Viktor Says WWE Wouldn’t Let Him Reference Being Trained at the Hart Dungeon

WWE alumnus Viktor of The Ascension was trained at the Hart Family Dungeon, but most WWE fans may not be aware because he wasn’t able to mention it on TV. Viktor spoke with the Two-Man Power Trip of Wrestling and touched on how he was told not to talk about being trained at the famous facility in the ring, and you can see some highlights below (per Wrestling Inc):

On his training at the Hart Dungeon not being mentioned on WWE TC: “We used to kind of always pitch it. Like, this is one of my things, basically. Because that’s a thing in wrestling. You know what I mean? That’s what I came up watching. Like, everybody else that came from The Dungeon, that it was just kind of a given. You hear somebody is from Calgary and you say, ‘That guy can work. That guy is gonna be a good wrestler.’

“When I got to FCW they were just like, ‘Nope. We’re not letting you say that anymore.’ And I was like, ‘Hmm. Well, thanks.’ And I think even [William] Regal said it one time on NXT and they told him to quit saying it. So I really never got a definitive answer as to why. They just told me to drop it. And so I said, ‘Fine’. I don’t need to keep trying to jam it down your throat if you don’t want to accept what I am.”

On being one of the last graduates of the Hart Dungeon: “It gave me a lot of credit when I would go somewhere. Even when I went over to England for the first time back in 2005-06, somewhere around there. They didn’t like a lot of foreigners always coming over and taking work – is kind of how I was told even before I got there. Then once I started meeting the guys and talking to them and even a lot of the veterans that were there, I never had any issues. They were all pretty cool with me. I felt like it always went a long way until I got to FCW and then it was like, ‘Nah. What you are doesn’t matter anymore.’”