A WWE Creative Member Wanted William Regal To Speak With An American Accent

During the latest edition of Gentleman Villain, William Regal opened up about a pitch he got during his time in WWE asking if he knew how to do an American accent.

“I remember once when one of the creative people in WWE said to me, ‘Can you do an American accent?’ It was his idea and only his idea. He didn’t last long there. His idea was to change the character of me to make me American. I was like, ‘That doesn’t make sense whatsoever.’ It was one of the few times that I actually said no to anything.”

On talent complaining about creative:

“You can look at things in two different ways. You can either sit and whine and moan about it, or you can go, ‘What can I take from this?'”

“I found that, for whatever reason, that was my ability in this job that has made me last this long. Even if it was a bad experience, I used to think, ‘What can I take from this?’ Not, ‘Oh, this is wrong’. If you look at this and go, ‘What can I take from this, whether it’s, I’m never going to do that. I’m never going to treat somebody like that. I know not to do that again, or I’m going to avoid doing this’, you learn it. If you’re like, ‘Oh, this is terrible. This is rotten. This is crap. I’m not going to do this’, you’re just shutting your brain off.”

“If you have that open mindedness to everything, you have no idea what you’re going to retain, and it can be useful to you. The only thing that matters if you’re a talent is number one is getting hired and keeping the people who are paying you happy. Whether they like you or not, as long as they’re paying you, that’s number one. Number two is connecting with an audience. I tell people, ‘Just make it work.’ If you’re given anything as a talent, and you say, ‘This is rotten. This is no good. I don’t get it’, there’s a good chance it’s going to be rotten.”

On meeting Triple H in WCW:

“He came to WCW and I saw somebody who was talented and young. I mean, he’s only a year younger than me, but hadn’t been in the job as long as me and hadn’t done as much.”

“I’m like, ‘Do you want to come and train together?’ We drove together. He used to come and eat. My wife cooked for him. I’ve done that for a lot of people because people did it for me.”

On meeting The Young Bucks 12 years ago:

“There was a group of extra talent that was brought to every show. Part of that was The Young Bucks. I liked them straight away. We had a great few days together. I talked to them a lot. They had some incredible matches in the afternoon. In fact, I put them on with the Usos to have a tag match and the two teams tore the place down.”

“So that’s probably something that the fans would love to see. I saw it in the afternoon. I was raving about them. I’d been told a few things. Now I could have some of these things wrong. But there were a few guidelines. The guidelines were that we don’t like to hire anybody under 20-something and I can’t remember if it was 22 or 25. The reason being, they can’t even rent you a rental car. It has something to do with rental cars.”

“I’m just hearing little bits of information from people, and I could have this completely wrong, but this is what I remember. I’ve heard different people tell me who know them far better than me, they’d already made up their minds that they were going to Ring of Honor, they didn’t really care about this gig. A while after that, I found out that they were older than what they were.”

On Adam Cole's original WWE tryout:

“Adam Cole did a tryout at one point when he was, I believe 24. I said, and everybody else around, all the crew, everybody involved in this said, ‘This lad is as proud as it gets. He’s got everything going for him.’ Triple H made the call, which may sound a bit harsh at the time, and he told me personally, ‘Leave him out there.’ He was already working for Ring of Honor and doing all this other stuff and doing PWG.”

“He said, ‘Leave him out there because in two years, the experience he’ll get out there will make him 10 times better than what he already is, if not more than that. Keep an eye on him and if he ever needs anything, let us know. Then when the time’s right, when we’ve got the right spot, we’ll bring him right in. Instead of coming in and sort of finding a spot for him, we’ll bring him up.'”