He was on short-term notice.
WrestleMania 37 was WWE’s first event with fans following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The two-night show took place at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.
On night two, there was a Nigerian Drum Fight between Big E and Apollo Crews for the Intercontinental Championship. Crews received an assist from who would become his new on-screen ally, Babathunder, also known as Commander Azeez or Dabba-Kato during his time in WWE.
Kato was invited onto Developmentally Speaking and looked back at his WrestleMania moment. He stated that he did not know it was happening until two days beforehand. He spoke about the pairing with Crews and feels it started off rough because nobody knew what they wanted from it. Kato would go on to heap praise onto Apollo.
It went really quiet for a little bit and then out of nowhere, they just came, like, ‘Listen, WrestleMania is in two days. We need you,’ and I was like, ‘Well, let’s do it. Absolutely,’ and that’s how Commander Azeez came about.
There was some basic rundown on the character (that was provided to me)… It was pretty extensive, and it was close to what I was naturally. I’m also part-Nigerian myself. My name is Nigerian and they realized after a couple of years, like, hey, we got a Nigerian guy. Oh! So it was cool to finally get that through. But, when he (Apollo Crews) started, I feel like it was a little bit rocky at the beginning because nobody knew what they (wanted) from this group I would say. But then us, me being with this genius, this machine guy. He can do (the) craziest stuff in there. Apollo, man, he not only looks like a Greek God but he move, he fly, he control his body in the air like I’ve never seen and I’ve seen it firsthand, from right under the ring or being in the ring. So he’s awesome. But, with this idea, again, we got this idea and we just, you know, stick around with it. A lot of times, it was maybe less luck on the timeframe. We walk out, they’re like, ‘Listen, guys, you lost half of your time’ and we on the way, on the ramp and I’m like, oh, beautiful, you know what I mean? Sometimes it was difficult to cover all the corners, because just stuff out of our control. But, for what it was, I really enjoyed the time with everybody and especially that time when we got to be, you know, WrestleMania. I got to the bad guy. Because I feel like I’m a Florida boy. I moved from Poland, but I’m Florida boy now. I live in Orlando and I got to be in Florida and I get to help Apollo to beat the local guy. You just hated me, and most of my matches I did on the live circuit here with NXT on Florida loop and they just loved it, everybody… This is exactly what we wanted and we waited for it so it was cool.
In 2023, Dabba-Kato and Crews had a program on the NXT brand. In September of that year, he was released from his WWE contract.
Crews is currently a member of the SmackDown roster and is in a tag team with Baron Corbin.
If the quote(s) in this article is used, please credit Developmentally Speaking with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
