Karl Fredericks Discusses Gripes With WWE NXT Character, Shawn Michaels Saying He Reads A Lot About ‘Indian Stuff’

A deep dive into Karl Fredericks’ presentation in NXT.

From 2023 to 2025, Karl Fredericks was signed to WWE. He was known as ‘Eddy Thorpe’ and was featured on the NXT brand. Fredericks began appearing on television with a character that was presented as a homage to his Native American heritage.

An interview with Fredericks was pushed out by Ray Petree of Augusta Free Press. He did a deep dive into his presentation and remembers his first week at the Performance Center, NXT overseer Shawn Michaels told him that he viewed him as a babyface because he’s Indian.

“I’m always f*cking thinking back to my first week in the (Performance Center), when I finally have a talk with (Shawn Michaels). I’d sent them some matches, and he came over and he was like, ‘Really cool stuff.’ Blah, blah, blah. He gave me a nice little pep talk. Then he was like, ‘I think you’re a babyface, you know, because you’re Indian! I think that’s cool!’ Right off the bat, in my head, that was a red flag. I didn’t expect too much out of Shawn… I could gauge where his awareness was with any of this sh*t… I don’t want to be Tatanka.”

He went on to speak about the gripes he had about the character and who else, besides him, was cultivating ideas for it.

Fredericks said there were times when he was enjoying what he was doing, but there were also a lot of times when he was mentally drained and fighting for his life.

“I was doing my second or third pre-taped promo, and I’m standing out by a f*cking fire. I can’t be out in the f*cking forest. This isn’t a real person. This isn’t someone that my people know. You look at the internet; it’s always white fans, and the internet fans — anyone — they’re all just saying negative sh*t anyways. That’s just how the internet works, right? But that’s where the backhanded racism comes from. They’re not going to get it, and understandably so. They don’t fucking know this character. This person doesn’t exist in the real world today anyways.” Fredericks continued, “I remember saying, like, I can’t be stuck out in the forest for too long, and I remember being told that I’m playing a character on TV. Yeah, I’m playing a character written by a white man who don’t know anything about me, and here’s Shawn (Michaels), ‘Well, you know, I read a lot about Indian stuff. I think it’s real cool.’ Blah, blah. You know, that doesn’t f*cking do anything for me. I’m glad you think it’s cool. You know, I didn’t say that, but that’s how I feel when I hear that sh*t. Like, great, it’s neat to you. What does that do? What does that do for me? Where do we go from here? Do you think that makes me feel better about it all? There were times where what I thought we were doing was cool. Then there were times, a lot of times actually, where I would get the scraps, especially towards the end, and I was struggling real bad mentally. You can see it in my f*cking physique as well… I was fighting for my life working there, doing the shit that I was doing… I remember getting scripts and just seeing the words, and just giving up. There’s no way I can rewrite this. This must be what they want. If I rewrite this, it’s still going to be just this bullsh*t, meaningless cultural slop; using big, fancy words and sounding like an asshole.”

The breaking point for Fredericks was a promo that was given to him by a writer. The content had the word ‘assimilate’ in it, which was in reference to his culture.

“I remember one specifically that I was f*cking hot about. The writer that wrote this particular promo — I was really close with him. He hands it to me, I read it, and I’m just like, ‘Abso-f*cking-lutely not, brother. What the f*ck is this?’ This man’s not even from the United States. He doesn’t know any better. That was the other hard part. I’m telling you the way it made me feel, but there was no malintent on his end. You know, it’s just what I deal with in my everyday life about my cultural identity. It’s either a joke to people or it’s just ignorance. They don’t know, because this isn’t sh*t we teach. That particular promo was about me wanting to leave the reservation and not worry about my people’s cultural expectations. To leave the reservation and assimilate to the wider world… To me, that sounds like I’m leaving the reservation to go to a f*cking assimilation school, to go to Carlisle so I can be beaten, and raped, and all the sh*t that happened to those kids.” He added, “Just the fact that the word assimilate was in there; I had to give him a little history lesson. I’m dealing with this bullsh*t. I’m passing sage over an injured arm, like what the f*ck am I doing on television? I was giving up. I decided that I would just deliver. Every big match, every storyline, just deliver, and they were happy. I just needed to get through this sh*t. We can get past this, and I won’t ever have to do it again. But I just never really got there.”

Elsewhere in the chat, Fredericks spoke candidly about Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque’s support of the Trump administration.