach and ESPN, and I crafted this character called MVP. I wrote up a treatment, chapters explaining who the character was and photos of me in a suit and how the character dressed. This came because, fortunately for me, Ricky Santana was a very good friend of mine, he worked at WCW, and he and John Laurinaitis were very good friends. I told Ricky, ‘I have this idea but I’m scared they’ll steal it from me.’ I pitched him the idea and he said, ‘That smells like money to me.’ He called Johnny, Johnny gave him his word, ‘We won’t put the kid off.’ Spoke to Johnny and he said, ‘Sounds great. Give me 20 storyline ideas.’ I literally wrote 20 vignettes and storylines. Within a week or two, I had this ready for him and they loved it.”

MVP was eventually signed by WWE in 2005. He later debuted on WWE TV in August 2006.