Bobby Steveson wanted to use his real name in NXT.
Upon signing with WWE in August 2021, Bobby Steveson was given the ring name Damon Kemp despite already being an established and successful collegiate wrestling career. With his time in WWE coming to an end, Steveson will now get the chance to use his real name for future bookings.
While speaking to Fightful for a new interview, Steveson revealed that he wanted to use his real name in WWE, citing that he had already made a good name for himself.
"I wanted to keep it. I want to keep it because I felt like I already made a good name for myself before I got here. So I was like, why switch it? It was kind of like a restart. So how they go about names are, you get closer to TV and they wanna do something with you. They'll give you options for a name. So like, what I did was you send them a bunch of options and if they like it, they don't, they just keep going and eventually, or they'll pick something for you. So what I did was I would write down, I Googled, I typed in ‘cool names for guys, first names,’ and they all popped up. So then I wrote them all down and then I typed in ‘cool last names for guys,’ and they all popped up. So I like wrote first and last names right here and then I kind of just like drew a line here, drew a line there, there, there, there, there, then I submitted them. Then it's funny because my other option for my first name was Diego. They were like, ‘Oh, you want to do Diego or Damon?’ and I was like, ‘Oh, I don't look like a Diego. I'll just do Damon.’ So I went with Damon and then it was funny because literally as my name, like I did a 205 live with Andre Chase and then I looked at like Twitter on like that Friday night and I seen that there was a guy that murdered people in like Daytona. His name was Damon Kemp also."
Steveson went on and talked more about the killer named Damon Kemp and how he brought up the possibility of changing his ring name.
"Yeah. He was literally all over the news and then I told I told one of the guys I was like, ‘Hey, you know, there's a serial killer out there from Daytona named Damon Kemp, right? Like, should we change it? This is a bad thing.’ Then, ‘Oh, no, no, just leave it. It wasn't that big of a deal. Like, it didn't make that much news.’ I'm like, ‘Dude, look at NBC. It's on of the news.’ Yeah, and I was like, ‘The first thing they're gonna see until I actually make a name for myself is a guy's mug shot with the same name as me.’ So then I kept the name, so I was like, ‘Alright, cool.’ But yeah, that's not that you're the names. You just pick a bunch of random names and hopefully, whatever you throw at the wall sticks, that's how it went."
Elsewhere in the interview, Steveson recalled interacting with Cody Rhodes after a match on Main Event. Check here his full comments on the interaction by clicking here.
Furthermore, check out Fightful's full interview with the former Damon Kemp in the video linked at the top of this article.
