Former WWE NXT head trainer Bill DeMott was a recent guest on Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast and commented on his WWE NXT release, his reputation as a hard-nosed trainer and more.

DeMott said that if you can make it in NXT, then you are so prepared for what the WWE is, from two hours of sleep and being at media calls at 4am, to driving 500 miles and said that some of them drive to Lakeland in Florida and want the next day off and then you think to yourself, we can’t let that happen, you’re going to go from Buffalo to Wilkes-Barre, make the drive, you’re going to have a meeting at 6am, still make your RAW call-time and then sit in front of Stephanie, Triple H, Vince, Paul Heyman – the guys that are up there on top that have that work ethic and you’re either going to hang or you’re not and it’s not to break you down, it’s to prepare you.

Jericho questioned DeMott about being known as a hard-nosed trainer in the WWE, to which DeMott said that he’s a red-light guy who acted like an a**h*** when the cameras were on that it caught on and that is what they had him do on WWE Tough Enough. Jericho then questioned him on the “jelly doughnut scandal”, before both men noted that wrestling has been a “boys club” and sometimes you do ridiculous things to keep the morale up. DeMott said that he had something back then called “Make-A-Deal Friday” where the developmental wrestlers would make a crazy deal to get out of their Friday workouts which was the day after a television taping and it became something fun and ridiculous that they did as a team-building and morale exercise and said that the problem is that one person took it out of context and used an incident from 4-5 years ago as to why they were cut from developmental. DeMott said that he didn’t think that Zack Ryder would make it on his own, only because the Major Brothers, back in Deep South Wrestling were so good. DeMott said that both Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins are such fans and are both good guys and when he heard about the split of the tag team, he was more concerned for Zack then than for Curt Hawkins, because Zack had that aggressive thing that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

DeMott also talked about the end of WCW and being part of the Invasion angle in the WWF at the time and said that the group that showed up at WrestleMania 17 was originally supposed to be in the ring with Shane McMahon, however they were then moved to the audience because Shawn Stasiak had leaked the names to the media on the night before the pay-per-view.

The interview is available in full at this link.