Jay Lethal explains how working on the TNA IMPACT video game from 2008 briefly made him despise his Macho Man impression.
Jay Lethal, before becoming the franchise of Ring of Honor and an AEW Superstar, was best known for his impressions in TNA Wrestling. Without a doubt, the two impressions that he was best known for were his Ric Flair and Macho Man Randy Savage impressions. His Ric Flair impression is best remembered as a one-off during a live promo between Lethal and Ric Flair but his Macho Man impression birthed an entire character, Black Machismo.
Asked during a recent appearance on AEW Unrestricted which of these impressions were his favorite, Jay Lethal named Macho Man as his number one because of how easy it is for him to do.
"I think it's Macho. Because the thing about all the impressions on I do, which is not a long list, I think I got a pretty good Jimmy Hart too, but I needed my megaphone. The thing about Flair and Macho is if I've never heard Flair say it, then it's hard for me to come up with the way he would say it. It's this weird thing where I have to have heard him say it before I can," Lethal said. "But with Savage, no matter what, I've never heard Savage eat cake. But I mean, *does Savage impression* 'I bet he'd like chocolate. Maybe it's one of those half-and-half cakes.' So with Savage, I can say almost anything. But the Flair one, I have to have heard him say it. So my favorite one to do is probably Macho Man."
However, he does explain that recording lines for the TNA video game made him sick of the character for a while.
"Although, when I started the Black Machismo character in IMPACT Wrestling, they sat me in a booth. I said, 'Oh, yeah,' maybe, I'm not kidding, 100 times, they had me say all these lines, maybe 50 to 100 times. Then shortly after that, they were making the TNA IMPACT video game. I was like a large part of the story mode. Because when you enter the story mode, me and Kevin Nash help you through the story mode. When anyway, I had to read so many lines with that voice. Man, the next day it was killing me. At that point, I was like, 'I don't like doing this anymore.' But it got way easier after that, for a short period of time Macho Man was I hated doing it. Because it was stressful in the voice. But then afterward, I was like, yeah, it's definitely easier than the Flair [impression] because [with Flair], you gotta yell and take your pants off, maybe, a few times," he joked.
These days, Jay Lethal doesn't do any impressions but he does still have traces of Pomp and Circumstance in his current theme song as a nod to Randy Savage. Also, Jay Lethal has yet to be confirmed for the current AEW video game but Tony Khan has said in the past that there will be downloadable content added down the line.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a H/T and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
