Pat McAfee on the creative freedoms in NXT helping him be himself
There's an age-old argument in professional wrestling that the performers who get over the most with the crowd are the ones who are actually allowed to just be themselves with the dial turned up to eleven. The main roster of WWE restricts a lot of its Superstars from being able to just be extensions of themselves, but it is a lot more welcome in WWE NXT.
Former Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee is a perfect example of this. The NXT creative team have worked hand in hand with the professional sports athlete in making sure he comes across as real and authentic on their show.
Pat McAfee talks about how much creative freedom he has to be himself in WWE NXT
On Busted Open Radio on Sirius XM, McAfee sat down with hosts Dave LeGreca and Bully Ray to discuss a variety of topics, including the creative freedom he has been given in NXT.
LaGreca asked McAfee to elaborate on what a typical week for him with WWE NXT is like.
"So there's a couple conversations that happen, because I fly down, so I get, I get COVID tested on Sunday and Monday, here in Indianapolis, so when I get my results back tuesday wednesday so if those two are negative as soon as my show ends here in Indianapolis I hop on a plane, literally as soon as the show's over, and fly down to Orlando so whenever I get down there. The audience is already in the Capital Wrestling Center, right, so there's a couple quick conversations that have to happen like, hey, this is where we're at.
"This is what we need and I have a really good relationship with the people down there and they're like, this is what we're thinking has to happen, you tell us though. There's been a lot of times where they're like, we're not gonna tell you how to be Pat McAfee. And I think that has been one of the coolest parts of the entire thing it's like, hey, this is what we think, right, like we think this could potentially be this, but we're not going to tell you how to do it and to be honest it's been it's been amazing.
"It has been very very cool, I know that I'm in a very lucky situation to have that happen for me and I think I have to continue to take advantage of it because when I don't obviously that's gonna change, so it's like every night when I go out there I'm like, okay, I have to prove that I'm worth having this responsibility of doing and saying basically whatever the hell I d*** please."
You can catch McAfee every Wednesday night on the USA Network for WWE NXT