Ever since EC3 was released by WWE in April, he’s shown off his creative chops through videos and messaging about ‘controlling your narrative’.
He recently spoke to Fightful about his final weeks in WWE, and how their frustrating creative process made him reluctant to even pitch his best ideas, because the ideas would likely get warped once WWE took control of it:
“This is me. It’s true to my life. It’s changed a lot with COVID, ’cause it’s really brought it out to a different limelight, but this is something I’ve always wanted to do. I was like, ‘If I pitched it to [WWE], it’s gonna suck and I’m going to lose my mind.’ So, in my mind I watched the Fiend lose to Goldberg at Saudi, like that guy put so much work into being the most creative thing I’ve ever seen and then they just throw it away. But, I gotta do something. So, I pitch this beginning. The same thing that I released when I got fired...
Before I got fired I filmed it on my couch. Isn’t that cool? It [took] about two hours, probably. I filmed an earlier version that I pitched and then there was a Raw at the Performance Center. ‘Everyone loved it. It was great. So smart.’ But, it’s ironic enough. So, I’m sitting on this sweet video and this sweet pitch. At first it wasn’t even about this character, it was 90 days of freedom to do what I want with a wrestling character, how I want it. Let’s see where it goes, because someday someone else is gonna get their hands on it. It’ll be manipulated, and it won’t be as true to my vision and which is okay. ‘Cause that’s what happens to some extent. It was also a 90 day exhibition in showing how broken WWE creative process is. If I and a buddy and a Sony handheld and some cool music can do more with a brick wall than you can do with every person…”
WWE’s decision to invest so much time into The Fiend, just to feed him to Goldberg at Super ShowDown 2020, drew the ire of many wrestling fans who were exasperated with WWE constantly sacrificing today’s performers for the sake of chasing nostalgia. But it’s interesting to see that the wrestlers themselves witness this cycle and, at least in EC3’s case, also can’t make sense of WWE’s creative process. What’s the point of coming up with these truly creative concepts and putting everything you have into it if the expectation is that the promotion will likely ruin or waste your work on a whim?
EC3 will be free to join another wrestling promotion this week, and most signs point to him resurfacing at Impact Wrestling’s Slammiversary pay-per-view on Saturday, July 18. He referred to himself as “the most creative guy in the wrestling world” during this interview, and now is the time for him to prove it.
Are you looking forward to seeing what EC3 can accomplish outside of WWE?