Sidney Akeem (Reggie) On Why Scrypts Didn’t Work Out In WWE: ‘Too Many Chefs In The Kitchen’
Sidney Akeem explains why his Scrypts character in WWE NXT didn’t work out the way he wanted to.
In NXT, Sidney Akeem (then known as Reggie) debuted a new gimmick named Scrypts. He wanted to shake things up in NXT. The character died with Akeem’s departure from WWE in 2024.
Speaking with Rewind Recap Relive, Akeem reflected on his Scrypts character. In the interview, he had mentioned that his Scrypts character didn’t pan out the way he wanted it to, and this was his response when asked why that was the case.
“Too many chefs in the kitchen. When I got to NXT, I had a meeting with Shawn Michaels, head creative. He was asking me questions, what I wanted to do. I said, ‘I wanna do this mask gimmick.’ Talked about my past, and originally it was supposed to be me doing like a six-man tag with Dom, Rey Mysterio versus like Alpha Academy and Austin Theory. I’m nervous for this tag, it’s like my first real match on TV, and Rey sees me nervous. He comes in like, ‘Hey, just put this mask on and you’ll be okay.’ That mask gave me this newfound confidence. I go out and get a big win. I go to give Rey the mask back. He said, ‘You know what? You earned that. You keep it.’ That was going to be Reggie under a mask. I’m a creative, I write a lot so I wrote the story and this is before Dom joined Judgment Day.
I wrote the story where Dom had some animosity that his dad gave me that mask. So he was eventually going to turn on his dad or turn on me. But they were like, ‘Well, we don’t know what Dom is gonna do.’ Then later, all of that happened. But just for the judgment day.
So I went to NXT and I told them the idea with the mask, and then their head writer said, ‘What else do you do for fun?’ I said, ‘I do slam poetry.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I had this idea of this dark poet.’ Me, I’m a team player. Then they came up with this idea of you’ll do this and do that. On TV, I wasn’t ready because the mask was horrible, the gear was horrible, and the gimmick was horrible. What you saw was not Scrypts, you saw Blink Man.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Akeem discussed his WWE 24/7 Title reign. Fans can read his comments here.
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