MVP reveals how he got his first job with WWE.
Former WWE superstar Montel Vontavious Porter recently spoke about his previous run with the sports entertainment juggernaut on Marking Out podcast. The former United States Champion recalled his conversation with then-Vice President of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis that led to the genesis of the MVP gimmick.
“When I got hired by WWE, I invented MVP,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I had a number of tryouts and got booked as an extra a number of times. One day, my frustration got to a point where I was like, ‘To hell with this.’ I went to the Vice President of Talent Relations, who was John Laurinaitis at that time. I went, ‘Johnny, you got a minute?’ ‘What is it, kid?’ ‘Can I get 30 seconds?’ ‘Okay, you got 30 seconds.’ I said, ‘Tell me what the f*ck I gotta do to get hired. You tell me what you want. You tell me what you want for me and I’ll give it to you.’”
John Laurinaitis asked MVP to come up with a character
The real-life Hassan Hamid Assad said his response took Laurinaitis by surprise before the former Johnny Ace told him to come up with a character.
“Initially, he was taken aback like, ‘Who are you talking to?’ But he saw it was coming from a passionate place. He said, ‘Kid, we like characters. Give us a character that you can do that we don’t already have, and get back to me,’ and he walked off. I remember feeling like, ‘That wasn’t the answer I was looking for. Tell me specifically,’ but he gave me the answer.
“At the time, I was working at South Beach, doing bodyguard work. I used to see these professional athletes show up to the club, and I would see Hall of Fame legends like Shaq [Shaquille O’Neal], Dr. J [Julius Erving], and Barry Sanders. I would see these sports Gods show up and they were so humble and cool.”
MVP was initially reluctant to pitch his idea
The former WWE Tag Team Champion talked about the the influence of South Beach and ESPN on his gimmick before revealing he was initially reluctant to pitch the gimmick because he thought WWE would steal the idea.
“… I took my experiences from South Beach and ESPN, and I crafted this character called MVP. I wrote up a treatment, chapters explaining who the character was and photos of me in a suit and how the character dressed. This came because, fortunately for me, Ricky Santana was a very good friend of mine, he worked at WCW, and he and John Laurinaitis were very good friends.
“I told Ricky, ‘I have this idea but I’m scared they’ll steal it from me.’ I pitched him the idea and he said, ‘That smells like money to me.’ He called Johnny, Johnny gave him his word, ‘We won’t put the kid off.’ Spoke to Johnny and he said, ‘Sounds great. Give me 20 storyline ideas.’ I literally wrote 20 vignettes and storylines. Within a week or two I had this ready for him, and they loved it.” [H/T Fightful]
