The NXT Champion is a big fan of HBK.
On February 11, Ricky Saints joined WWE following his departure from All Elite Wrestling, becoming part of the NXT brand. After a short reign as NXT North American Champion, he defeated Oba Femi at No Mercy on September 27 to capture the NXT Championship.
Appearing on Busted Open Radio, Ricky Saints spoke about working with Shawn Michaels in NXT and revealed that the WWE Hall of Famer lets him march to the beat of his own drum.
“Shawn is awesome. Shawn is great because Shawn can give you — I remember one time Shawn pulled me aside and he goes, ‘You know, you’re not like a typical — and I hate to even pull the curtain like that — you’re not the typical baby face.’ I get it, so it’s always good to have that type of perspective because too often you have someone’s idea of what something is supposed to be, and they try to put it on you, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, it ain’t working.’ There’s certain times where Shawn does like, ‘Ah, man, come on.’ But for the most part, he lets me run free because it’s easy to let somebody run free and then wrangle them in, as opposed to, you’re putting them in a straight box and they don’t have room to move. So I think he appreciates that. And I of course appreciate it because that’s all I ever wanted.”
-Ricky Saints
The October 28 edition of NXT saw Saints brawl across the arena with Trick Williams before Ava announced that the pair would meet in two weeks in a Last Man Standing match for the NXT Championship.
Elsewhere in the interview, Saints discussed the possibility of a future match with current WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. You can read more about that here.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on future plans for Ricky Saints as soon as we hear more.
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