Former NXT talent and current WWE Superstar Elias recently joined E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness to talk about his run on the main roster. The man formerly known as “The Drifter” discussed the origins of his character singing to WWE crowds:

“One time I went to Largo, Florida and Terry Taylor came up to me and asked if I could sing a song tonight and I said, ‘OK, about what?’ He said that I should sing about the crowd. I came up with a song that night and the song kind of clicked right off the bat, so I evolved it from there. I started asking, at the time, ‘Who wants to walk with The Drifter?’ I would then tell a little story; it all really started at NXT, even though the NXT audience didn’t really get to see that side of me too much; the live events crowd definitely did see that.”

Elias also revealed that Triple H predicted during his time in NXT that his character would be more successful on the main roster than in developmental:

“Triple H has told me specifically from the very first time when he saw me, he said that it would be a better main roster character than NXT. It never really clicked with the NXT audience the way it has. The way I see it, I took my live event act in NXT and brought it to the main roster. They saw the live event act and said let’s put that on TV. On NXT, I would sing songs, but wouldn’t even do that, plus it was very dark and cryptic, but this is the kind of stuff I was doing on live events in NXT before being called up.”

He also discussed how he looks forward to his character evolving as he continues forward in his journey on the main roster:

“I definitely see my character evolving. I don’t want it to run until the wheels fall off. I am definitely going to get the most out of this incarnation of it, then hopefully whatever the crowd reacts to it, and storylines take me there are many level. Think about just any kind of rockstar who has had a journey; they have their ups and downs, their egos and demands and then they hit rock bottom. There’s a million ways to go with ‘Elias,’ in my mind I see it evolving in many different ways.”