Former WWE Superstar Heath Slater recently joined Kenny McIntosh of Inside The Ropes for a candid interview, diving deep into his time with the short-lived faction The Corre — and finally setting the record straight on one of the most talked-about quirks of the group: its unusual spelling.
The faction, which formed in early 2011 following CM Punk’s takeover of The Nexus and Wade Barrett’s ousting, featured Slater, Barrett, Justin Gabriel, and Ezekiel Jackson. But according to Slater, the group was never meant to exist in the first place.
“Pass [laughs]. Should have never happened and Nexus should have rode right through that s—t,” Slater said bluntly when asked about The Corre.
One of the biggest mysteries about the group was always its name – particularly the double R. Slater revealed the behind-the-scenes chaos that led to it during a creative meeting with none other than Vince McMahon himself.
“Here’s the story about that, and this is the truth,” Slater began. “The Corre was supposed to be me, Gabriel, Wade, and Ryback. Ryback got hurt. He was out. Next thing, Nexus is falling apart and CM Punk’s coming in… I thought it would be like NWO white and red and we’d have Nexus yellow and white or whatever. But no, we’re changing the whole name, and y’all gonna be the core of Nexus.”
Slater then recalled a rushed creative session that led to the now-infamous t-shirt design.
“We were in a meeting and Vince said, ‘They gotta have a shirt’, this and that. And they’re like, what about this? What about that? So I guess Kore was copyrighted and Core was copyrighted. Vince took out a napkin that his coffee was on, drew a t-shirt and wrote C, O, R, R, E down sideways with this little Iron Man heart in the O, gave it to them and said, print it out. That’s how we got our Corre shirt.”
When he first laid eyes on the shirt, Slater said he was just as confused as fans were.
“I said, ‘What the hell? Why are there 2 Rs?’” he recalled. “Then Wade, the bastard, tries to tell the whole damn world that I can’t spell. That’s the truth, but I did not misspell Corre. When I first looked at it, I thought it was like Corré, like French or something. I didn’t know. When I first saw it I was like, God, that’s an ugly shirt. Why is it spelled that way? And then of course, Stu being Stu, he just wanted to let the world know I did it.”
With years of speculation finally cleared up, Slater’s interview offers fans a hilarious and insightful glimpse into the often chaotic and spontaneous world of WWE creative.
