Nick Rodriguez On His WWE Tryout Experience, Says a Camera Crew Was Filming

Martial artist Nick Rodriguez was at the WWE tryouts in Los Angeles over WrestleMania weekend, and he recently discussed the experience. Rodriguez recently spoke with The Simple Man podcast about participating in the tryouts, and you can see the highlights below, per Fightful:

On his experience at the tryout:“Two [or] three years ago, I went to a WWE tryout, and recently, I had another WWE tryout, and it was pretty sick. I pretty much had to act. I had to act a little bit, right? Obviously, we know the world of professional wrestling isn’t a real fight. It’s totally choreographed. These guys are taking damage when they’re falling and stuff, but yeah, I went to try out. I had to do some promos. I had three total promos.”

On a camera crew filming the whole thing: “We had a film crew documenting it. I can’t say where it’s gonna be released, but it’s going to be on some substantial network TV channel, and it’s gonna be, I believe it’s gonna be very huge, shall get multi-million views. For us, it was pretty much a reality series, so we were miked up the whole time. So it was a bit like — whenever we’re talking, you have to be conscious of people listening.

“So I was staying in a hotel. There were no mics or cameras in my room. Cameras everywhere. Every time you go into the hallway, there was producers and cameras in there the whole time. I’m having a conversation with a couple of the guys, and they’re like, ‘Hold on.’ They bring a camera, they’re like, ‘Alright, continue your conversation,’ and they’ll be asking questions like, ‘Oh, how was your day?’ I’ll respond. They’ll be like, ‘No, no, no, no. Ask him, ‘How was your day?’ Start the conversation.’ It was a bit offsetting. Definitely took some getting used to but it was mentally overwhelming. I’m not doing physical activity, but I have to talk to people all day long. I have to put that persona. We had a battle between trying to satisfy the producers, that wanted us to be one thing, and then trying to satisfy the WWE coaches [who] wanted us to portray another thing. To be myself is easy but then to be myself and then some… being extra is not my thing.

On being invited to spend a month at the PC: “I make it to the final day. WWE, we go to the building of WrestleMania… they put us in a small room, and they’re like, ‘Alright, talk amongst yourselves. We’ll come get you.’ They call me in as the first athlete. I open the door and it’s [Matt Bloom], Triple H, and Shawn Michaels. So I open the door; it’s them three sitting there and just one table across the room from them. I’m like, fuck, alright, let’s go. So I sit down, and they pretty much tell me, ‘Listen, you’re tall, handsome, strong, super coachable, extremely fast, and we’ve never seen anything like you.’ So they’re like, ‘Alright, listen, we want you to come spend a month in Orlando, and we’ll help build this persona a little bit more, and then we’ll get going from there.’ Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and the Head of Athletics there, Coach Bloom, pretty sick. So they accepted me.”

On his goals: “Honestly, my goal would be to be able to compete in the highest level of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, win ADCC, and then a couple of months later win the WWE World Championship… [the month in Orlando] was their offer so that they could say, listen, we want you to be a part of WWE because, again, it’s a production thing, but yeah, they’re gonna call me. We’re gonna talk about numbers and logistics of it and you know, we’ll figure it out, but I’m not gonna not train jiu-jitsu,” he said. “I don’t know if I would do a month in Florida, but I think I have enough ability — I have enough ‘something’ that they’re gonna be like, ‘Alright, I think we can invest in this guy.’ If they invest a few hundred thousand in a trainer and training me in a ring or whatever, it’s gonna be worth it in the future… I think I have something that most of these guys don’t have, and I could be a fucking superstar on their platform and I know they understand that, so we’ll see how it goes.”