Tucker on Character Ideas He Tried Pitching to WWE, Interacting With Vince McMahon

– Speaking to Inside The Ropes’ Gary Cassidy, former WWE Superstar Tucker, aka Levi Cooper, discussed trying to pitch other character ideas to WWE after Heavy Machinery was split. Below are some highlights.

Tucker on pitching a golf character to WWE: “I pitched the golf guy for myself, kind of like a country club d*ckhead. You know, I like golf. I’m like, ‘Well, I know all the jargon of golf. You know, I could throw out all the lingo and talk about I’m going to hit you upside the head with the birdie,’ you know what I mean? ‘They’re making bogeys’ – whatever it is! So I pitched that. I pitched one where I’m kind of like a mansplainer and I’m sort of like… I pitched that I would have somebody that would be kind of like my taskmaster essentially, and all I’m doing is just thinking about how everyone’s doing different things wrong and how I need to fix them from doing those wrong things backstage. Then my handler is like, ‘Hey, it’s time to wrestle. Like, you need to focus on how to wrestle right now and not how to…’ And I’m always just like thinking I’m living my life perfect and everyone else has little flaws in their existence that I can fix for them. But like I mentioned earlier about the pitches, you can kind of pitch until your face turns blue but if they don’t want to use you or they don’t have plans for you necessarily… Even if you have an amazing pitch and they love it, but they don’t see it for you, they’ll just give it to someone else. That happens too. So, yeah, I did. But I can take some onus of this – that especially like after that Ricochet thing and after a couple of weeks, I was just like, Well, any time you put me in the ring, like, I’m going to give you…'”

Tucker on not wrestling Otis after his heel turn: “So, when [Otis & I] didn’t have a match and then kind of that next Monday… Well, it wasn’t the week after, it was the next week that me and Ricochet did the match because, the day after we split, I wrestled Humberto Carrillo on Main Event as a heel and – I don’t know if this is the truth or not, but people were like, ‘Well, this is kind of a test, just do it,’ and whatever. So I’m like, ‘All right,’ and then obviously the next week, I think Ricochet beat me – and no disrespect to him either, I’m a fan of his, he’s good athlete, great performer – but it’s not like it makes any sense for me to get beat by the guy that’s that size in 90 seconds. I had just kind of went about cutting my hair and doing some stuff because I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve got to change something here, you know?’ Yeah, I mean, it was kind of all downhill from there as far as things for me in WWE, unfortunately. It’s actually funny because, after that Ricochet match, I talked to Vince in Gorilla right afterwards and I said, ‘Hey, whatever you guys asked me to do, I will always give you 100% no matter what – but I’m capable of doing so much more than this, and I hope I get the chance to prove it’ and obviously, I didn’t and it is what it is.”

Tucker on his interactions with Vince McMahon: “I mean, I interacted with him when it was possible, there definitely would be months that would go by where I wouldn’t really interact with him too much. He’s super busy, he’s in his office all the time and people are always constantly trying to go in there. He’s kind of signing off on every television segment. So I don’t feel like I had necessarily like a great relationship with him. I do feel like there was a level of respect there at least. He’s Vince, you’ve got to come correct, right? I’m not going in there every week, just like, ‘Hey, sir, how are you?’ No, it’s like, ‘OK, I have an idea that I think is a good idea. I’ve tried to run it up the chain and whatever, I’ve shopped it around a couple of writers, a couple producers. They seem to think it might be a good idea, so I’ll go run it by Vince to see what he thinks and see if we can’t make it happen or whatever.’ Because, if you can get the boss to sign off on it, then it’ll happen.

“That’s kind of why I was saying about the barbecue thing. I distinctly remember leaving that office and being like, ‘That was the best kind of pitch conversation we’ve had with him up to this point. Don’t you think, Doz?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, dude, he was really into it!’ He was very engaged, like wasn’t on his phone. It was probably only a ten-minute conversation or something and that’s why, like I said, I was just kind of thinking, like, ‘He seemed to love it and he was writing stuff down, so it’s probably going to happen,’ I think if I would have known… That was kind of early on in our time, if I would have known what I knew now, I would have really stayed on it with some of the people who are kind of like next down in the chain that could make the moves happen and sort of just constantly, constantly staying on it instead of just being like, ‘Oh, well, he liked it. I think it’ll happen’ and it just didn’t, and accepting that.”

WWE released Tucker last April due to budget cuts.