Otis Says Mandy Rose Was The One That Got Their Romance Storyline Going

In an interview with Chris van Vliet for Insight (via Fightful), Otis spoke about his romance storyline with Mandy Rose in 2019 and 2020, crediting Rose with making it happen. He noted that while he had the idea to do it, she talked to Vince McMahon to get it going.

He said: “She was definitely the ignition for sure. Because you can it pitch all day long. But again, like with Mandy, she’s like, I’ll talk to Vince, okay. Because I was just kidding around, I would see a bikini post on her IG and I would be like you look good, babe. And then it became this thing and on Google, it said is Otis married [to Mandy Rose]? It was just one post. And I’m sitting there going, Oh I can get some more leverage here. So I kept posting it just for laughs and she’s awesome. The girls, they’re a blessing too. So yeah, but she talked to Vince came out and then we started rocking and rolling there. So I mean, but she definitely was like, Hey, we gotta do this. It’s one of those things where I’m gonna kiss the world champion bikini model. Behave yourself. Every day was a test. We could never do a pre-shot. It was always live because somebody would mess up. I’m sweating terribly because I got to get a hold of a cake. The box was so uncertain that I was like this thing falls during a live shot I don’t know what to do, but I don’t know. It was just like, you couldn’t find a grip on it. And of course, Ziggy, I love Ziggy man. It’s pretty crazy. Ziggy gets in the picture and it was his first singles match in the warehouse as WrestleMania was my first singles too. So it was like, it was bittersweet because I respected Dolph off a lot and it’s like damn, I wish it was better. Just that time but you know, times being the times.“