Since his debut on WWE Friday Night SmackDown, Rick Boogs has become a regularly featured member of the blue brand as King Nakamura’s hype man and tag team partner.
During a recent appearance on WWE After The Bell, Boogs looked back on the fairly last-minute way he found out about his move to SmackDown. He also admitted that, contrary to one might expect, he didn’t regularly play guitar before his first appearance on the show.
“Let’s just say I was shocked, I was stunned because I had, I would say about maybe 12 hours of heads up,” said Boogs. “I got a text like the night before to be at SmackDown and this is what I was gonna do. So yeah, obviously I play his theme on guitar. Now let’s keep in mind, sure I dilly-dally a little bit with the guitar, [but] I hadn’t played guitar, other than maybe a little bit here and there, like I hadn’t practiced at all. I’m not even kidding. From time to time, maybe I’ll do something simple and easy, whatever, maybe to put it on Instagram or whatever, but it’s not like I practiced.
“So them being like, ‘Learn this’, and of course I’m like, ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ but the anticipation and the nerves of that, man. Not just playing guitar, because I was in a band in high school, not a very serious band, I think the biggest full crowd we played in front of was, I don’t know, 25 people. So now it’s like, can you learn this thing in a matter of hours and everyone’s gonna judge you, it’s gonna be in front of millions of people, and it’s not really what I do.”
Of course, practice makes perfect, and Boogs noted that he has gotten quite comfortable with playing Nakamura’s music.
Boogs then described how he heard that WWE’s Old Spice commericals he starred in (earlier this year) made quite an impression on Vince McMahon, and they might have led to his call-up, though he wasn’t being used a lot on NXT at the time.
“I think it was the first day I was at SmackDown, and Bruce Prichard was like, ‘Oh yeah,’ I don’t know why, they were looking, I think it was Old Spice, so I did the Old Spice [commercials], and apparently like Vince watched it and he’s like, ‘Call the guy up,'” said Boogs. “Just from the character work alone, this is what I heard. So then they just had to figure out what to do with me, you know what I mean? Because it’s like, ‘Well what does he do? I don’t know. Is he on NXT? No….'”
Boogs then explained how, despite his lack of prominence on NXT, a video on his Instagram account, in which he was playing guitar, ignited the creative spark that eventually led to his current character.
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The full interview is available here:
