Rick Boogs Was Called Up To WWE SmackDown After Vince McMahon Saw Old Spice Commercial
Boogs’ work as ‘Joe Average’ got him the SmackDown gig
After spending four years in NXT but appearing rarely on TV, Rick Boogs was shockingly called up to WWE SmackDown as Shinsuke Nakamura’s personal hype man, and according to Boogs himself he got the call up due to Old Spice.
Boogs appeared in several Old Spice skits as part of a cross promotional drive between Old Spice and WWE, and as Boogs told Corey Graves on After the Bell, it was these skits that got him called up:
“You know what it was? I think it was the first day I was at SmackDown, and Bruce Prichard was like, and I don’t know why they were looking at an Old Spice commercial, and apparently, Vince watched it, and he’s like, ‘Call the guy up’, just from the character work alone. This is what I heard. Then they had to figure out what to do with me because they were like, ‘Well what does he do?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Is he on NXT?’ ‘No.’ They went on my Instagram, and you know what it was? I did this video where I did a lunge. I was playing The Trooper on the guitar. Bruce said that Vince was going to love that because he loves lifting weights. I guess that was it. ‘Oh, he can play The Trooper while he’s lunging 340 pounds so let’s have him bust out Shin’s tune live in front of millions of people.”
H/T: WrestlingNews.co