Luke Gallows recently was interviewed on The Steve Austin Show in which he discussed how he got into WWE, his Impact Wrestling run and working with Hulk Hogan. Below are the highlights:

On getting a job with WWE:

 “I called Tommy Dreamer and Johnny Ace every week, like, ‘Hey guys, you should probably hire me – I’m pretty good.’ I was having the bulls–t matches in West Virginia against guys in furniture stores and stuff! Terrible! So finally they were opening Deep South and I think they needed to fill it and I wouldn’t leave them alone, so I somehow got my ass in there after three years of terrible indies.”

On pitching a hillbilly gimmick: 

“They bring in Henry Godwinn and my partner eventually ended up being Terry Gordy’s son, Ray Gordy. And the way that happened was Michael [Hayes] brought Henry back and they were going to be the new Godwinns with Henry and Ray. And Ray was always really cool to me, sold me these Tex Slazenger boots. I wore them around for a while. And something happened with him. He had to leave the company. I don’t know what it was, but whatever. But they needed a partner, so some guys from TNA, some old school guys came in, but they couldn’t match this hillbilly thing, so I just watched, like, Larry The Cable Guy stuff and Bill Engvall. I got material for this stuff and I asked ‘Doctor’ Tom Prichard, who I always had a great relationship with, ‘can I please do something with Ray?’ because I know I’ve got nothing. They just killed this weird gimmick that I had. We cut a couple of promos and they loved it!”

On his and Karl Anderson’s travel partners:

“It’s always us and a rotating third or fourth. We get each other so [well] from when we first clicked, so sometimes Finn Bálor, sometimes Curt Hawkins. We were on SmackDown, so it was always AJ [Styles]. And then, we had Jinder [Mahal] for a while and he left to go to SmackDown and blew up. And we always do good, but we’re always together no matter what. I just think AJ and Jinder put up with us because we were funny and silly when we were reading.”

On his Impact Wrestling run:

 “It was fun. I don’t want to bury anybody there. It was a lot of fun and I had a lot of fun. It was just really different coming out of WWE because I went from bulls–t indies to the WWE. Then I left and I got fired right after my 26th birthday. I was a young cat. I started wrestling when I was just 18 [years old], so I was like, ‘this is not a bad thing – this is a good thing. I’m going to go everywhere and then hopefully go back.’ So I had a lot of fun there. I didn’t make a lot of money, but it was a lot of fun. It was a one-year run and then they were having their issues or whatever.”

On working with Hulk Hogan:

 “Oh man, Hulk was awesome. I always say because I started so young and I loved wrestling so much, I’ve met a lot of guys that were a little bit of a letdown.”