Damian Priest says that The Judgement Day was never meant to be supernatural, but if it took that approach, he would have been “cool with it.”
After Priest, Finn Balor, and Rhea Ripley kicked Edge out of the group, reports of a creative difference between the WWE Hall of Famer’s preference for the stable and WWE’s vision for it started circulating, with the rumor being that Edge wasn’t in favor of a supernatural tone of the stable.
In an interview with Stephanie Chase of Digital Spy, Priest addressed these rumors and dismissed them, saying that a supernatural approach for the stable was never the plan. He went on to note that while some of the group’s antics may have come across that way, they opted to move away from that direction.
“I guess I understand why people thought that,” Priest said. “I don’t know where the actual rumor came from that that’s what was planned, because it never was. “If anything, we had conversations of how we didn’t want that and that included Vince [McMahon] himself, who did not want the group to be supernatural-based. We were all in agreement.
“We did some things that seemed that way, I know I did a thing with lightning one night, and the idea wasn’t about supernatural, but it came off that way and then we immediately went, ‘OK, let’s not revisit that because it came off that way’.”
That being said, Priest stated that he wouldn’t have been opposed if the faction had been booked to a supernatural force, and he referenced his fandom of The Undertaker and other acts that leaned into that side of wrestling.
“For me personally, I wouldn’t have been against it, though,” he said. “I’ve been a fan of The Undertaker and so many iconic characters that had to do with the supernatural. I was like, ‘Yeah, I want powers!’ But unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to look at it, it wasn’t a planned thing.”
The former WWE United States Champion also stated that the association with Edge, along with the stable members’ dark personas, may have been responsible for the assumption that The Judgment Day was a supernatural act. However, he made it clear that just wanted to be different.
“Naturally, when you involve somebody like Edge and we’re on the darker side, it’s gonna be, I guess, assumed and hinted at, like, ‘Maybe this is a thing’, but no that was never part of it. It was just more of a vibe that we wanted, that darker vibe and that darker atmosphere and people to look at us like, ‘That’s different, that’s odd, that’s weird’.
“That’s what we wanted. Just like, that’s not something you see every day in the street so to speak. So that was the goal. It was never to get to be spooky with powers and stuff but I would have been cool with it.”
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