At this point, everyone knows about the gimmick The Revolt was given prior to leaving WWE. Vince McMahon wanted to turn the former Revival into a duo of comedy wrestlers.
The writing was on the wall for The Revolt, but this gimmick was the final nail in the coffin. Dax Harwood said:
“There was opportunity for us outside of the WWE and they just wanted to keep us away from that opportunity. They basically just…gave us one last big spiel about how they wanted to use us. It was all Vince’s idea, we had a meeting with Vince.
He presented us with these characters that were less than flattering to us. It wasn’t what I felt we could or should represent. I don’t know too many guys that, if they had any kind of self-worth or if they believed in themselves as characters and people, if they would’ve taken that opportunity.
So we just said no. We’re not happy here, I think it’s time for us to go. They took us off the road, and that was it. The last thing we did on TV was we beat down Braun Strowman, so I guess we got our tag team revenge on him.
To see what Harwood meant by the Braun Strowman comment, check out this article on why they decided to leave WWE. Chris Jericho asked if Cash Wheeler could follow up and give us any more details on this gimmick, and he obliged.
The Fox transition was incredibly hectic, and the XFL thing was happening. We knew [Vince] was extremely busy. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy [to get a meeting] but part of our negotiation was that we wanted to talk to him and air our grievances face-to-face-to-face with him.
We were ringside one day putting a match together and Corano texted us and said, ‘Meeting in Vince’s office. Get here ASAP.’ We got to Vince’s office and we sat down and he had these big foldouts. The first page was us as we are now, and then you open it up, and there are multiple different versions of their vision for what they wanted to do for us.
You’ve obviously seen, the pictures have leaked online. They are 100% legit. They were handed to us by Vince McMahon himself.
Harwood cut in, stating that he doesn’t know where the leaks are coming from in WWE, but it’s not from the boys. He feels that this leak, specifically, had to come from someone in creative.
Wheeler continued on about the company’s vision for them, stating:
“I’ll put my hand on the Bible. I laughed out loud in front of everybody. It was me and David (Harwood), Vince, Bruce Prichard and Corano. They were all serious and started telling us why they thought it was a good idea. They brought up the Ucey Hot stuff and the back shaving stuff where we got to show that we can do more than just be serious, straight faced.
Though The Revolt knew the gimmick was terrible, they were committed to the cause and the company.
We told them straight up, and I think this was when they realized we weren’t bluffing. We said, ‘Here’s the deal. These are not good. These are bad, but we’ll do these until our contracts expire. We’ll do whatever you want. We’ll give 100%, we’ll have fun with it. It’ll be fun. We’ll do exactly what you have right here, but when our contracts expire we are gone. There’s no way we’re going to be staying here past June.’
That was on a Friday, and by Wednesday we’d gotten a call saying that, ‘Hey, you guys have been pulled off of everything going forward.’
Wheeler felt that the reason the company didn’t go forward with it was that they were fine with doing it and possibly took some fun out of it.
Now The Revolt are free and are looking to knock off some top teams on their bucket list. You can hear those names and more from Talk is Jericho.
Be sure to credit Talk is Jericho and h/t Wrestling-Edge if these quotes are used.Â
