Corey Graves had a slew of guests on this week’s episode of WWE After The Bell and two of those talents happened to be the tag team of Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford of The Street Profits.
Graves asks the duo how they each came to be involved with WWE and both share different backgrounds in regarding their journey to the WWE ring. Dawkins was discovered by Jerry Brisco at The National Duels tournament for amateur wrestling and Ford sent his work into the WWE recruit website. It wasn’t until months later when Ford got his first try-out. He didn’t make that cut and part of his assessment was that he needed to gain weight. Ford then put on 45 pounds of muscle and sure enough, got hired on his second tryout. While Dawkins wasn’t too familiar with pro wrestling before going to NXT, Ford has always been a fan from the start.
“I’ve always watched my entire life. Always been a fan but actually like now doing, I didn’t have any indy experience,” Ford said. “Me and Dawks never both like worked on the independent scene so like no experience in there, but it’s just one of those things where you watched it your whole life but to actually do it is two completely separate things. So that’s kind of like one of those things that we’re still to this day learning about is just like, it’s completely different from watching it and growing up idolizing it and being a fan and actually doing, crafting art itself so, but yeah man, that’s the journey. That’s how I got here, man.”
Graves then asked how the two became to form The Street Profits. Montez recalls being in the same promo class with Dawkins and having something unplanned pan out organically between the two:
“We were boys from the start. Like when I first got to the PC and my second tryout, the one they actually hired me off of, they brought me to an acting class in which Dawkins was in the acting class…
“I remember that day that I thought that promos were going to be in the evening so normally I show up with a suit everywhere…but it was like five or six of us in that room so I wore my ring gear to pretty much what was going to be the promo class. I’m like, ‘Oh, damn, man. Like I ain’t got no suit on man, seriously they took us up to the acting class and I actually had on gym clothes, gym shorts and some moccasins.
“So I remember sitting up there, and they was going like, ‘Hey Dawks, like that’s perfect fit for y’all , he’s wearing moccasins too. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I see that.'”
Dawkins commented on how much his alliance with Ford meant to the development and growth of his career:
“Oh, it meant a lot, you know what I’m saying. Like you said, I’ve been around there forever so like keep finding like new different characters that would kind of like keep me in the fold for a little bit, but not like take me to the next level to where I wanted to go and as a singles competitor and even as a tag competitor, but that didn’t end up working out and so then I just kept looking for things that could stick, looking on things that could stick and then finally me and Montez have ended up as a tag. We haven’t looked back since. Don’t plan on to, you know?”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can listen to the entire episode of After The Bell below:
