A former WWE star has recalled the bizarre creative they were given for a match where they teamed up with Roman Reigns.
During the feud between Reigns and Shane McMahon in 2019, the future Tribal Chief needed a tag team partner to take on McMahon and Drew McIntyre. As seen in a backstage vignette, cleaner Gary Garbutt was offered $5,000 by McMahon to be Reigns’ partner but not wrestle. Instead, the offer was for Garbutt to wear a mask and stand on the apron.
The match took place later that night with Garbutt showing that he was a competent wrestler. However, despite his best effort, Garbutt lost the match after being hit with a Claymore from McIntyre.
After the match, Reigns cleared the ring and Garbutt unmasked to reveal that it was actually Cedric Alexander under the mask. However, in a confusing follow-up, Alexander smiled like he had got one over on McMahon and McIntyre even though he lost the match.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Alexander recalled the pitch for playing the role of Gary Garbutt and admitting that he also found the angle to be bizarre:
“I got to work that day, not knowing what I was going to do, which is the norm for WWE. I just remember sitting around, and then ref tells me, ‘Hey, we need you ringside.’ I was like cool, go down the ringside, hang out for a bit, talk to some guys. Nothing happened. Okay, then Shane McMahon comes and gets me and goes, ‘Hey, come with me to the production meeting.’ Oh, cool, all right.
Following Shane to production he goes, ‘Wait right here.’ I sit outside the chair of the production meeting for what felt like 10-20 minutes. Shane comes back out, and in that time they had already got the plan together for Drew and Shane to bully a backstage crew member, a janitor, and then for me to take his place, put his mask on and wrestle. I’m like okay, why are we doing this? ‘It’s the story with Roman and Shane’, all right, cool, fine. That’s good enough reason for me, and that’s all I got.
Went out there and did the match. I remember calling the match with Shane and Drew, and I’m calling the spots I’m gonna do. I called the back elbow, and Shane goes, ‘So you can do my moves now?’ Sorry, Shane, this is what I was doing at the moment. What do you want me to do?”
Continuing, the former WWE star spoke about smiling after the match even though he lost:
“The weirdest thing from that was then taking the mask off at the end of the match and then having a smile on my face. It was the weirdest thing, because I remember the spot was to take the mask off and reveal it’s me, and I’m like. I hadn’t done anything on Raw at this point. I’m just a guy. A guy from 205 Live that most people didn’t who watched Raw probably didn’t see the show. So I’m like, All right, cool. Gonna take the mask off.
I remember taking off and Roman goes do it slow. All right. I take the mask off, and I’m smiling with a busted lip because Drew just kicked me in the face with a claymore. And I’m like, Yeah, it’s me. It’s me, Austin! I’m thinking to myself, why the hell am I smiling? I just got kicked in the face. Vince was like, ‘I want you to take it off and smile big, like you just got one over on him.’”
Also in the interview, Cedric Alexander spoke about his WWE release and possibly signing with AEW.
WWE Champion Look Back On Roman Reigns Rivalry
Returning in 2020, Reigns won the Universal Championship at SummerSlam that year and held onto the title for 1,316 days. In a recent interview, one of Roman Reigns’ opponents in the record-breaking title reign spoke about the feud and how they felt it set them back.
In another interview, a WWE star blamed Cody Rhodes for not being allowed pyro.
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