In January 2021, with WWE running out of their “ThunderDome” set-up a year into the pandemic, Apollo Crews turned heel for the first time in his time with the company. It was a feud with then Intercontinental champion Big E, and started promisingly enough, with Crews showing a new attitude and referring to his Nigerian ancestry.
Apollo briefly used a Nigerian accent while quoting his grandfather on his first night as his villainous character (which also featured an unannounced Trick Williams as a member
of his “elite Nigerian guard”). But when Crews next appeared the following Friday on SmackDown, he delivered his entire promo that way.
It led to jokes, concern about returning to wrestling roots in ethnic and racial stereotypes, and charges of racism.
It also didn’t do Crews any favors in the long-run. He briefly held the IC title, but that was really the gimmick’s only program. Crews (and his sidekick/head of his , Commander Azeez) were drafted to Raw in late 2021, and then Apollo appeared alone — and sans accent — in NXT for a spell before spending the last couple years of WWE run as a main roster enhancement talent. Following his post-WrestleMania 42 release, he’s been working elsewhere under his pre-WWE name, Uhaa Nation.
That refresher is for Crews’ story of how his Nigerian character and accent came to be. It’s from his chat with Chris Van Vliet, which was posted today (Sept. 24):
“So, I pitched the idea at the time and apparently the first thing Vince [McMahon] said at the time was, ‘Is he going to have an accent?’ That wasn’t something I was planning on doing. The idea that I had was to not portray it in this kind of way.”
“And I remember I was really strongly against it at first because it didn’t make sense to me. As a kid, I had a lot of Nigerian-American friends, so we would imitate our parents and do that accent a lot as kids. And my brother and sister would pretend, put on the accent to imitate my dad and stuff, but by no means did I think I would be doing it on TV in front of millions of people or anything to that level.”
“I felt strongly about it. I went and spoke to Vince and pleaded my case against it. Obviously, I was talked into it. And I was like, ‘Okay, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it 100%.’ And somehow I used a lot of the — how my dad was like growing up, and I was able to immerse myself in this character. Some people loved it, some people hated it, but people were talking about it. And it was, overnight, I became, I don’t know if it was a Prince or what it was, but I became this character with an accent and did a 360 on the character.
“I remember the first promo we were going to do, I was going to do it with my regular accent, my normal, regular accent now, and I think 10 minutes before the show started he wanted me to do one line with an accent. Ten minutes before the show started, they told me he wanted me to do the whole thing with the accent. I was like, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ Ten minutes before. That’s what a lot of people will never understand. The things that go on right before you go out the curtain. People can’t understand it unless they are in the situation. I’m not the only person that’s happened to.”
Whatever else Crews’ story illustrates, it confirms what we’ve always heard about the chaotic creative and production process under Vince McMahon.
Let us know what else you take from it, Cagesiders.
