On June 30 and July 1, WWE made a two-night trip to London, England to broadcast WWE SmackDown and WWE Money in the Bank from the O2 Arena.
Jimmy Uso and Jey Uso got into a fight with Roman Reigns and Solo Sikoa in the last moments of WWE SmackDown, kicking off the Bloodline Civil War. Security intervened to try to maintain order, but they were unable.
On Mark Andrews’ podcast, My Love Letter to Wrestling, independent wrestler Andy Roberts from England shared his thoughts on the performance as a member of the security squad.
“Everybody works the indies with the intention to wrestle for the biggest companies in the world. To get an email to be invited to come down o do something like that is unbelievable. I was happy to just come and whatever happens, happened. I just wanted to enjoy the experience,” he said. “With WWE, you have to be cleared to wrestle and things with doctors. We had to do all the paperwork side of things and see the doctors. Then it’s just, ‘go chill in the extras room for now.’ William Regal had some time to spare, so he took us aside to chat and answer questions for a couple of hours, which is great. It passes the time and he has so much he wants to pass on. He wants to see British wrestlers do well. We sat with him doing that for a bit. Michael Hayes came over and said, ‘go into the props van and get some security t-shirts.'”
Andy Roberts on his experience as a WWE extra
Roberts followed by pointing out that while there were nearly a dozen extras, there were just a few security outfits.
“Everybody started to quietly walk to the front of the queue because it was like, ‘if there are only three t-shirts, I will fight people.’ Then we just got asked to wait until they called us forward to go into the production meeting,” he said. “For me, it was really interesting to see how they plan it and see how similar it is to if we were at an office town hall in front of 100 people if we were planning a segment. It’s exactly the same.”
Andy Roberts on how they picked the security team members
Roberts went on to describe his mindset before the segment.
“Everything was going through my head, but I had to say to myself, ‘Just enjoy it.’ I know that I can sell, not only as a wrestler, but in whatever way they need me to. In that environment, they need me to be a security guard. I’m not going to sell like a wrestler, I’m going to sell like it’s the first time I’ve ever been kicked in the face by a 240-pound Samoan.”
Roberts frequently competes in Scotland’s Insane Championship Wrestling.
In another section of the interview, Mark Andrews expressed his confidence in his abilities to join WWE.
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