CJ Parker (Juice Robinson) on Leaving WWE NXT to Chase His Wrestling Dreams

Fred: I have a very special guest on the line, fresh off a stint in WWE NXT: the Moon Child himself, CJ Parker. CJ, what’s going on, man?

CJ Parker: Oh, friend, what’s up, dude? You make me excited. How you doing, brother?

Fred: I’m doing all right, but I think you’re doing a little better than me. We were talking off the air about how you’re in warm Florida, chilling on the patio sipping some tea, and I’m here in Jersey, where it’s still cold in April. You’re the Moon Child. Do you have any environmental tips that could help make New Jersey warmer?

CJ Parker: I’ve got one for you: Get in there, turn the thermostat up, get on your couch and watch some Netflix. That’s how I deal with it.

Fred: Very good idea. You’re literally less than two weeks removed from giving your notice. You voluntarily left WWE NXT, and the first question I’ll pose to you is why.

CJ Parker: I’m 25 years old, and I wanted to experience some things I haven’t experienced yet in my career, things I didn’t know if I’d ever get to experience, like traveling all over the world and really earning my stripes. All my friends, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Adrian Neville, Finn Bálor, worked their tails off for years and did it the old-fashioned way. They got over at the smallest level, and now they’re getting over at the biggest level. I feel like I owe it to myself, and that’s the right way to go about things. If I’m going to give that a try, I’d better do it now at 25, and that’s what I decided.

Fred: I couldn’t believe you were only 25. Not that you look older, but you’d been there about four years.

CJ Parker: Developmental puts some years on you, man. The chassis has got some miles on it.

Fred: But still underratedly handsome, in my opinion, as the ladies and some mutual friends have told me. Before NXT, you were in FCW, right?

CJ Parker: I started in FCW in May 2011.

Fred: Were you homegrown, or did you have indie experience before signing?

CJ Parker: I wasn’t homegrown. I’d trained, and I knew my way around the ring before I got to Dr. Tom, but I didn’t do much on the indies before I got there, just a couple of years around the Chicagoland area to get my feet wet. Nothing really to speak of. Then I luckily got signed really young, and here I am.

Fred: For years, people told me, “You’ve got to check out CJ Parker. He’s really underrated.” I’m not going to lie, at first I wasn’t feeling the environmental gimmick, but over time you could tell you worked really hard to make it work, and you made a lot of guys look really good even when you weren’t on the winning end. When your release was made public, the outpouring of support from guys like Enzo Amore, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens and Finn Bálor, the best of the best, was incredible. What do you feel you bring to the table that fans haven’t seen?

CJ Parker: I don’t think fans know how passionate I am about wrestling and how much I love it. I’m going to do it until the day I die. I know for a fact I’ll be wrestling when I’m 60 years old, and I’m not going to stop until I’m excellent in every area of wrestling. All I aspire to be as a man is a hell of a pro wrestler. Seeing all those people say those things about me made me feel so good. I can’t even put it into words. If my friends were in charge, maybe things would have gone a little differently, but no, I’m just kidding. It’s a great group of guys down here. We bonded and became friends doing all the little shows together and being in the Performance Center every day for hours on end, making each other laugh. It’s impossible not to become friends with everybody, and if any of them had left and I’d stayed, I would have said the same things about them, because they’re my brothers and I love them all.

Fred: For fans who don’t know much about you, who drew you into wrestling?

CJ Parker: I think everybody says Shawn Michaels, but Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, The Rock and Chris Jericho were huge for me when I was 9 or 10. I was born in ’89, so around ’98 or ’99, the Attitude Era, I was hooked, and that was that. As I got older and started watching older stuff, guys like Randy Savage, Curt Hennig, Ricky Steamboat and Bret Hart became my kind of guys. Those are the guys I still watch and love.

Fred: When they repackaged you in NXT a couple of years ago, did they specifically tell you what your gimmick was? It later became an environmentalist, but before that it was almost kind of a Rastafarian gimmick, and some people called it a PG version of a stoner.

CJ Parker: I’d say it was more like a hippie. There was never a day they pulled me into an office and said, “All right, brother, you’re going to be a hippie. Ready, go.” I was a 22- or 23-year-old kid in boots and trunks trying to figure out who I was in the wrestling world. I had curly hair, and I had a personality, but I wasn’t focused in any general direction. Then I broke my wrist at practice and was out four or five months, and while I was out, I wanted to come back different. Wrestling is about people seeing you and knowing you, like, “Oh, that’s the guy with dreadlocks.” You need to set yourself apart and look colorful and eye-catching, and I’d always thought dreads were cool since I was little, so I asked the office if I could get dreads, and they said give it a try. I put some colors in there and made it really flamboyant and over the top, along with the colorful gear I was wearing, and next thing you know, I’m coming out to a Jimi Hendrix-style song with trippy, psychedelic lighting. I was practicing my entrance and thought, “Maybe I should dance.” I don’t think I danced very well, but it snowballed. They chose the music the day before I debuted, and that’s when I decided to dance coming out, sorry excuse for a dancer that I am. They were big on characters at the time, like Tyler Breeze, completely different characters where you see them and know exactly what they are. It was never a conscious decision by one person. It was a gradual thing with a lot of ideas thrown in, and all of us trying to adapt, evolve it and make the best of it.

Fred: You did have some great entrance music. Once you became the guy for the greater good, I was kind of hoping they’d bring back Simon Dean’s Segway, or give you a smart car, like Alberto Del Rio and his cars.

CJ Parker: It would have been hard to get a Segway or a smart car up the stairs in the back onto the stage, and the ramp at Full Sail is only about 15 feet. And if Simon Dean did it, I don’t want to do it. I want to do me, not Simon Dean.

Fred: You spent some time in FCW and a number of years in NXT. Besides the obvious production value, what was the biggest difference between FCW under Dr. Tom, Norman Smiley and a few other guys, and NXT, where there were still some of the same trainers sprinkled in with new faces like Coach Gunn?

CJ Parker: It just got bigger. When Dr. Tom, Joey Mercury, Norman Smiley and Steve Keirn were down on Dale Mabry, in the little warehouse with three rings and about 40 guys, it was great. There were stars there, they helped the stars come into their own, then they moved up, and it worked. Then Triple H put his hand into developmental, and everything just got bigger and better. There were more coaches and trainers, the roster was bigger, and it grew overnight. Developmental became more attractive to people outside the business, maybe a guy who played football his whole life who WWE thought had potential. That guy might walk into Dale Mabry and not be blown out of the water, but now they walk into the PC and are blown out of the water, because that place is badass. It’s state-of-the-art, with everything you need if you want to be a pro wrestler. It’s pretty much the first of its kind in our business.

Fred: Something that’s great but also a little concerning about NXT: In the last few months, particularly since Kevin Owens got there, it’s become more of a brand than developmental, and it looks like they’re recruiting more independent talent, with names like Adam Cole, ACH and the Briscoes rumored. For every younger guy like CJ Parker who knows what he’s doing, there are guys like Baron Corbin and Enzo Amore with a lot of potential but a big learning curve. If they signed all those indie guys tomorrow, with Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn on top and Baron Corbin and Enzo at the bottom, would that negatively affect things, or would being around great workers help the younger guys get better?

CJ Parker: Anytime younger guys new to the business are around seasoned guys, they’re going to get better. As far as Enzo Amore and Baron Corbin go, they’re both doing great and learning quickly, and they’re going to be just fine. If you’re going to be good as a pro wrestler, you’re going to be good, whether it’s Dale Mabry or the PC, or a roster of 100 guys. You’re going to figure it out, and those are two guys who are in the process of figuring it out. Guys like the Briscoes, Adam Cole and ACH coming here would be great for everybody. It would help the younger guys, and I think those veterans would enjoy working with guys like Enzo and Baron, who are great workers. NXT is a really good place to be right now, regardless of experience, and it’s only going to keep getting better.

Fred: From the outside, it seems very much like a family atmosphere among the wrestlers.

CJ Parker: A huge family atmosphere. A lot of people forget that we only do our TV show about once or twice a month, plus live events all over Florida Thursday through Saturday. Monday through Wednesday and the first part of Thursday and Friday, we’re at the PC grinding away, training in the rings and the weight rooms and doing promos, so we’re together all the time. We all live here in Orlando, too, and wrestlers get bored pretty easily when they slow down, so we hang out in our free time. It’s a great group of brothers down here.

Fred: I’d imagine it was very hard to leave, though to quote you, you did it for the greater good of your own career. Can you give us a little detail about the conversation with management?

CJ Parker: It wasn’t that I needed to go somewhere else to get better, because this place is where you want to be, with incredible coaching and training. There’s no doubt in my mind I’d have continued to get better here. I just felt it was time to try a different way, because I felt like I might be plateauing, in a spot I might not be able to get out of, and being so young, I didn’t want to be known as the guy who did what I did on TV for too long. I want to get out there, get all kinds of experience and maybe come back with a fresh coat of paint. I wasn’t bitter, upset or frustrated. I just knew that as a performer, I needed to try a different route to keep growing. It was a great talk. I went in worried and afraid, not knowing how they’d perceive what I was saying, and I shouldn’t have been, because they were great. They knew my mind was made up, that it was a tough decision and something I had to do, and they were very supportive. It was on good terms, and in the future, who knows? Maybe I’ll come back, maybe I won’t. It’s still business. But the door is always open, and it couldn’t have closed out for me any better.

Fred: You grew up in the Attitude Era, got signed in your early 20s, and all of a sudden you’re getting mentored by the Game. What was working under Triple H like?

CJ Parker: It’s very surreal for a while. I was nervous, because I look up to him so much and have so much respect for him. He’s the man, a big, tall, tan, jacked dude in a suit, and he can be intimidating. But as you get to know him and see how passionate he is, how much he cares about NXT, the future and everybody who works there, the ice breaks and it becomes easy. Then every once in a while, it hits you: “Hold on a second. I’m working under Triple H.” Same with Dusty Rhodes. “Geez, Dusty Rhodes has been watching me do promos for almost four years.” When you stop and think about it, it’s like, “Man, this is awesome.”

Fred: Did the Attitude Era fan in you ever want to ask him about some random match from 1999?

CJ Parker: No, because it’s all business. TV is the most important part of anything we do, there’s a lot of pressure on us, and we want to do very well for him, and he wants us to do well, so there’s no real time for that. Maybe a quick joke here and there, but no fanboy stuff. He does this bump, like Harley Race and Shawn Michaels did, where somebody throws you into the corner and you flip over and fall to the outside, and I did it on TV once, and we joked about it. Little things like that. He’s a great guy. You’d be surprised how easy he is to talk to once you get to know him.

Fred: So what you’re telling WWE fans is that the future is safe with Paul Levesque?

CJ Parker: I wouldn’t put anyone else in charge of it. He cares about wrestling. If you look at his career and know anything about him, he always has, and you can tell he always will.

Fred: There was a lot of controversy a few months back with Bill DeMott. To be fair to Bill, he’s polarizing at the very least. I interviewed him a few years back, and all things considered, he seemed like a cool guy. He has critics, but people like Antonio Thomas, who I’ve spoken to, Brad Maddox and Chris Jericho speak very highly of him. What was your experience with Bill DeMott?

CJ Parker: Big Bill was passionate. He was proud to be the head coach, he was always there, often the last one to leave, and he put everything he had into NXT. He went from the small warehouse on Dale Mabry to the multimillion-dollar PC, saw it get off the ground and was hands-on with it, and he loved it. I think that speaks volumes.

Fred: Who would you say is the unsung hero among the NXT trainers? We hear about Sara Del Rey quite a bit, and I know Jason Albert just started.

CJ Parker: All the coaches are awesome. They were assembled so that each one has a certain strength. But not enough people talk about Robbie Brookside. He’s wrestled all over the world, and he can teach you any hold and any counter. He’s so technically sound. If you want to learn anything wrestling-wise, he’s the guy. Billy Gunn was a top guy in a top time, and he likes doing things the simplest way, which is a beautiful thing. Not enough people know how good a trainer he is. Terry Taylor is incredible with psychology. He’s a wealth of knowledge, and just sitting around him hearing stories about the old way of doing things is incredible. Everybody there is the best of the best, or they wouldn’t be there.

Fred: I saw Billy Gunn at WrestleMania. He’s what, 51 or 52, and he still looks phenomenal for his age.

CJ Parker: He’s tan and jacked, and he’s a big, brick-handed so-and-so. I hope he hears this, because he’ll laugh. He makes that place fun. He’s a 51-year-old 5-year-old. He likes to laugh and have a good time, and his thing is that you can have fun and joke around and still be learning and working hard. I always loved that about him.

Fred: How cool is it to see the women in NXT getting over as much as they are, particularly Sasha Banks and Charlotte?

CJ Parker: I love it, man. I love when anybody gets it, and the girls down here are getting a huge chance and showing everybody why they deserve it. They were out there working their tails off on a couple of the specials, and who couldn’t respect that? When they do things like that, they’ll continue to get opportunities and show people how passionate and hard-working they are. I’m really proud of those girls.

Fred: Before I let you go, a couple of fan questions. George asks: “How long did it take Kevin Owens to forgive you after you broke his nose?”

CJ Parker: About four or five seconds, maybe, because Kevin is a pro wrestler in every way, and he’s tough. He said, “Oh man, I think you exploded my nose,” and I looked and said, “Oh, brother, yeah, I think I did.” Then the blood started to come, and you could hear the crowd realize what had happened, that there was blood pouring down his face. Kevin knew right away that it made his debut that much better. That’s how I’d want my Kevin Owens to debut. We didn’t plan that, but I’d want him covered in blood and still prevailing and whooping whoever’s ass he’s whooping. You had the referee, Drake, trying to wipe it off, and Kevin didn’t care. He didn’t sell it for a second. He was dead set on making an impression and whooping my ass, and that’s exactly what he did. I thought it was beautiful, and when I watch it back, I wouldn’t change one thing. I’m glad I broke his nose, and Kevin feels the same way. If I’d broken Tyler Breeze’s nose, that would have sucked, because it would have gotten blood all over his beautiful gear.

Fred: Scott asks: “Who is your dream opponent outside of WWE?” Maybe Adam Cole, Nakamura or Tanahashi?

CJ Parker: All three of those guys. I’m a huge fan of all three. I also think the Young Bucks are so awesome, and Kenny Omega. Wrestling is so hot right now, who wouldn’t I want to work with? I’d like to get in there again with Chris Hero and Trent, and I’ve got friends like EC3. Look at any roster, TNA, ROH, New Japan, PWG, CZW, where I’m going Saturday, or AAW in Chicago. There are great wrestlers everywhere, and I hope that by the time I’m done, I can say I wrestled all of them.

Fred: How much did the trainers and staff in NXT follow indie and international wrestling?

CJ Parker: Look at the last three or four years and the guys who’ve made it to WWE. Clearly everybody has their eye on what goes on outside WWE, because the guys doing it in the biggest way right now all did it in the biggest way they could before they got here: Finn Bálor, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Adrian Neville, and before them Seth Rollins, Cesaro, Dean Ambrose, Luke Harper and Daniel Bryan. If you’re good, they’re going to find you and know about you.

Fred: Good to know for any aspiring wrestlers watching. Jeremy asks a random one: Finn Bálor apparently didn’t know how to drive before getting to Orlando. Would you trust Finn Bálor to drive you to the mall?

CJ Parker: I would trust Finn Bálor with my life. I let him drive my car once from a show. I miss him already just talking about him. He’s very cautious. He looks both ways, follows all the rules and watches the speed limit. He does a great job, but it’s funny, because it’s like when you’re 15 and learning how to drive, except he’s a 33-year-old full-grown man. That question made me smile.

Fred: Frank asks: “Who is the funniest member of the NXT locker room?”

CJ Parker: The boys are going to be hot if I answer this. There are so many funny guys. Enzo Amore makes me laugh a lot, Sami Zayn’s really funny, and people don’t know how funny Adrian Neville is. When all the boys get together, everybody’s funny. We take turns making jokes and making fun of each other. I’ve got to mention Braun Strowman. He makes me laugh really hard, and the funny thing is that he tries to make people laugh really hard, and he keeps track of how many times he gets the boys and who and how. That right there gets me, so I had to mention him, or he’d be hot. Scott Dawson cracks me up, too.

Fred: I’m glad you mentioned Scott Dawson. He’s really underrated and pretty damn good in the ring, kind of like an Arn Anderson type.

CJ Parker: He’s a working so-and-so. He’s so good. I was talking about him and his partner, Dash Wilder, to someone and said I love them because they make everybody in the ring with them better and put on great matches, and they remind me of the Brain Busters, just like you said. Except the guy who interviewed me misquoted it as “I love them because they do brain mustard,” which made me look like an idiot. They don’t do Brain Busters, but they remind me of the Brain Busters, and I can’t wait until they get going on TV, because they’re going to be awesome.

Fred: When I first saw Enzo Amore, being from Jersey, I was put off by the stereotypical gimmick, but he’s so talented and entertaining, and his look has gotten more unique over time. I know you two are tight. What’s it like going out in public with a guy who looks like Enzo Amore?

CJ Parker: Remember, he’s walking next to me, and I’ve got rainbow-colored dreads half the time, so we’re like two peas in a pod. We don’t really pay attention to that. He’s so entertaining. He’s got a binder of about 500 pages of promos and one-liners he’s written himself. He puts in so much time and he’s so creative, and he’s getting better and better in the ring all the time, because he’s got everything else in his back pocket. It’s great to see.

Fred: How hard is it to maintain those rainbow dreads?

CJ Parker: They’re not rainbow anymore. I stripped away the color. The cool thing about dreads is that they’re really easy to maintain once they’re dreaded. That’s the whole point. You just wake up and go. Every once in a while, I get them tightened and put the loose hair back in, and washing them isn’t very hard, but you need to dry them in a timely manner to keep them fresh. It was just as hard when I had long, curly hair, just different.

Fred: Keep growing them out, keep making a name for yourself outside of WWE, and then you can do a hair vs. hair match.

CJ Parker: If I’m doing one, I’ll win it, because I ain’t cutting these.

Fred: Where can fans find you next?

CJ Parker: I’m at CZW in Philly this weekend, then Five Boroughs and XWA in Cranston, Rhode Island, and I’ll be home for AAW and DreamWave at the beginning of May, hopefully with something in between. I’m just living one date at a time, selling one T-shirt and one 8-by-10 at a time. I can’t wait to do pro wrestling the way I think is so cool. Bookers can find my booking email linked on my Twitter.

Fred: CJ, thanks so much for your time. Best of luck in your career, man. I think big things are in your future.

CJ Parker: All right, brother. I’ll see you down the road.