Flashback Friday: Justin Gabriel Talks Pitching An Idea For Vince McMahon To Be Adam Rose's Bunny
Justin Gabriel was a true utility player during his time in WWE. He started off on the NXT program, before being involved in the main-event Nexus angle, before tagging in the lower-card, and eventually portraying Adam Rose's Bunny until his WWE release.
Wrestling Inc. spoke to Gabriel for an exclusive interview last year, where he spoke about playing the infamous Bunny character alongside Adam Rose.
"It started out as just a little character, then it kind of evolved from that." he said. "Then I'm like 'If I'm not going to be this Dare Wolf character, let me make this Bunny really f–king cool. Me and Adam Rose sat down and wrote out stories to make this bunny and evil bunny, because he wanted to be a heel so bad. We wanted to do like the Donnie Darko thing. We had an awesome mask made by the people who do The Walking Dead makeup, the same people who make Kane's masks. We had things filmed, and all of these ideas to turn this bunny into an evil, sadistic character. Adam Rose was going to be like a Marilyn Manson character. Everything got shot down. Each time I'd come up with something or Adam would come up with something, it'd get shot down. An idea that I thought was great and everyone thought as It's more frustration, it gets disheartening. It makes you lose passion for what you're doing."
Gabriel said that he had an idea for the Bunny to have a huge reveal, and that it was well-received backstage. Alas, the idea never came to be.
"They were just doing it week-to-week. I think they wanted it to end up being someone who was returning. Someone like Kurt Angle or Jeff Hardy, somebody cool like that. Anyone else on the roster, it wouldn't have been cool. It wouldn't have been a shock. I came up with an idea for the bunny to become really hardcore, he has dried blood all over him, sitting backstage grumpy smoking cigars. It's like when people hit their all-time low. The bunny should be going through ladders, tables, and coming close to winning championships, but doesn't because he's too f-cked up. Then maybe the bunny gets knocked out backstage, and a ref shows up and it's Vince. That's the only shock factor it could be, if it's someone on the roster. Then Vince wakes up and just goes 'I don't know what happened. I put the suit on and I just blacked out.' Everyone loved the idea, it just never came to fruition," Gabriel said.
You can check out our full, exclusive interview with Justin Gabriel at this link.