Eli Drake On Being On The Rock's Show 'The Hero', Rock Impersonating Him, If He Interacted With Rock
WrestlingINC.com owner Raj Giri was recently on a media conference call with Global Force Wrestling Global Champion Eli Drake. Giri asked Drake about his 2013 appearance on The Rock's TNT show, The Hero.
Drake, competing under his real name Shaun Ricker, was the third person eliminated from the competition. He said that even though he did have multiple interactions with The Rock while filming, they didn't really go beyond a surface-level due to The Rock's busy schedule.
"Not a lot of super-deep interactions just because that guy is on the craziest schedule I've ever seen," Drake said. "While we were filming he was WWE Champion at the time, so he was flying in and out of town to do Raw and SmackDown and going to movie premieres and then coming back to film every day."
Drake said The Rock was his childhood idol and recalled a funny moment while they were on a press tour.
"I remember the one time we did a press junket in Miami and he actually imitated me, I thought that was the funniest thing I've ever seen," Drake said. "It was an honor in a lot of ways because here's a guy I really idolized and looked up to in high school and now he's imitating and making fun of me or whatever, so that was pretty cool."
The Rock didn't offer Drake any advice for his wrestling career, but his manager offered some insight for how to do things in entertainment outside of wrestling.
"She just told me to build my brand, get as big as I can on this platform, and that'll assist big-time in moving onto another platform, if I so desire," Drake said.