Adam Pearce on how he got his job in WWE, what his life is like behind-the-scenes as a Producer
Adam Pearce is the guest on the latest episode of “After The Bell with Corey Graves.”
Pearce has been in the wrestling business since 1996 and he has wrestled around the world for promotions such as Ring Of Honor, the National Wrestling Alliance, MLW and elsewhere but today’s fans may know him best as the new authority figure on WWE television.
During the show, Pearce talked about his time on the independent scene and his current role with WWE.
Check out the highlights below:
Adam Pearce told us how he got his role in WWE: “I had my tryout in 2012 in Los Angeles. It was the same tryout Bayley came to the company out of. All credit to Jerry Brisco, Bill DeMott, and Canyon Ceman who works in our development department. I got a phone call that said, ‘Hey, a guy is going to call you and offer you a tryout. We are not interested in you as a talent. Know that up front, but accept the tryout,’ which I thought was a very auspicious phone call to get that you want me to try out but not as a talent. In the weeks leading up to it, it became evident that what I was being considered for is they wanted to see what I might do if given the opportunity to be a coach. Keep in mind, I’ve never trained anybody outside of being a locker room veteran. At the tryout, it became evident I was going to be married to a certain novice, and by novice I mean zero experience. That went well for three days. Then I sat on hold until for however long it took to build The Performance Center. I traveled back and forth nine times as a guest coach. It was the longest job interview in the history of job interviews. I would come for a week and go home. Two months later I would come for a week and go home. Finally, I got the call and came down and started officially in May of 2015. It was a long journey.”
Pearce explained what his day to day is like as a producer: “To make it real simple, I do everything. I do literally everything. A producer’s days, especially on TV days, start before everybody else. I will get there three or four hours before anybody else. We will sit in a meeting. You know the meeting where we will go through the festivities of the day that may or may not change at all. It may be etched in stone and we will follow with one set of plans immediately, I have become extremely adaptive at rolling with the punches, and oh, the punches will be coming and they will be coming fast and furious and at numerous counts. Producers are on their toes constantly. We are the behind the scenes deliverers of information, sometimes wanted and sometimes not. We are responsible for making sure that our specific duties for the day, be that one segment or more, not only hit their time but hit the content we are responsible for. Sometimes that means I need to get in the ring and teach somebody how to do something they never did before. Those are always fun days. Then once the broadcast comes to fruition, I have to sit there with the headset on communicating what we are seeing to our broadcast partners, our television truck, our producers and directors before it actually happens so they can have their cameras in position to capture the images we are trying to give the viewer at home. If all of that happens in a perfect world, we will hit our time to the second. Everyone will be happy with what they saw and we will move on to the next day. That is just describing a TV day. At least you get the wild adulation of the WWE Universe all the time for all of the hard work you put in all the time generally, right? I’m imagining the crickets chirping.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit After The Bell with Corey Graves with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription