Reggie recalls the moment his gymnastics journey began.
The former WWE 24-7 Champion recently sat down with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp to discuss a number of topics, including the incredible stunts he pulls off regularly on television. Reggie began by explaining how landing flips on a mattress in his backyard as a child set him on this path.
"So there were two moments I realized that. One moment is when I was flipping, my brothers and I had mattresses in the backyard and they were back there doing a back tuck and then another back tuck, consecutive back tucks. I didn’t know how to do two. I would do one and I would stop and then I would do the second one. I’m like, ‘How do Ido that?’ I remember I was sitting in my underwear in my room watching out the window. I was looking at my brothers do it and then everything slowed down, legit, it slowed down, ‘Okay, land the first back tuck and use that rebound to go into a second one.’ So I saw that ran outside in my underwear and I did one, two. Super excited. So there was that moment," he said.
Jumping on mattresses didn't always end well, however, as Reggie recalls flipping on his bed and falling out of his bedroom window.
"Then there was a moment that wasn’t so pretty where I was flipping in my bed and fell out the window. I bounced back up and just went back into the house. I’m like, ‘Am I actually a superhero? Because that was a two-story window.’ I fell out of the window at two stories and I was pretty young," Reggie said.
Acknowledging that though he "found out pretty early" was he was passionate about, Reggie says the "Circus just enhanced all of that. Learned the proper technique and then it was a wrap from there."
Not the only one with a gymnastics background, Reggie revealed that Vince McMahon, after watching Reggie's PBS documentary, told him that he used to do all of that stuff back in his day.
"So, he didn’t say, ‘Let me show you,’ but he watched my PBS documentary where I was talking about getting out of the games and all of these things and using flips to do all of that stuff. He comes to me and goes, ‘Just watched your PBS documentary. Really good stuff. I use to do all of that back in my day.’ I didn’t want to laugh because I’m like, ‘Maybe you’re serious, but uh...’ He didn’t say he could show me how to do things, but he said, ‘I used to do all that stuff back in my day.’ That was so funny to me," Reggie said.
As for what he does on WWE programming, Reggie admits that he likes to push his limits while the company would prefer to play things safer. That said, he believes they have pitched pretty good ideas thus far.
"So, I’m the daredevil actually. They try to give me things that are not as demanding or not high risk. They don’t want to take high risks. They say, ‘If you can do this, we can make this a little bit lower or dumb it down a bit.’ I’ll say, ‘No, no. Let’s actually make it higher and get a few more trucks I can go over.’ So, I’m all about pushing my limits. They want to be as safe as possible. No risk, no reward type of thing for them. I’m like, ‘It’s fine.’ I’m always pushing my own limits. They just let me go, let me be free.
I don’t think there’s been anyone that’s pitched anything crazy to me. No. They've pitched pretty good stuff. I try to make it crazy. There was one time where they wanted me to scale a wall and I wasn’t using a trampoline. I was like, ‘Hey, guys. I don’t think that's actually possible to do.’ It was cold outside and I was like, ‘Yeah, we might need the trampoline for this.’ It’s crazy because we’ve done so many crazy stunts. Flipping out of trees, flipping over ice cream trucks, jumping over cars. I’m just like, ‘Who comes up with this stuff?’," he said.
Looking back on it all, Reggie has no regrets and is enjoying his time in WWE, saying that this is right up his alley.
"No," he began by saying. "This is right up my alley. I’ve been doing things like this for so long. I used to flip off of garages when I was younger. So, I’m like, ‘All this is fine,’ and I didn’t have the safety that I have right now."
In late 2020, Reggie (then Reginald) debuted on SmackDown as Carmella's sommelier. Over the past year, however, he has become synonymous with the 24-7 Championship and holds the record for longest reign with the belt at 113 days. He can currently be seen every Monday on WWE Raw.
Fightful provides live coverage of Raw every Monday beginning at 8 p.m. ET.