Akam looks back on moments from his time with WWE and what’s in AOP’s future.
The duo of Sunny Dhinsa and Gzim Selmani, known in WWE as ‘Authors of Pain’ were brought together as a team in NXT. Throughout their time in WWE, they achieved accolades such as winning the 2016 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic along with becoming NXT and Raw Tag Team Champions.
Akam and Rezar finished up with WWE in September of 2020. Their last match together was in March 2020. Both talents joined Renee Paquette for a recording of ‘The Sessions’ and Rezar told the story of when he had to have a discussion with Happy Corbin about how Corbin was addressing him on an overseas tour.
Corbin asked Rezar to pick up a crate of beers from the tour bus and bring it to the hotel, but Corbin referred to him as ‘young boy’ in front of everyone. Here’s Rezar’s recount of how that unfolded:
We had a lot of people start heat out of nowhere. For example, there’s this story that I’ve never told many people, right? And actually, Jon [Moxley] backed me up on this one, right? The new guys, we were still the new guys and we had to actually — the new guys, supposedly, we didn’t know, have to lift up the beers, the big crate of beers from the bus to the hotel, but we didn’t know that [Akam added that they didn’t drink]. We’re walking through the hotel, I’m waiting in the line for catering to eat at the hotel because I was hungry after the match, right? And they didn’t care obviously because we were champions. That didn’t play in my mind, I just didn’t know. [Happy] Corbin went up to me and he said, ‘Hey young boy, you gotta pick up that crate of beers man and bring it back to the hotel.’ I look around and said, ‘Excuse me?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I did the same thing when I was a young boy. You gotta pick up the beer man. I’m thirsty’ or something like that. I said, ‘Are you seriously talking to me like this?’ You cannot — I understand if you say, ‘Bro, do you want to please grab those beers man? Everybody that was new, that’s the way to go.’ But you’re calling me young boy in front of everybody here man. Are you serious? So I said, ‘Baron, come here man,’ like in front of the whole crowd. Everybody went quiet. I said, ‘Come here.’ I said, ‘Are you seriously talking to me like this?’ He goes, ‘I apologize,’ this, that. ‘I didn’t mean to say it like that but I did it, everybody does it.’ A lot of things like that happened once we became champions and we were just cool, we were just cool but people thought just because we were new and we became champions, that we were gonna start turning into dickheads. We didn’t, right? We’re the nicest guys still as champions. We don’t care if you’re champs or not. Obviously, everybody knows it’s scripted so we didn’t care and we saw a lot of people turn a different way, right? Once that happened and it just — I guess that’s the way it goes everywhere, right? Not just in wrestling. It goes everywhere like that once you get success.
Akam and Rezar have entered the Metaverse space and are focusing on that. Rezar shared that since departing WWE, they have received offers from multiple companies but nothing felt equal to the venture they are currently on as of the podcast recording.
It’s a day-to-day community engagement, right? Like, we’re in a discord. We’ll talk with people. We have a special mental health chat, we have a sports chat, we have a wrestling chat. We’ll talk about everything and if you see people engaging so much, it really, really opens your eyes. That’s one of the things that me and Sunny [Akam] were really, really strict on. We really wanted the community part to be really strong and that’s one of the things we really wanted and of course, we also wanted something that nobody has seen before, something that nobody has done before. For example, with our figures, we’re fully 3D, fully adaptable to any metaverse. It’s crazy. We’re actually releasing a video game called ‘BullApe Planet’. It will be available on PlayStation, XBOX and so forth. It’s actually — we’re taking such big steps that we never could have dreamed of and that’s what we wanted. We wanted to be bigger than real life. Of course, you know the saying in WWE, ‘Everything’s bigger in real life.’ Once we left WWE, we felt like, where can we go where we have the same feeling? Of course we had offers from multiple companies and nothing felt the same as this right now. Of course in the future, you never know, right? We can make a comeback in the real world of course. We’re already planning some stuff to create in the Middle East. It’s gonna be huge. We’re actually flying over there in two weeks to set up some things and it’s gonna be huge. We can’t tell too much about it but it’s gonna be a very exciting time for us.
Both Rezar and Akam are in their late 20s. All of their pro wrestling experience has taken place under the WWE banner. Prior to signing with the sports-entertainment company, they were involved in Freestyle Wrestling and MMA respectively.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit ‘The Sessions with Renee Paquette’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
