Michael Tarver on Wrestling Voice Radio
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Regarding his performance on the first season of NXT:
"I started to notice that they had interest in certain people. It was my decision (not to take part in the Rookie Challenges), there was just no creative input put into my character at all, they focused their effort on David Otunga, Daniel Bryan and Heath Slater to a certain degree. Myself, Darren Young and Skip Sheffield they didn't put any effort into. So I decided to make myself the heel of the show and make myself stand out and be the only true bad guy of the show.
I began to get myself so much attention with my behavior as I was a fireball and making it interesting I thought they would keep me on. Each challenge they were talking about me, they weren't talking about the challenge or who won the challenge they were talking about what did Michael Tarver do or what is Michael Tarver going to do this week and I figured I was doing the right thing by standing out just being a bad guy, being that this is entertainment and presenting this personality.
I had to convince them I was acting and I came up with this to stand out. I think they knew who was going to get what out of NXT (before the show), they had in their mind who they were going to pull everything out of which put the rest of us at a disadvantage."
Standing out in promo class with Vince McMahon:
"I noticed again I wasn't getting the opportunity to show what I can do and I know and a lot of people know that I'm just as good if not better than anybody in WWE on the mic, and you'd have to be familiar with my work in FCW to know this, there was a time when I was writing promos for half of FCW because people would get advice from me to impress Dusty Rhodes.
So I interrupted the class with Triple H or Vince McMahon himself in front of the entire RAW roster and producers and agents, I would stand up in front of Vince and said give me a word, and he'd be shocked and think 'OK this kid has balls' and he'd give me a word and I'd knock it out of the park and I'd get an ovation from the whole roster and Vince called one of my promos 'classic'. He knew I got what he was teaching and he was brilliant to say the least."
On the debut of Nexus with the attack of John Cena:
"We didn't really know how it would turn out, we knew it really had never been done and it still took a couple of days to sink in, but before the pressure was on us we were told if you do not execute this kiss your jobs goodbye. The silence, the shock in that arena in Miami. It was amazing. It was the biggest thing, it was on ESPN on the news, all kinds of main stream media and it was one of the biggest things ever in the wrestling industry.
I had recovered from my injuries and I got brought back up to the main roster, once I had gotten there I started doing my usual interrupting the promo classes and doing these bombshell promos and working with Freddie Prinze Jr and started impressing people ever more than before. So the idea came that I was to become a manager or a recruiter but they weren't sure, but they wanted to use me on the mic and I was all for it and Vince was so impressed and had appearing in segments that had nothing to do with me and it worked, people still wanted to know what I was going to do and it just went away and I don't know why and they stopped doing it."
His attempts to get a new character over with the office:
"So I filmed vignettes and commercials on my own when Triple H came hands on with creative with the likes of Sin Cara and Kharma, what they did with Kharma was the idea I had for myself, and I thought I had that same aura. I had merchandise and T-Shirts and masks and I went to a TV Taping in Florida and put it on a DVD and handed it to every producer, Triple H, John Laurinaitis, I went into Vince's personal office and told him put it in, push play and let me go. John Laurinaitis was extremely impressed. But I was told creative had nothing for me."
He also talks about his early days in the business, more on NXT, working through injuries and how John Cena not working careful with him in the ring caused injuries.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
