During an appearance on Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast, Damian Priest talked about why he was signed by WWE:
“I remember when I got hired here, that was one of the first things Hunter told me. He was like, ‘Dude, there’s no shortage of good wrestlers. Everybody here is good. That’s why they work here.’ He goes, ‘Me hiring you, that’s just me hiring you — I could hire anybody if I wanted to hire a good wrestler.’ He goes, ‘You, it was the idea of something special with you. That’s what I saw and that’s why I brought you in because I really believe we could do something even more with you that you’ve never been able to do before’ and I thought that was cool, because that means obviously something I did worked. Outside of just in-ring performance, it was just the idea of what I could be, not just what I am and I appreciated that and I like that here — for many years on the indies and other companies that I worked for it has always been, they’ve always asked me, ‘Hey, we’re looking to you for this role. We think you can fill it.’ Okay. You’re never gonna say no, right? Like yeah, sure. I’ll play this, I’ll play that and then I came here and then it’s, ‘Hey, we just need you to be yourself,’ and I was like, ‘What!? I don’t know how to do that.’”
Priest also talked about working with Finn Balor at NXT Takeover: In Your House:
“This is the place, this is another one of the reasons why because people I was a fan of, now I might be able to get in the ring with and showcase something special. Not only just for the fans, but for me. This is where the selfishness comes in, I want this for me. I wanna be in a ring with these guys. I wanna be able to say to myself like, ‘Man, I got to work with this person’ like I did with Finn Balor which was extremely special. Now we just gotta do it again so I can beat him. But that was extremely special to me and finding out that he wanted to work with me, it blew my mind and that’s how that kinda came to be, which put a lot of pressure on myself because it’s like, ‘Man, this guy wants to work with me. If I go out there and suck…’” (quote courtesy of PostWrestling.com)
