So you always were a WWE fan growing up?
Yeah, I was a professional wrestling fan from a very young age. When I started to get obsessed over it, was when the Monday Night Wars started. I was 10 or 11 years old. I just fell in love. I just latched on to Sting immediately for some reason, and I was obsessed with him. My love for it just grew, and I started watching any type of wrestling that I could get my hands on. And I was fully obsessed all the way through high school, and into college a little bit. It kind of wavered a bit when I started training full time for Greco, because it was really a full time deal for me. I had to set it aside until the past few years. When I was training at the Olympic Center, there were a couple of guys there who watched. I started watching again and got back into it again. When I retired, I decided to give it a shot.
What's the toughest thing about transitioning from amateur wrestling to pro wrestling?
I think it's allowing yourself to be vulnerable and come out of your shell a little bit. In amateur wrestling, we are taught to never show emotion, and not let any emotions, whether it's from your opponent or the crowd, affect you. You just need to be a stone faced warrior out there. If you did that in the WWE, you'd probably get fired pretty quick. You have to feel the crowd. You have to show emotion. You have to feed off the crowd in WWE. Jason and I, we use the crowd's energy every night. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable and show emotion, that was the hardest thing when I was getting started.
When you were making the transition, did you talk to anyone who had done it before, like a Kurt Angle or Shelton Benjamin or anyone like that?
Not really. All I did was look for somewhere that did any sort of training in Minnesota. I found a small place and did a little bit here and there with them. But then I got in touch with Jerry Brisco, who does the amateur recruiting for WWE. Typically he recruits heavyweights, and the bigger guys. He let me know, he said that your size is usually not what we're looking for. But they were willing to give me a shot. He gave me a tryout, and thankfully it worked out.
You were signed in late-2013, and it took you a while to get to television. What were those 18 months like for you?
I'm a firm believer that if you work hard, keep your head down, and as long as you're doing what you're supposed to do, it's going to pay off. The hard part about what we do is that it doesn't always work that way. It's just the way it is. Sometimes there's opportunities there, and sometimes there's not. I wouldn't say it was frustrating, but it was definitely an eye-opener. I just had to adapt to it, and realize that I had to wait for my opportunity. I knew when it came, I had to take advantage of it, because those opportunities are few and far between. You're very fortunate when you get them, and I've seen people take advantage of it in big ways and have it pay off. So I was doing everything I could. When I had matches I would make the best of it. I was trying different things character-wise. Finally they threw out the idea of me and Jason, and we were all-in.
Jason, for those who don't know, has been there a long time. He has been there five years, and he's tried a lot of different stuff. It just didn't work out. He's one of those guys too, he just works so hard, and grinds, and never stops. He was trying thing after thing and it just wasn't working. By the time that we decided that we were going to run with this thing, we were both 100% all-in. I think that's part of what made it work. There was no reluctance there. We were on the same page from day 1, that we were just going to make this work. And it did.
I think one of the things that caught some people off-guard when you guys first came together in NXT was just how in-sync you guys were immediately. Was that something that truly was immediate, or did it take a little while before you got to TV together?
It was instant. That's the craziest part about this, it was definitely meant to be. Things happen for a reason. We both believe that. It was just immediate from day 1. We were on the same page, we just knew. We've been so fortunate, because I can't imagine that all teams are like that. I'm sure most work a long time to get that sort of chemistry, and we just had it. We were very fortunate.
Is there one specific thing that you think makes you guys so compatible?
I think a lot of it has to do with our mentality. We grew up in the same sport, and amateur wrestling breeds a certain kind of guy. Our mentality is almost exactly the same. Whether it's training, or just living, we're on the same page. It probably is just the way we were brought up. The way we trained, the way we competed, the competition we've had our entire lives. We see things the same way, so we approach everything the same way.
You guys draw a lot of comparisons to Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas, the World's Greatest Tag Team. You've even made jokes and references on TV to that. Are they a team that you consciously emulate, or has it just worked out that way?
We like to combine and watch everything. Obviously we've seen their stuff. It wasn't a deliberate thing that we wanted to be like those guys, but I mean, we're amateur wrestlers and we want to wear singlets. And it just so happens that we somewhat resemble them. If you're going to ask me who we would say is influential to us, I'd say it's more of the Steiner Brothers. They're someone we watch constantly. Those guys were ahead of their time, in my opinion. We've been watching so much of their older stuff lately, and some of the stuff they were doing in the 80s was so ahead of its time. We want to be that version, today. We want people to look back on us and say, “Man, those guys were ahead of their time.” We want to be new and fresh, and we want people to get the same feeling from us that they did from the Steiners.
I want to ask two final questions, one for the past, one for the future. First, if you could go back 20 years, and tell that 10 year old kid who loved pro wrestling that he would compete in the Olympics, and then a few years later debut on WWE television, what would he say?
I remember watching the girls gymnastics in 1996, in Atlanta. That seemed like such a big stage, and such an overwhelming thing. 10-year old me probably would have wanted to pass, it probably all would've been too stressful for little Gable.
Now that you're on the main roster, what are your goals from here?
In the short-term, we want to create an atmosphere on Smackdown where we raise the game of every tag team there. We want to approach it in a way that we're so tenacious, and we're so hungry, that it makes everyone else step up. We want them to say that they don't want the new guys to come in and take over. We want that competition. That's what we thrive on. If we can start that as quick as possible, we want everyone to step up and make the tag teams the thing to watch on Smackdown. That's the short-term goal.
Long-term? I hope they introduce tag titles to Smackdown. We want to win those. If not, we want to win the other tag team titles and bring them to Smackdown. Ultimately, we need to be on Wrestlemania next year. We need to be in a pivotal match and make an impact on a huge stage. We want to show it on the grandest stage possible.