Pete Dunne Comments on His New “Butch” Name

A recent episode of the Mark Andrews: My Love Letter to Wrestling podcast had Butch, formerly known as Pete Dunne in NXT, as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Butch’s thoughts on his recent ring name change as part of his call-up to WWE’s SmackDown brand.

“Yeah, I mean it’s exciting, but it’s also a little bit — I mean it’s just different but I think it’s time to change it up a little bit [Dunne said about his name change and character]. Like I said, five years, fresh start, why not try something a little new? And the thing is with me, whether it’s a name or whatever it is that changes, that’s not really what endeared me to the audience in the first place, right? It’s the — I like to think anyways it’s the quality of the in-ring work and that’s what I’m gonna keep the same of course. It’s gonna get better, it’s gonna improve as time goes. So that’s sort of my perspective on it. If I can endear the crowd with the quality of my in-ring work, that’s what I’m looking to continue to do.”

Butch also gave his thoughts about being paired together with Sheamus on WWE’s SmackDown brand.

“Yeah, he [Sheamus] would have been a name on that list to work with too. He’s someone I crossed paths with a lot but, we started around the same time when — might have been in the UK. Obviously there’s an age gap but it’s still a similar time and I remember watching his stuff on The Wrestling Channel [The Fight Network] back in the day and then seeing how far he’s come so, we feel like we have a lot more in common. Obviously, we haven’t known each other that long but, we definitely have more in common than we think we would and it’s good to see how excited he is for all this as well. He’s been there so long and he’s still excited about the prospect of that and seeing how far we can take it so, that’s endearing to come in and see that veteran up there who’s still, you know, he wants to kill it and he wants to my grow name bigger and he wants to help me and Ridge [Holland] make our names solid so, yeah, he’s a good guy.”

Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com