Charlie Haas was a personal favorite of mine when he joined Shelton Benjamin as Team Angle in the WWE and went on to win two tag team championships before they broke up.
While it can be argued pretty successfully that he and Benjamin were the WWE’s attempts to cash in on those with amateur wrestling backgrounds like Kurt Angle, they always had a certain aura about them that promised more.
For whatever reason, they never gained the success many expected or hoped they would, and it led to a couple of moments that were a little strange.
In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Haas opened up about a few things, including how he tried to turn around what he believed to be an insulting gimmick into a tribute.
Making the most of it
In his interview, Hass went into greater detail about the experience, and it sounds like other stories that have come out about how some talent is treated. Whether true or not is up for each to decide for themselves.
Special thanks to wrestlinging.com for the transcript.
“I think that was when they were really trying to get rid of me and find a way to get me out of there. But I looked at it as a chance to honor the people that I grew up watching and embrace it. I did the best that I could. I didn’t want people saying, ‘He has a bad attitude, let’s get him out of there.’ It’s crazy, I get so many people coming up to me about me doing this character or that character. It’s part of my career that I look back at and I did it because I had to. I am not proud of it; it was not something that I wanted my career to be based on. But I guess a lot of people watched it because I get more people coming up to me. I guess they liked it.
“If you are honoring them and they enjoy it, then that’s good. The only one I didn’t like was when I had to do J.R.. I don’t know what was going on with J.R. and WWE at that time, but they wanted me to really make fun of him. He’s the guy that signed me to my WWE contract, and my feet were put to the fire with that. I wasn’t too happy about that.
“I apologized to him for it, and I wish I put my foot down and said I don’t want to do that. But I didn’t have the pull to say we were not going to go in that direction. It wasn’t fair to him and it was wrong.”
This is an interesting experience to say the least, especially given how JR said Vince and others made fun of his Bell’s palsy and we’re curious if there was a reason for them or something thinking it was funny.
Stories like this are great fodder for wrestling fans to delve into if we’re looking for something more about our favorites, but it should definitely come with a warning label.
What’re your thoughts on the gimmick Hass mentioned, and what was your favorite Charlie Haas moment? Let us know in the comments below.
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