Brodus Clay was one of 11 talents fired last week by the WWE and 'The Funkasauras' recently spoke after his release about his time in the company.
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Clay, whose real name is George Murdoch, was released last Thursday along with JTG, Drew McIntyre, Jinder Mahal, Aksana, Curt Hawkins, Theodore Long, Camacho, Evan Bourne, Yoshi Tatsu and referee Mark Harris, and then writer Jay Gibson was let go by WWE CEO and Chairman Vince McMahon on Friday.
Clay discussed his Funkasauras character and how it came to be during an interview with Wrestling 365. Clay started off as serious threatening figure before turning his gimmick into a light-hearted dancing big man.
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"Initially, I had spent the last 7-8 months to the better part of a year training with the idea that I was going to be 'the juggernaut', destroy all that stuff and those vignettes were a lot of hard work and then seeing me in the back, cracking jokes and just being myself or whatever, the boss [Vince] said, are you sure this is the right way we want to go," he told the program. "He said what if we do this instead, and I was kind of surprised and kind of nervous and didn't even know if I could pull that off as the dancing stuff really isn't who I am at all, but cracking jokes with a smile, I do that all day and joke around with the boys all the time."
Clay then said that it was a challenge to get the character over and that despite the fact that there were a lot of doubters, he was determined to make it work.
"A lot of people were rolling their eyes saying that it's not going to work, but I was given a challenge and I thought I done pretty well with the challenge put in front of me, it was completely out of the box than what I had originally prepared myself for, but it worked out okay and now that I look back at it, I'm proud of it," he said.
He added: "I can always be ruthless and aggressive in the ring, but I don't think I'll ever have the opportunity to be 'The Funkasaurus' again. I'm thankful for that time, because for me, it was a chance to be a character and have fun and honestly, the reactions that I got from the kids just made me want to do more and more of it. I enjoyed seeing the smiles and the dances and the videos they would send me on Twitter. That was really cool."
Clay was released last week as a part of a series of budget cuts the WWE is expected to make and there is fear and paranoia amongst lower-tier talent backstage that their jobs may not be safe since the WWE is looking to slash costs after McMahon lost money on a subpar television deal, lackluster WWE Network subscriptions and the WWE's stock taking a hit.
The WWE is expected to continue to make cuts and the NXT roster is slated to be shaken up soon while many Superstars are on edge over the fact that the releases may not be over with.
Clay had a solid run in the WWE but was never able to really get above mid-card status leading to his departure, but he took a difficult gimmick and made it work.
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