Bull believes Brooks, Briggs and Fallon can take their act to the main roster.
For nearly 20 years, Bull Buchanan was a full-time wrestler. He spent time in WWE, WCW, ECW, All Japan and Pro Wrestling NOAH.
Buchanan’s son, Brooks Jensen, is part of WWE’s NXT brand and is paired with Josh Briggs and Fallon Henley on-screen.
Back in the fall of 2022, it was first reported by PWInsider that Buchanan was going to be guest coaching at the WWE Performance Center and Buchanan confirmed that while appearing on the Insiders Edge Podcast.
I’ve never had a bad thing to say about the WWE. They always did what they said they would do, the checks were always there. I had a good relationship with everybody. I can’t really look back on it and say that I ever had a bad day at work while I was there, you know? As far as, you know, there’s hassles. Flight gets delayed, your rental car’s not there, it’s always stuff like that but as far as working in the company — and even to this day, I went down a few months ago and did a guest coaching thing. They’ve always been first-class, they’ve always done what they said they would do and it’s always been a really good relationship.
Before speaking about Brooks Jensen’s journey in wrestling, Bull mentioned that his youngest son is looking to follow similar footsteps and get involved in the wrestling business.
Bull recalled being at an EVOLVE seminar that William Regal was leading. Brooks was present and there was a point when Regal went over to talk to Bull. He asked if Jensen would want to come to the WWE Performance Center but Bull had the idea in mind for his son to head to Japan and then get a shot with a Ring of Honor or IMPACT Wrestling to get prepared for WWE. It was months later that Regal inquired about Jensen again.
Oh God, how much time do you got? I’ve got four children, my two girls were older and they actually got in the ring a few times and tried it but it just wasn’t their cup of tea. My youngest son, Zack/Zach, who’s 16, just got done with the high school wrestling state tournament. He’s a football player and a wrestler, made it to the state finals this year, he’s a junior. But, he’s already had a handful of matches so he’s looking to kind of follow in the footsteps. Ben (Brooks Jensen) has just been in love with this business since he was a little kid. He was kind of like me I guess. I just kind of fell in love with it. So, all these years, the indie shows and stuff like that, he’s always went with me and at seven or eight years old, he was trying to help put up chairs at the indie shows I would go to. He would try to help set up the ring. He went from that to, I think, when he was 13 or 14, he approached me and asked me if I would train him and I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, we’ll train you as a referee and we’ll see how you do’ and I made him referee for about a year and while he was refereeing, I would take him in the ring and show him a little bit here and there and I trained him and he has that first match actually at 16 and he did most of it himself, he got himself booked. I made him go out and contact promoters, I made him do it all, kind of grassroots kind of thing. He had himself booked every weekend and I think it was 2019, EVOLVE had a show in Atlanta and William Regal was doing a seminar beforehand and it was all him. He contacted him. He was working at a small feed mill over in (a) town we live in, part-time job after school and he saved up his money, I think it was $200, paid to go to the seminar and I just kind of hung out. Of course I wanted to see how he did. But while he was in the ring, William Regal came over because we had known each other for a long time and always had a good relationship so we sat and talked and he asked me, you know, ‘Would he be interested in coming down there?’ ‘I’m sure he would.’ But, really my idea was for him was continue to work the indies and maybe get him over to Japan to spend a few months in a dojo there. I wanted him to be well-rounded. I really kind of saw him maybe getting a shot with ROH or IMPACT or something smaller to kind of prepare him for WWE. But, (2020), that’s when COVID hit and pretty much just threw a monkey wrench into everything. But, Regal actually contacted me in November and said, ‘Hey, we’d like to bring Ben in. I know you wanted him to get some experience and go to Japan’ but I think at the time, his son was over in Japan, they weren’t doing any more visas. Everything was kind of shut down so he said, ‘We’ll bring him in’ and I said, ‘Well, you know, give him a call. See what he says. I wish I knew what the answer would be’ and he went down and had the tryout. I guess the rest is history. He moved down there in late August and by early September, he was on TV and they’ve been running ever since.
Speaking about what Brooks is currently doing on NXT, he thinks the group with Briggs and Fallon can be taken to the main roster. Buchanan said Jensen had the idea for his current character before joining WWE and it is an extension of who he really is.
He (Brooks Jensen) was doing indie shows. He was doing Friday night, Saturday night, sometimes Sunday, occasionally during the week and I would always go with him because even though he’s as big as I am, he’s still a 17 or 18-year-old, 16-year-old kid so of course I wanted to go and make sure everything was — he didn’t get into any situations he didn’t need to. So we would talk about this and just like when you’re on the road, you’re in the car for three, four, five, six hours at a time. All you do is sit there and talk and we talked about WWE… But he had the idea of the gimmick that he wanted to do when he went down there but I told him, I said, ‘Look, man, you never know. You go from being this country boy. You could be a whatever. It’s just whatever whim they decide,’ and he kind of had an idea of what he wanted to do and for the most part, that’s kind of what he’s done… The best gimmicks are not gimmicks. They are just extensions of your character and we joke all the time because this is absolutely an extension of his character. The Brooks Jensen you see on TV is not too far from the Brooks Jensen in real life. I’m pretty sure he has had a kiss before. That’s kind of Ben and I think that’s why it works for him and you know, I really couldn’t have picked a better partner for him to put him with, other than Josh (Briggs). I had watched Josh a little bit in EVOLVE and so had Ben and I’ve really been a fan of his work and so, I think they’ve got something that they can — and with Fallon (Henley) coming in with them too, I think they got something that they could go to the main roster with and have a good run.
Brooks Jensen is currently involved with NXT Tag Team Champion Kiana James on-screen. To hear the latest on their storyline, check out the latest NXT review from the Poisonrana Podcast.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the Insiders Edge Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
