Eugene

When I got there, there was two weekly television tapings, one or two house shows a week, and then practice two or three times a week.

You were at so many reps to get so good under Rip Rogers and Nick Dinsmore and other people like that.

I don't know of any other training situation like that.

You were living the life.

He might have.

Nick Dinsmore, is that Eugene?

Yep.

He had the, it was like a t- team tryout match or like a development match.

Like, it was like, so I had to oil up more, but yeah, he, uh...

I was never promised anything, but I kinda felt like there was, I felt like, uh, where I was going at beginning was toward the Intercontinental Championship.

I thought that would've been, that- that's kind of the, the stepping stone to being a per- pers- you know, like a main eventer.

Absolutely.

Kurt Atlas with Aaron Blanchard defeats Eugene.

Yeah.

Nick Dinsmore?

Yeah.

In Merthyr?

And there was a guy that ran HWA named Steven Bradley.

And Stephen Bradley was almost like a Nick Dinsmore.

Nick Dinsmore and Rob Conway, they were the veterans at OVW.

And they had more respect than anybody.

And at HWA, we had Stephen Bradley.

Yeah.

2007, same day, WWE announced they had released Nick Dinsmore, who had portrayed the Eugene character.

Dinsmore had failed two drug tests, which led to the decision.

They did bring him back in 2009, but after just one appearance...

They axed him again.

Monday Night Raw, August 2nd, 2004.

And I remember that at the time, Triple H was very, very, very angry that Eugene interrupted this match against Chris Benoit.

Mm-hmm.

And he was very, very angry and said, okay, who made Eugene enter? Why he came? Eugene, where are you, Eugene? But then there was this voice, this accent that came in and said, dear, dear, dear, dear.

And that was William Regal that cut one, that not just me, a lot of people say it was one of his best performances.

promos of his career and I still remember the whole promo by heart and the point is that after there was a match and it was very short and because it finished with DQ because Triple H had a knuckle duster and of course there were of course the ref called disqualification and I remember William Regal had like a like a blood mask and he wore the knuckle duster in his hand it was raising up and it was the moment that said damn Now I know what I want to be when I grow up.

I love Drew McIntyre.

And you mentioned, like, you know, obviously, you know, being a big Will gum.