Former WWE Cruiserweight Champion, TJP recently hosted a Reddit AMA where he answered a variety of questions from his time in WWE.
On the issues with WWE 205 Live:
“There’s no consequence to it. That’s why it’s not must see tv. You can’t do it on content alone. Great wrestling doesn’t keep anyone’s attention, there needs to be a fear of loss of you miss it. CWC worked because every week someone got sent home. You had to keep up with it, there were consequences, and potential for what it would look like integrated into RAW/SD. Then 205 started and there was no integration nor consequences to our matches. That’s also why I think viewership continued to get worse during the Neville period. We all loved Neville because he’s incredible. But building a brand new group of guys around one person doesn’t work because it sets the bar that we are all losers except for him. And great matches won’t overcome that. In the beginning we had 4-5 of us that could all beat each other. Myself, Brian, Swann, all seemed equal footing and then behind us there was a tier of Cedric, Nese, Jack etc that ppl wanted to see move up and challenge. At best that made us interesting if you were into the concept. But being separate from the WWE main characters tells the audience that we aren’t as good as them, and once they started focusing the division around one guy at a time, Neville, Enzo, etc it became harder to keep ppls attention because there was little consequence to the results. I pitched a tag team title tournament once to play out weekly so we could spark investment. But nothing changes on that show because the company doesn’t care about it. That’s just the truth of it, it’s their investment and they don’t care. That’s their call.”
If Cruiserweight Tag Team Titles were ever planned:
“Some of the guys said they saw the titles on the production prop truck on night before 205 had even started. I didn’t see them myself but I remember that. They probably didn’t do them because they didn’t care. I don’t think the rope color change was any indication so much as how segregated we were coming in.
When I was champ all my stuff was on the main ppvs. Clash, hell in a cell, (In Your House:) Road Block…as 205 started they moved all Cruiserweight stuff into pre shows except for a couple instances. I remember they had me wrestle Nakamura as a special main event for nxt and it got a great reception from fans because it was like the first interaction with cruiserweights and heavyweights…but they didn’t care at all. For me I knew when they didn’t care because of things like those changes happening.”
On suggesting a valet storyline with Summer Rae:
“They didn’t approach me, I approached them. One day in Boston I went to Vince’s office before raw and asked for 2 things. To use TJP as a nickname(it was previously a nickname fans gave me on the Indys back in 2010) and also me and Summer Rae pitched a wrestler/valet combo like Shawn/Sherri. Since I was turning into a bad guy. Vince said sure no problem to the nickname, but the valet thing never stuck. Summer and I tried pitching it a few times but it didn’t take.”