Maven discusses being unable to come out of the shadow of the WWE Tough Enough reality show.
Maven was the inaugural winner of WWE Tough Enough in 2002 and he parlayed that victory into a full-time career as a WWE Superstar until 2005. These days, he uses his YouTube channel to share his stories from his time as a wrestler.
His latest YouTube video discusses the top phrases that no WWE star would want to hear during his era. He does use the video, however, to air a personal grievance about how his legacy is tied to the WWE Tough Enough reality show, and no matter what he's done since then, it still gets brought up in interviews today. Of course, he is grateful for what the show provided him but admits it's tiresome to be associated with something that happened so long ago in his life.
"Now this next one is more personal in nature to me, and that is being called the 'Tough Enough Kid.' Now, for those of you who are unaware, in 2001 the WWE had a reality show contest called Tough Enough. I won the first one, and that gave me my WWE career," he recounted. "While I'm forever grateful for that opportunity, I mean, I am and will always be the fan who was able to live their dream, but I always wanted the opportunity to be able to graduate, to move past just being the 'Tough Enough Kid.'
"It's weird. It's not even backstage. It's not even with the boys," he continued. "After time passed and after I earned some of my stripes, I noticed the guys in the locker room, they no longer viewed me as the 'Tough Enough Kid.' Even the production staff no longer viewed me as just the 'Tough Enough Kid.' They allowed me the opportunity to earn some of their respect, but with interviews I do, and still do to this day, I'm forever known as 'Tough Enough Kid.' I know what you're saying, 'Maven, you ungrateful piece of --' Imagine if I linked your lifelong success with the first thing you did after you graduated. Is that something that you would want to have hanging over you? I don't think so."
Maven has also commented on why WWE had to tone down the difficulty of the training for the first season of the reality series and how it affected the editing of the program. Learn more here.
Perhaps because he was always known as the "Tough Enough Kid," Maven dealt with imposter syndrome throughout his entire WWE career. Learn more about that here.
If you use any of the above quotes, please credit Maven's YouTube channel in addition to linking back to this article and giving Fightful credit for transcription.
