Jelly Roll recalls the original plans for him at WWE SummerSlam 2025.
Unlike most celebrities, Jelly Roll marked his WWE in-ring debut with a loss, courtesy of a Frog Splash from Logan Paul at WWE SummerSlam. According to the country music star himself, that scene played out by his own design, which he had personally pitched to WWE officials.
While appearing on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Jelly revealed that WWE’s initial plans called for him and Randy Orton, the babyfaces, to emerged victorious over Paul and Drew McIntyre in tag team competition at SummerSlam. After pushing for himself to lose instead, however, the match result was altered.
“It was originally, babyfaces up,” Jelly said. “So the day of, I’d been dropping it in on Shane [Helms] the whole time. ‘Shane, I want to lose this match.’ And he was like, ‘Brother, you got to take that up with them.’ I was like, cool. So I came down and me and Triple H talked about it right there at the ring that day. I said, ‘You know what I’m coming to talk about?’ He said, ‘I want to hear it.’ And I gave it to him. And he was like, ‘Alright, alright.'”
Jelly Rolls Recalls His Pitch To Triple H
Expanding upon the pitch he relayed to WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque, Jelly noted that a loss at SummerSlam would set up a reason for him to come back for a potential second match in the future. Furthermore, a loss on his first in-ring outing simply seemed more believable.
“It was an easy pitch. I was just like, it took three things. One, it’s the right thing to do, let’s just start at core values here,” Jelly said. “No celebrity has any business coming in and pinning a wrestler on their first run without some extreme circumstance. If Randy comes out and double RKOs everybody while I’m out and puts me on top of somebody. But two, I can always come back, I don’t think any other celebrity ever really cared enough to think full angle through.
“If I lose this, I love Logan. That’s my friend in real life, but every time he’s in that ring, now he’s got to wonder if at some point he’s going to hear, ‘You know I got it, so come and get it’ [Who’s Your Daddy? By Toby Keith]. He’s got to wonder about that a little bit. Drew too. If I really owe one of them, it’s Drew. So that was part two of it. I was also smart enough to be like, Yo, I want to angle in. And I was like, I don’t want to be remembered as a celebrity who did the thing, and then Triple H stopped me.”
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