The Revival (now known as The Revolt) were recently guests on Chris Jericho’s podcast, Talk Is Jericho. During the podcast, Scott Dawson (aka (Dax Harwood) and Dash Wilder (aka Cash Wheeler) spoke about the comedy gimmick that they were pitched before they left WWE.
Some photos went viral from the pitch a few weeks ago, with artwork that essentially showed The Revival dressed up as clowns. During the podcast, the duo provided some much-needed backstory about the gimmick that they were pitched.
Here is what Dash Wilder said about what happened when Vince McMahon pitched them the gimmick (h/t to Cageside Seats for the quotes below):
“Vince hands us these [designs]. I’ll put my hand on the bible and tell you, I laughed out loud in front of everybody.
It was me, [Harwood], Vince [McMahon], Bruce Prichard, and [Mark] Carano. They were all serious and started telling us why it would be a good idea. They talked about the Ucey Hot and back shaving stuff where we showed we can do more than be serious, straight-faced ass-kickers. We could show different sides and different levels of charisma, which we never got a chance to do, even though we asked a lot.
We told them straight up, and I think this was when they realized we weren’t bluffing or trying to negotiate a higher number, we looked at them as said, ‘Here is the deal, these are not good. But we will do this until our contracts expire. We’ll do whatever you want. We’ll give 100% and have fun with it. But when our contracts expire, we’re not re-signing. There’s no way we’re staying past June.’
That was Friday at SmackDown. On Wednesday, we got a phone call saying we were pulled from everything. The numbers that have been reported contract-wise, $750,000 a year or whatever, it was higher than that. It was more than that for us to do the clown, Cat in the Hat, Flava Flav stuff. We said, ‘we’ll do this until our contracts expire, but we’re not re-signing for any amount of money unless it’s way up there.’
When they first described it, it was ‘we’re doing this out of spite. Tag teams don’t get the respect they deserve and they have to be a comedy act to get TV time,’ which is true. Most tag teams who get TV time do comedy and if you’re more serious, you’re considered not charismatic. So it’s us taking the piss out of how we perceived the division being disrespected. It’s not terrible when it’s on paper. I don’t know how it would have been executed as the weeks roll on, but us doing [the comedy act] out of spite to be upset about how tag team wrestling is disrespected, I was okay with it. We could have had fun with it and probably made decent money. I don’t know if there’s a long shelf life or if we’d be above super-low card comedy.”
Scott Dawson added that he isn’t sure if Vince really thought that it was a good idea or if he was just trying to bury them on their way out the door.
Let me know what you think in the comment section below or on Twitter.
In other news, check out our Wrestlemania 38 predictions.
On a related note, here is what Bret Hart pitched The Revival after they left WWE.