Brad Maddox recently spoke with Rolling Stone following his WWE release. Here are the highlights…
On Being Brought up to The WWE Main Roster: I was told that it was going to move into a wrestling role. That was a concern of mine. I liked the creative idea of doing something different and unique, but I didn’t want to become a full-time talker. I wanted to wrestle. I did all the things in developmental that they said you have to do. They put trust in me by giving me several different championships in FCW. They gave me the Jack Brisco FCW 15 Championship, which was their real wrestling title, the equivalent of the Intercontinental Championship. I had the FCW tag titles with Rick Victor. I expected it to morph into a regular wrestling role. What I didn’t know at the time was that it was a gimmick just to win CM Punk another match. I should have been more proactive about that. I should have gone to Vince right off the bat, asked if he knew who I was and knew that I could wrestle. I should have asked where this was going and what they were going to do with me now that I was here. I just kind of expected the writers to have some grand plan for Brad Maddox, and I certainly shouldn’t have assumed that. That would probably be one big regret, assuming that it was going to turn into something bigger than what it was.
On His Role as GM: I missed wrestling the whole time. As soon as I came up and started transitioning into a referee, I missed it immediately. I kind of felt like I was at the peak of my wrestling abilities when they brought me up. So I immediately missed it. On the other hand, it was pretty surreal getting to work directly with Vince and Triple H and Stephanie every week. I have awesome experiences just going over promos with Vince in his office. It was really cool. It held me over, but I’ve missed wrestling for about three years now.
On Pitching Ideas to Get on TV: I did this one thing where I acted like I was lost in a cave, in Mexico. I put these videos out online. Then it turns out that I wasn’t lost, it was just a publicity stunt. It turns out that I had lost my mind, but it wasn’t because I was stuck in a cave, it was from being stuck at home. I wanted to turn into a guy who just flipped out from falling off his mantle as being the most important man on Raw to a guy who lost his dream job and everything else with it. A guy who became mentally unstable, though not in a Dean Ambrose way. I messed around with some split-personality stuff as well. I like to try to get creative, and sometimes I go too far outside the box. Those were some of my favorite pitches.
On Getting Contacted by Other Companies: People have been contacting me. I’m still working on my game plan. By no means do I think that I’m done wrestling. I’m also focusing a lot on acting, which is my other passion. I’m sure I’ll be doing a bit of both. Acting has been a growing passion of mine over the past five or six years. Before then, it was something that I was a bit too nervous to get into. Now I really enjoy it. That’s one of the reasons I make so many YouTube videos on my own. I like to be creative and try out different characters. Actually, in Dusty Rhodes’ promo class, I got bored with the standard wrestling promo pretty quickly, so I just started doing weird things. I’d come out with a different character every week, or I’d try doing an emotional or a dramatic scene. I just played around with it. That was my stage, and that’s where my passion for that developed.