Before Wes Lee and Nash Carter became MSK in NXT, they were Dezmond Xavier and Zachary Wentz, known as the Rascalz, in IMPACT Wrestling.
Lee and Carter signed with WWE in December 2020 and made their television debuts in January.
Speaking with Stephanie Chase of Digital Spy, MSK discussed why they signed with WWE and left The Rascalz name behind.
"It just seemed right that we needed to evolve into the next aspect of our careers," Carter said. "If you watch some of the best documentaries on some of the best wrestlers they know when it's time to evolve and let go and create anew in order to stay fresh. We just knew that we were in a cocoon and we needed to spread our wings and be beautiful butterflies."
Lee added, "And just like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it never really loses who it was it just alters how it presents itself. That's essentially all we did. We're still the exact same guys. It doesn't matter what name we do it under. But right now, MSK is who we are and that's who we're going to be for a long time."
While Lee & Carter came to NXT, the third member of The Rascalz, Trey Miguel, stuck with IMPACT. Miguel explained that he wanted to stay with IMPACT as he felt he had more to accomplish. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
When asked about leaving IMPACT, Carter said, "When this opportunity came, it was a no-brainer. I've always wanted to be a WWE Superstar."
Lee agreed with his partner, saying, "With the progression of our careers, this was the next stage and it was just right there in front of us and we just had to take the opportunity. It's bred some amazing, amazing things since we made that choice. The pandemic definitely gave us time to re-evaluate a lot of things and we did a lot of talking, a whole lot of talking on what it is that we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it and this just worked out perfectly."
MSK found immediate success in NXT, winning the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic and then going on to win the NXT Tag Team Championships.
Fightful will have live coverage of NXT beginning at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
