WWE star Ivar has addressed the recent name change of his tag team, original plans and if any other alterations were considered.
First introduced to WWE fans in NXT, the former Hanson [Ivar] and Rowe [Erik] were known as The War Raiders. Winning the Tag Team Championships, The Raiders were called up to the main roster on the Raw after WrestleMania 35. However, with NXT call-ups being unnecessarily repackaged at this time, the tag team made their debut on Raw as The Viking Experience.
Mocked for the name change, the duo were quickly rebranded again as The Viking Raiders and kept the name for the next 5 years. In 2024, Erik and Ivar each returned from injury and were once again known as The War Raiders, a move that was welcomed by many fans.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, the World Tag Team Champion recalled how the return of War Raiders was pitched and how the return was delayed:
“When I had this opportunity to do the singles run and it was going well, I had a conversation with Triple H where he said, ‘Hey, how about we start pulling back off of the heavy Viking stuff, slowly peeling some of those layers off so we can tell more stories with you.’ I’m like, Oh, that’s great. So as we started to do that, I got hurt again, and then Erik and I were ready to come back. I think we were actually scheduled to return in Calgary at Raw.
At the last second, they pulled our travel and said that we’re gonna hold off for now. Oh man, here we go. They’re like, ‘No, nothing bad. We want to hold off. We want to have better creative for you.’ And then the next week, we got a phone call, Hey, how do you guys feel coming back as The War Raiders? And we were like yeah that sounds good. That sounds really good.”
WWE Star Ivar Discusses Other Possible Changes
Also in the interview, Ivar was asked if there were any conversations of reverting back to their individual names following the NXT tag team name being used on the main roster:
“I think at this point we spent five years in the main roster and Erik and Ivar, especially with the Ivar singles run. That’s how we’re known. I think it would have felt like an erase of everything we’ve done. I don’t think we want to erase everything that we’ve done on the main roster. We’ve done some great things, including singles run, our Raw Tag Title run that we had, all the stuff that we did with The Street Profits, whether people liked it or not, it’s our history. I loved every second of it, and I don’t think we want to erase that.”
Also in the interview, the WWE Champion opened up about his recent injury.
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