Nova Reveals Original Plan For Simon Dean Character In WWE

Nova played Simon Dean in WWE in the mid-2000s, and he recently talked about his original plan for the character. Nova spoke with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp for a new interview, and you can see a couple of highlights below:

On the original plan for Simon Dean: “That’s the only thing they came up with, was the name of Simon Dean. Everything else I came up with. The original name I came up with was Sonny Slade because I wanted to have Sonny Slade’s Super System of Self-Help and Supplements. That’s what it was gonna be.”

“So I pitched that whole angle, Jack LaLanne, Tony Little, all this stuff was my idea. Then they came up with the name Simon Dean. I didn’t know what Dean [Malenko]’s real name was. Then he came up to me a couple of weeks later and said his name was Dean Simon and the whole deal. I was like, ‘Well, this is great. I can do Simon Says and all that stuff.’ I never looked back. I loved my time in WWE. I loved being Simon Dean. I loved being Nova and Hollywood Nova, but I just liked being a pro wrestler.”

On his appreciation of Maven: “Me, personally, I hope Maven sees this. I love Maven. I felt the business did him an injustice, a little bit. Because he won Tough Enough, they threw him right on TV, and they tried to just push him to the moon. It was too much, too fast. When I got with him and we were teaming, I remember breaking down matches for him and telling him, ‘Hey, this is why we do this in a tag team match. This is why we do this, this is why we do that. It was almost like starting from scratch.’

“He had so much more to offer. I felt the business chewed him up and spit him out a little bit. He deserved better from it. Maven was a class act. He’s an awesome dude. He’s a success story. He had some trials and tribulations, man, and he’s made it past that. He’s another one you can look at and say he made it. He’s done great for himself. I’m proud of Maven. He came out on top.”