Wesley Blake On the Origins of the Forgotten Sons, Teaming With Steve Maclin

In an interview with Wrestling Inc, Wesley Blake spoke about the origins of the Forgotten Sons and how it came about when he stopped teaming with Buddy Murphy. Here are highlights:

On the start of the Forgotten Sons: “After me and Buddy split, I was trying to do single stuff, trying to get traction, and just trying to get on TV and try to become an asset to NXT in any which way I can. At the end of 2016, we had an Australian tour that was about 10 days, and once we got on the plane, I was there. I was told that, ‘Listen, once we get back to the States, you have to find a new gimmick because we’re going to have someone we’re about to start debuting, someone that’s going to be similar to your gimmick,’ which was Velveteen Dream. So I was, okay, so the first thing that came to my head when he told me I needed to change my gimmick was Steve [Maclin]. So when we got back in the States, the very first phone call I made was to Steve and just asked him, ‘Hey, I really think that we can start tagging,’ because we’ve always had a bond with each other. We’ve always had a real close brotherhood – friendship type thing. Not a lot of people know this but he’s the godfather to my children. Once I said, ‘Hey, they wanted me to change gimmicks. I think we can kill it as a tag team if that’s what you want to do,’ and of course, he jumped in 110%, and he goes, ‘I would love to.’ And that’s when we started getting the ball rolling with Forgotten Sons with pitches and the look and vibe that we wanted to do. It’s one of those things, me and him both have high regards to, that we really love, because it’s something that we pitched, and they actually went and used. Of course, WWE or NXT creative put their spin on it, but that was something that Steve and I creatively came up with, and they they used it. So that was something that was very much fun.”

On the original concept for the group: “When Steve and I first originally were pitching this, we were pitching a Sons of Anarchy type vibe, a brotherhood, but we originally pitched prisoners of society. The concept of that was you had two guys from different backgrounds, which we were, but we felt we’ve done everything right that you’re supposed to do in life, and we weren’t getting ours. And so now, we were going to take ours by any means necessary. That was kind of the concept that we were going with, which they liked but some people didn’t like. It wasn’t until [Jaxson] Ryker was paired with us, they kind of went more military with it, and that’s when Forgotten Sons started rolling and that’s when we were getting our message across of a military-esque type team.”