The folks at Complex have a great profile of Elias you should go read. What stood out to me was this great story he told about his first proper meeting with Vince McMahon.
The setup is that he was backstage rehearsing before going out to play for the audience. Then:
“[Management] said, ‘Vince [McMahon] wants you to do the song for him,’” Elias recalls. “I sat down in Vince’s office and said, ‘Hey, they told me to come do my song for you, so Vince, if you could just silence your cell phone, hold your applause, and shut your mouth, I’d like to do that right now.’”
A supersized flex to say the least, what makes the interaction even more legendary is that it represented the first between him and McMahon beyond a handshake. Always cool and confident, regardless of his audience, Elias was far from intimidated by McMahon and his notorious hard-assery.
“After I sang my little song,” Elias continues with a half-smile, “he just kind of gave me a head nod and said, ‘Oh, this is gonna be good.’”
It’s entirely possible he’s just working his answer, and maybe even likely. But I badly want to believe he legitimately did that to Vince and it was then that McMahon told him to go out and do the exact same to the live audience. It wouldn’t be the first time for either outcome, not by a long shot, but only one of those is really fun.