Senior Vice President of Live Events “Road Dogg” Brian James recently covered WWE Clash of Champions 2017 on his podcasts. He also discussed some of the wrestlers who worked for the company at the time.
Road Dogg was asked how NXT call-ups to the main roster work now that Triple H is in charge, as well as if he comes up with ideas for them. According to Road Dogg, creative is now given more time to write off a wrestler before they move to RAW or SmackDown. When Vince McMahon was the CEO, this was not always the case.
He said, “Yeah. So all of the above to be quite honest with you because there’s not a strict streamlined process, especially now that Hunter is in charge of the creative. He understands much more about giving fair warning so you can write the person out or write the person off or however you’re going to do it. It gives you time to prepare creatively for that. I like a heads up. So sometimes we got those and sometimes we didn’t. I think going forward, you’ll always, I’m speaking now from NXT creative experience, that we had time to prepare to send people off, but sometimes we got, ‘Hey, we’re taking this person because we got an idea for this and this’, and you could be in the middle of something with them or not, and there they went. So I don’t think it’ll be that way anymore because I think everybody understands at least let me beat him on the way out or let me do something to close the book on his character or whatever. Give us time to create something. I think that’ll happen a lot now.”
Road Dogg discussed The Riott Squad at the time:
“I’ll tell you this, and this is nothing against Liv. I think she’s improved 100 fold and she’s a legitimate star now and I book her on live events as such and put her in positions that position her as such, and so that’s a different story for a different show, but for me, it was always Ruby Riott. Ruby Riott was always the one. I still to this day think she’s the one out of those three. That is just my personal opinion, but I thought she could work. I thought she could cut promos. She kind of was the total package but she didn’t look like Liv. You know what I mean? So that’s what I figured was the end all be all, but I was a huge fan of Ruby Riott and still to this day a huge fan of her and Liv and Sarah too for that matter. Sarah Logan’s back now and I always love seeing her. She’s fun to be around and what a great name. All three of them are delights to work with and great at what they do. I’m sure the highlight will be Road Dogg hates Liv Morgan or something, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Love her. Love all three of the girls. Personally, what I saw with my little eye was a little, short, scrappy, tattooed girl. Like she’s the underdog outsider that people can relate to and that’s what I thought and I still feel that way.”
You can listen to the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
