During an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Baron Corbin revealed a conversation with a SmackDown head writer that sparked his concerns about talent treatment. The discussion centered around creative plans for Jacob Fatu, where the writer’s choice of words drew immediate criticism from Corbin.
I was sitting with the head writer of SmackDown and it still just kind of makes my blood boil, because it doesn’t pertain just to me. But I was just like ‘Hey, do we have any ideas? What are you thinking creatively?’ He’s like, ‘Well we got we got Jacob [Fatu] up and running, so we’re gonna need bodies for him.’ I was like ‘We’re not bodies dude. Nobody on this roster is just a body.’ That was so frustrating to hear. Like I said, it doesn’t pertain to me, but it just goes this is what you think of [us]. I’ve been here at this point 12 years and I’m a body for somebody else? Dude, if you want to say something like that go ‘Hey man, we think you’d be great because you could help build Jacob, you could make him look like a monster.’ Dope, let’s go. But ‘We’re gonna need bodies?’ He’s referring to the bottom half of the roster. When you say that it’s so disrespectful to say that about people who go out there and put their life on the line every night, because careers can be ended in an instant. I mean, look at Big E, one suplex wrong and he may never wrestle again, it can end like that, or you can end up a quadriplegic. All of these things could happen. It’s your livelihood. It’s how you put food on the table.
Corbin emphasized the risks wrestlers face in their profession, using Big E’s injury as an example of how quickly careers can change. He further discussed the value of every roster member in WWE’s success.
I’m so gracious to have such a long career that I don’t have to worry about that. But if you’re three years in and you’re just a body, and you’re disregarded as not even a human being in a sense, come on dude. It takes everybody, guys who are there to be extras, they’re just as important as talent in a sense, because without those guys doing that, we don’t have major superstars. You need guys that can do that and do it well. I think that that’s harder sometimes than being the top guy when everything is fed to you, you’re given every opportunity, you’re built on this pedestal. When you’re all the dudes clawing at the bottom to try to get there, it’s way harder to be down there and survive and be happy and successful than it is to be this is our guy, we wrote his name right there, so everything else funnels to him. That’s easy to be up there. The only hard part is the amount of time it takes. When you’re put on a pedestal, it’s much easier than being guys fighting for those two three minutes on a show and then to refer to them as bodies. I said something, and he was like, ‘I didn’t think about how I said it that way.’ But I was just like, This is why it’s good that I’m going away for a little while regardless.