Back before he was able to make wrestling his full-time job, Drake Maverick worked at a bank. He takes principles from that job in his on-screen work as general manager of 205 Live on WWE programming.
Maverick, who debuted with WWE at the beginning of the year after a lengthy run with TNA/Impact Wrestling, talked about his role during an appearance on last week's episode of the E&C Pod of Awesomeness, hosted by Edge and Christian.
"I just try to sell to the audience the guys," Maverick explained, adding, "I need to project to the audience, 'This guy's the best. This guy's great. This guy's brilliant. This guy's that.' There's no negativity in any of these guys. They're honestly amazing—every one of them."
Maverick went on to praise several members of the 205 Live roster, most notably Mustafa Ali and Buddy Murphy:
"Mustafa Ali has stepped up like nobody's business and putting in performances like, white-meat babyface, man. Selling his ass off, taking these crazy insane maneuvers and just fighting. And then when he cuts his promos and saying he wants to live a life that people follow, it's kind of endearing. And then you've got Buddy Murphy, who's coming in, who's got a chip on his shoulder, he used to be an NXT tag champ and he's like, I have sat in developmental since that and just waited. He just wants to come in and kick ass. Every match that people are raving about, you usually find Buddy in."
Maverick also noted that Murphy is legitimately under the 205-pound weight limit, weighing in at "a legit 198."
Maverick also provided some insights on the challenges that wrestlers on 205 Live face to stand out from their colleagues.
"How do you stand out when you're all amazing athletes? Because we're 205 Live, we haven't got the big guy, we haven't got the little guy, everyone's about the same size in the division," he said. "It's just, it's that way of standing out. I love how the Lucha House Party are coming out every week with something more. I said to them, 'Man, come out with a car, come out with a bicycle, f---ing everything.' It doesn't matter. Just throw everything you can at the wall and if it sticks, great. If it doesn't, don't worry about it. Just do it. Just try. There's no problem with failing. The worst can happen is, you tried. That's it."
Maverick is expanding his role on WWE programming, as he made his debut as the manager of the Authors of Pain on the most recent episode of Raw.
Click here to listen to the full interview.
