Select Portions: Austin Theory, Nikki Cross, More

– Nikki Cross tells Fightful that one of the inspirations for her character is Jack Nicholson in the Shining. She wanted the character to be unpredictable and emotional.

– Former WWE writer and head of creative Chris DeJoseph is now working as Creative Director of Productions at Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk’s conservative nonprofit.

– NXT is planning some sort of media scrum following Stand and Deliver, per usual.

– We’re planning on List & Ya Boy airing Tuesday this week instead of Wednesday as SRS will be traveling. The Fightful Roundtable with Shak, Steve, Larson and Tempest will air Tuesday afternoon.

– Fightful has an interview with Billie Starkz planned for this week, and will be at several media and community events in LA.

Austin Theory

Fightful’s Joel Pearl spoke with Austin Theory.

Theory said that working with The Way allowed him to relax a lot and find himself. He said that everything flowed really well, and they had a lot of input on how a lot of the segments would go and what changes were made.

Theory said now that he is where he’s at, facing John Cena at WrestleMania, he isn’t sure he’d change anything. He isn’t sure if the last few months would have happened if he didn’t have the Money in the Bank story.

“Now where I’m at—and it’s funny I say now—but I don’t know if I’d change anything about what happened with it just because it was the changing of the guard. It was literally making everything different and once that briefcase was off of me, it was almost like I was able to set everything around. But would we have been able to get that same impact if I didn’t have that Money in the Bank story? So I think it’s all important and I think, to me, it always works out the best way it should. I think that’s what happened with it.”