Former WWE Star Criticizes Name Change, Wanted To Keep Family Ties on TV

A former WWE star has spoken about how he and his real-life brother were given completely different names and stories on television.

In an episode of Casual Conversations on the Wrestling Classic, former WWE NXT star Damon Kemp, whose real name is Bobby Steveson, opened up about being assigned a separate identity from his real-life brother, Gable Steveson.

While Gable Steveson has also appeared on WWE TV, including in NXT, their familial relationship was never acknowledged on screen.

Reflecting on how he found the name difference strange but how it was explained to him, Bobby Steveson said:

“So, it was weird (dynamic between myself & my brother in WWE). He was doing his thing with amateur wrestling… the Olympics and stuff like that, and then I wanted to keep my last name. I was like, ‘Why not keep my last name? He’s literally in the business with me. Looks just like me. Why would we differentiate at all?’

“And then they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, eventually, we’ll get to something where you guys get to do this and do that,’ and then, it was also really funny when they had him help Eddy Thorpe out. I just thought it was like comedy kind of, in a way. Because I was like, I found out that he was gonna help him out because he knew me really well.

“But we weren’t related. I asked him, I was like, ‘Yo, you know people are gonna know we look alike?’ I was just thinking in the back of my head, is it gonna eventually lead to something? Because I lose to Eddy, do I eventually get to wrestle my brother?

“You can go back and look on Twitter. Brisco, Gerald Brisco tweeted it, like three years ago and there was a thing with The Creeds. He was like, ‘This is the match that we’re gonna see at WrestleMania. The Stevesons versus The Creeds.’ I still have the tweet saved. Great dude also.

“More stories with him, and then I was like, ‘Why are we doing this? It’s just kind of weird, kind of comedy-ish,’ you know? I think if we would have wrestled in NXT, I think a match like that would have been a match — we were told, ‘If you guys ever wrestle, it would be at WrestleMania,’ and we were literally told that. ‘If you guys ever wrestle, it would be a WrestleMania match’ and then I was like, okay, so, you know, maybe five, 10 years down the road, I wrestle my brother at WrestleMania. I’m just thinking at the time, thinking of the what ifs.”

Damon Kemp was written off NXT television after his No Quarter Catch Crew faction appeared to dispose of him by locking him in the trunk of a car.

Although Wren Sinclair witnessed the drive-off, she eventually joined the group after threatening to reveal what she saw during Kemp’s disappearance in the NXT parking lot.