Viktor On Nearly Joining The Wyatt Family, The Ascension Being Longest-Reigning NXT Tag Team Champions

In a recent interview on The Wrestling Inc. Daily, Viktor discussed nearly joining The Wyatt Family, The Ascension being the longest-reigning NXT Tag Team Champions, and much more. Here are some highlights:

Viktor on nearly being a part of The Wyatt Family before the formation of The Ascension: “I suffered a couple of little minor injuries while I was there. I just started rolling, this was kind of before I got put in Ascension. I’d been working with Seth [Rollins] a ton, and I was in a three-way dance with him and Leo Kruger (Adam Rose) somewhere three hours north of here. And it was one of the very last things in the match, and Seth was just throwing me back into the ring. And I remember my knee just suddenly gave out when I went to stand up and finish the match. And it was such a good match. It was really good. We had so much fun.

“I just remember somebody being like, ‘It was so much fun.’ I go, ‘Yeah, I’m not walking out of here,’ and so then after that, it was kind of a weird scramble where I was almost in The Wyatt Family for a little while. And then after that got shut down, Hunter (Triple H), under the suggestion of Norman Smiley who had been saying it for years and Billy Kidman who said, ‘Hey Vic should be in The Ascension.’ That’s kind of how that happened. NXT had already kind of formed, but we were still in Tampa. We hadn’t moved to Orlando yet.”

On The Ascension still being the longest-reigning NXT Tag Team Champions: “I have a lot of mixed feelings about it,” Vik admitted. “I think I was laughing about it with Konnor the other day because we were like, ‘I can’t believe they haven’t gotten rid of that yet’ because I was sure that they were going to get rid of it at one point. I thought it was going to be FTR or AOP because I know both of them had super long reigns, and I was sure that one of them is going to get it. And then they never did, and I was really surprised at that. And I think it’s just the fact — WWE did their best to forget about us being the longest-reigning NXT Champions. I remember some of the commentators saying that they were never allowed to bring it up again on commentary. That’s more or less why I have mixed feelings on it, and I remember the time for me and Konnor, it looked one way to everybody else, and it was really a completely different way for the two of us.”

On the reaction from Michael Hayes and Pat Patterson to their storyline of them mocking legendary WWE tag teams: “At the time, I said I didn’t care because I’m like, it’s not real. We don’t feel this way about any of these legends. It’s just trying to get us heat, and so it didn’t really bother me because I didn’t mean any of what we said. It really bothered Konnor because he had to say a bunch of stuff that he didn’t want to, and to me, I’m like, well, it’s not real. We don’t feel this way. When we started seeing the response, the company was kind of blind to the response that the fans gave us, as they are in many cases. It took them forever to realize that we weren’t bad guys anymore. I can remember Michael Hayes saying to us after we cut a promo one day on NXT, and he was like, ‘I don’t get it. You guys are cutting heel promos, but the fans are reacting to you like babyfaces.’

“We’re like, ‘Michael, you haven’t realized people have been cheering for us for like six months?’ [He said,] ‘I just don’t get it. We’re gonna have to do something about that.’ I don’t remember the match, but we came back, and Pat Patterson was standing there clapping. This is the only time he ever did this, for me anyway, and he goes, ‘Oh my God, I love it you guys! I love it. You guys used to be the biggest badass heels, and now you’re just the biggest badass babyfaces! This is so good!’ And we were like, ‘Okay, cool. People are starting to notice.’ The first time we came up, our very first live event together for WWE was in Madison Square Garden right after the first Takeover and both super nervous just being like, man, I don’t know what people are going to think or whatever. And as we walked up to MSG, there’s so many fans outside, and they just all started chanting for us. We’re like, ‘Holy s**t. This is crazy.’”