Elias Talks Issues With His "Drifter" Gimmick In NXT, Evolving His Character and More

WWE Superstar Elias recently made an appearance on Edge and Christian’s “E & C’s Pod of Awesomeness” podcast. During the interview, Elias discussed working in NXT, issues with his “drifter” gimmick and Triple H believing in him. Check out the interview highlights below:

On his time in NXT:

“Since I was an independent wrestler, you always wanted to be on Monday Nights, or SmackDowns, PPV’s, and all that stuff, but I have to say, when I was in NXT I was absolutely set on that I had to have a TakeOver match, I wanted to be featured on NXT. Yeah, I know the audience is more of a hardcore based audience, but in my head I believe I could have done that as well, but they had other plans. When I was in NXT I was all in with NXT and wanted to be on all the Take Over events and all that stuff.”

On the issues with his “drifter” gimmick in NXT: 

“There definitely were times that I had issues, but when I first started doing the Drifter in NXT, I remember I just wanted to sit in the back turnbuckle corner and strum the guitar. I thought that would have been the coolest thing; I wouldn’t have to sing or say anything I kind of thought that it would be mysterious and cool.”

On Triple H believing his "drifter" gimmick would work on the main roster:

 “Triple H has told me specifically from the very first time when he saw me, he said that it would be a better main roster character than NXT. It never really clicked with the NXT audience the way it has. The way I see it, I took my live event act in NXT and brought it to the main roster. They saw the live event act and said let’s put that on TV. On NXT, I would sing songs, but wouldn’t even do that, plus it was very dark and cryptic, but this is the kind of stuff I was doing on live events in NXT before being called up.”

On seeing his character evolving:

 “I definitely see my character evolving. I don’t want it to run until the wheels fall off. I am definitely going to get the most out of this incarnation of it, then hopefully whatever the crowd reacts to it, and storylines take me there are many level. Think about just any kind of rockstar who has had a journey; they have their ups and downs, their egos and demands and then they hit rock bottom. There’s a million ways to go with ‘Elias,’ in my mind I see it evolving in many different ways.”

On Terry Taylor asking him if he could sing to the crowd: 

“One time I went to Largo, Florida and Terry Taylor came up to me and asked if I could sing a song tonight and I said, ‘OK, about what?’ He said that I should sing about the crowd. I came up with a song that night and the song kind of clicked right off the bat, so I evolved it from there. I started asking, at the time, ‘Who wants to walk with The Drifter?’ I would then tell a little story; it all really started at NXT, even though the NXT audience didn’t really get to see that side of me too much; the live events crowd definitely did see that.”