When The Ascension debuted on main roster WWE television, Konnor and Viktor became face-painted, shoulder pad-wearing, monsters similar to The Road Warriors. They would even start feuds with tag teams of the past.
Speaking on the Two-Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast, Konnor explained that he spoke with Demolition, Road Warrior Animal, and The Powers of Pain in an effort to clear the air with them while performing a similar gimmick on television.
"They know that was who we were and then, you know, the comparison, it was a tough pill to swallow because we specifically never wanted to be compared to anybody, you know? I — and Vik, I don’t know if he talked to you about this or not but we had the opportunity to speak with [Road Warrior] Animal, in person together and we talked to him and kind of explained that we were sorry, that we hoped that there was no ill will towards us because of that and he understood and I think the best part about that was talking to him man-to-man, face-to-face about it and that was really important to us," said Konnor. "Then, of course, we talked to Demolition and I talked to Powers of Pain because I know The Warlord pretty well and so we felt like we had to do that out of the respect to those men because those are men that paved the way, that allowed us to feed our families and that was very important to us… But yeah, that was one of the things that we took upon ourselves to do once we were done [in WWE] was that we were like, ‘We’ve got to talk to these men if we can and clear the air, at least just to make sure’ and they probably didn’t give a damn to be honest with you, but it was the right thing to do, at least from a man’s perspective. The way I look at it, that was the right thing to do."
Dusty Rhodes in FCW, Konnor, like many, had nothing but good things to say about Dusty.
"He was amazing. Absolutely love him. Everything I do, when I think about him, I have taken everything he's taught us in my mind that I love to give in promo classes or when I talk to kids about character development now, he was a huge inspiration on the success that we had in the first Black and Gold NXT. Him and Hunter and of course, Bill DeMott. They had a huge part of our success and why we did so well. Always be grateful. Always," he said.
Speaking about the comparisons to the Road Warriors, Konnor even proclaimed that Dusty Rhodes tried to warn them ahead of time to make it clear that there could only be one Road Warrior tag team in history.
"When this comparison started, this is right at the end of our NXT run, I believe, before we're about to get called up to the main roster. I remember Dream telling us, it's very important that you guys explain to yourselves that there can only be one LOD, there can only be one Demolition, there can only be one Powers of Pain, and there can only be one Ascension. It's very important that you guys talk about that, because you don't ever want to emulate another team you really don't like. You want to be your own person or your own team. When going back, you look at the NXT version, you could see we were doing our own thing. You could see that's who we were. That's why people bought into it," said Konnor.
Konnor recently appeared on IMPACT Wrestling television in a losing effort.
You can check out the full interview embedded here.
