Levi Cooper wanted to channel a character in the vein of Shooter McGavin or “Mr. Hole-In-One” Barry Darsow, but now he’s focused on hurting his opponents in a more traditional way.
Levi Cooper recently spoke with WrestleZone about his singles run in WWE, which came after splitting up with long-time Heavy Machinery partner Otis. Cooper, an avid golf fan, revealed that he tried to pitch a country club heel gimmick as a follow-up, but explained why it wasn’t something ready to put on television.
“I personally tried to get a “country club assh-le” [gimmick], for a lack of a better term. I like golf, I know the jargon and lingo of professional golf and I had some discussions about a golf guy, maybe he comes to the ring with a club, he has a glove on and that’s his thing, and he dresses in polos. He just kind of acts like a general pompous, cocky guy who has money and came from a better background than everyone else,” he explained. “I talked about a few other things with people, potentially joining in with a couple of other groups, but nothing ever felt like it got any real traction, I guess you could say.
“I think there was a part of me to that once [Heavy Machinery] split and there wasn’t really a [blow-off] match, I felt kind of lost creatively as well. WWE TV is not the best way to tinker with something creatively, you need to have something that’s pretty polished and ready to go on TV and I don’t know if I had something outside of Heavy Machinery that was ready for that.”
Cooper felt that it was hard to find a new identity outside of Heavy Machinery in that environment, but now knows the direction he’s taking. He says he’s looking to use his amateur wrestling background to his advantage and said he got away from it before, but it’s a skill set that made him successful in the first place.
“I know where I want to start my foundation out and I got a couple of other ideas, for someone who’s very calm and very zen and understands that as soon as it’s time for [that mood] to go away, that’s the time for violence and that’s kind of going to be the initial thing for me. Just a base amateur wrestler and then sort of a force of nature if you will, kind of the shift that nature is undergoing, this calm, kind of beautiful, relaxing thing that can make you feel those types of emotions,” he noted, “and then with the flip of a switch, all of a sudden it invokes fear, that’s going to be kind of what I’m going to do.
“I don’t need to be tense and I don’t need to be angry and bring the noise all that often but when I do, you know that it’s going to be real serious, it’s not going to be funny or joking around anymore. It’s going to be time to put people on their asses and time to hit people. It’s time to do the things that make me who I am, the things that made me become a Division-I wrestler, because of the work that I put in and because of the ways I’m able to put my hands and systematically break down other human beings,” Cooper stated. “I feel like I haven’t had the opportunity to showcase those things in the past 12 to 18 months. So, going forward, that’s the thing that excites me the most, that’s what gets me out of bed, like, alright, now I’m in control of my destiny, if I was going to place a bet on somebody, I’d most certainly wish to place that bet on me and be in full control of that. It’s time to get it on.”
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