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Shawn Daivari Talks Stephanie McMahon Pitching Him a ‘George W. Bush’ Character, His New Wrestling Academy, More

October 19, 2016 | Posted by Larry Csonka

– Shawn Daivari recently spoke with wrestlinginc.com, here are the highlights…

On Stephanie McMahon Pitching Him a ‘George W. Bush’ Character: “The SmackDown! after Great American Bash, I was supposed to come out as George W. Bush, in, like, an over-the-top, red, white, and blue America thing. Almost, like, patronizing the whole thing being like, ‘hey, I can be patriotic too. I’m not an Arab. I’m American. I love America! My name is George Bush!’ and that kind of s–t. And then, I told her it was a bad idea. Like, A) it doesn’t have any longevity. Like, you can only do it for so long. And then, B) like, it’s not going to work because people… it just doesn’t sound like a great idea and she agreed with me. And she says, ‘yeah, I don’t think it’ll work either.’ And that was that.” Daivari continued, “from my experience, my whole time there, almost, I shouldn’t say with anybody, but the top people, Steph and Hunter and Vince, and s–t, like, if you said, ‘no, here’s why’ or ‘no, here’s an alternative’, and if they agreed with you, it was never an issue. And she did agree with me in that respect, so it was not an issue to say ‘no.'”

On Starting His New Wrestling Academy with Ken Anderson: “The whole thing started, probably, when they contacted me about doing the NXT guest trainer thing. It kind of, like, relit… like I said, it has been an idea for years, on and off, we’d talk about it. Then I kind of said, ‘okay, lets put some real thought into this.’ And then, knowing what the Performance Center was doing, because I had no idea until the first time I got my little brother down there. He went and he told me what they were doing. And I said, ‘wow, these are great, amazing, outside-of-the-box ideas’. And then, like, and then, the more I learned about it, the more I thought about it, I’m going, ‘f–k, these are great for guys under contract. What about the guys that don’t have contracts? Like, why aren’t they allowed to have this kind of training?’ And we said, ‘well, there’s really no reason for it.’ Obviously, they can do it bigger and better because they have unlimited bank account, but, like, we were thinking about it and it’s really financially feasible for me and Ken to do it. There’s nothing that they’re doing that can’t be done by anyone else as long as don’t have a secret formula they aren’t letting out. We said, ‘f–k it! We should just do it.’ And that’s kind of what we’re modelling our camp after.”

On Molly Holly Being a Trainer: “Me and Nora have been friends for years. Pretty much, the way me and Nora became friends was, she lives in Minneapolis as well, and when I got signed by WWE, we were always on the same flights going out of town together. And I think I was 18 or 19 at the time. You have to be 21 to rent a car, so I could never rent a car, so we’d be on the same flight together and then I would be like, ‘hey, I can’t rent a car. Can I ride with you?’ She said, ‘yeah, sure.’ I would ride with her on the house show loops and to TV and stuff. And, yeah, that kicked off our friendship. And then, we’ve been friends ever since 2004 or something.”

article topics :

Shawn Daivari, Larry Csonka