Rich Brennan Says Meeting Dusty Rhodes Was His Favorite NXT Moment

– Rich Brennan spoke with Wrestling Inc for a new interview. Some highlights are below:

On being a wrestling fan growing up: “I really got into Ric Flair, the Road Warriors, the Four Horsemen, all of that stuff. I don’t know what I found so intriguing about it. It might have been that it was presented a bit more realistic. I really enjoyed that gritty style that was presented. I love the WWF stuff, too. I loved Hulk Hogan. I loved all of those guys growing up, there was something about that gritty Crockett style. I used to try to watch as much of it as I could. There used to be this Worcester Spanish station, for whatever reason at 1 in the morning they would play World Wide Wrestling. There I was at 9 years old up watching. I watched a lot of wrestling growing up, I was able to get world-class, I was able to watch the AWA, there was even a local Indy promotion that had a television for a little bit. I watched as much of it as I could growing up.”

On when he got into announcing: “I remember being a kid playing around with two record players. I would set them up, and had a little cheap Radio Shack microphone doing segues in between songs and tapes trying to figure out how that worked. I was always interested in announcing. When I was little I had the little LJN ring, with the big wrestling figures. I used to make my own cards and would announce them coming to the ring. My mom always said I should do something with my voice. I never really thought about it seriously until High School. I used to listen to a lot of college radio in high school. I was a big metal head growing up. There were a lot of college stations around at the time, and there was no radio at the time, so if you wanted to hear metal, that was the way to do it. I thought ‘oh, when I go to college, I’ll do a radio show.’ That’s what I did. I got a music show, played all sorts of stuff. Somewhere along the way the light bulb goes off that you can’t make a living doing this. I enjoyed doing radio, and loved announcing, and it clicked that I loved hockey and loved listening to a handful of announcers like Tom Neese and Gary Thorne. It clicked that I was going to try to do this.”

On working for Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling: “With Booker T, that was a labor of love. I had a regular day job at the time. I was working out for an NWA promotion once a month. They would go in a warehouse and there’d be a ring set up, and I’d run the ropes, and I wanted to referee. I learned a little about that, but they really needed a ring announcer, so I started doing that. One of my friends who was Alex Reyes in WWE who just got released was working there and had went on tour with the Globetrotters. He was about to go on tour and Booker needed an announcer, so Alex recommended me, that’s what really started things. It was a once a month thing, but I got involved in the website, becoming the defacto PR things, and a lot of things behind the scenes, but I still had my day job.”

on how he got into WWE: “It was through Booker. I wasn’t happy with the day job I was at, and a few people in the business had pushed me towards announcing again. I had taken a sabbatical from being a PBP guy to figure out what I’d do next. People told me I should be calling games. The Booker T Reality Of Wrestling thing was a labor of love. I never expected to make a living in wrestling. I ended up talking to Booker, and the next thing I knew, I was headed to Florida to get a tryout. It happened quicker than I could have ever imagined.”

On how hands on Triple H was at NXT: “From what I saw, very hands on at the TV tapings. He was at the Performance Center as much as he could be. You talk about a guy that works non-stop, that’s Triple H. I don’t know how he does it. Vince is the same way, a lot of people at WWE are the same way. It really becomes it’s own bubble and universe and it’s just go, go, go. It’s from the top. Stephanie, Vince, Triple H, they work non-stop. Triple H at the Performance Center is very approachable and hands-on. It’s his creation.”

On meeting Vince McMahon for the first time: “The first time I met him was at that San Jose show. I went up to him and said hello, he said ‘how are you,’ and that was it. There’s always a line to talk to him, he always has something going on. I’m just an announcer, not someone important. I’m not going to knock on his door and demand something important. He knew who I was, that was kind of unique – it’s Vince McMahon.”

On his favorite NXT moments: “Getting to know Dusty Rhodes, by far. I remember the first day at the Performance Center there’s a meeting going on in there. Bill DeMott was explaining some things, and the whole time Dusty was saying ‘kayfabe’. Bill would go on and Dusty would say ‘Bill, kayfabe.’ Bill asked him what he was talking about. For some reason, Dusty called me Ben Justice. He said ‘you’re giving away the whole business, meanwhile you’ve got Ben Justice standing back here.’ I had a bunch of nicknames from him. I got to work with Dusty, got to know him, it was amazing. I was a Crockett fan growing up, so getting to go into the Performance Center, go into the next office, sit and talk to Dream. A lot of it wasn’t even wrestling related stuff, just talking to him. I really enjoyed that and wasn’t anything I thought I’d ever have the opportunity to do.”

On getting the call to be Smackdown’s lead announcer: “It was crazy to think I was going to be calling Smackdown, a show I’d watched. Superstars and Main Event are cool. Superstars, you call two matches, Main Event is a little more involved, but you know they’re the C and D shows. Knowing Smackdown is the second biggest show in the company, you know there’s a lot more pressure on you and the expectations are that much higher. It’s definitely challenging, but I waited my life to get a shot at the major league level, and it was an exciting moment for sure. The first Smackdown I did was in Providence at an arena that I grew up going to. My parents were there, it was a very cool thing.”

On the difficulty in making the adjustment to Smackdown: “When you’re there you don’t necessarily think of it as ‘this many people are watching.’ You have a show to do. It’s a lot more involved than Main Event. There are a lot more segments, a lot more moving parts, a longer show obviously. At the end of the day, you’re calling a show. If you can call an NXT show, that’s getting you ready to call shows on the main roster. It really wasn’t that much different.”