PCO Talks His Initial WWE Run Ending After Refusing To Job To Diesel In Montreal
Before PCO became "PCO," he was known as Pierre in WWE in the mid-1990s. He was a three-time tag team champion and had a brief singles run that came to an end due to backstage politics.
When you hear "backstage politics" in the setting of WWE in the mid-1990s, you think of The Kliq and PCO detailed the issues he had with them that caused his WWE run to end.
"It was actually [laughs], it was a really bad move on my part! I can say I take 100 percent of the blame on that," said PCO. "You know what? The Kliq, they weren't cool back then. They were all about themselves. They pretty much had control of the company. If Diesel wasn't World Champ then he and Shawn were the Tag Team Champs and then Razor Ramon was the Intercontinental Champ. Then there was the [1-2-3] Kid and later, Triple H joined. They were the Kliq. I don't know...
"At that time, at that age, I was like 25 or 26 and I just felt it was time I put my foot down on the ground. I felt Vince didn't have control of the company anymore. The Kliq had control of the company. It made me kind of furious at the time. I was young and lacked experience while in a big company like that, pretty much alone with all my thoughts and problems. I think I created, you know, 99.9 percent of my problems. I confronted Shawn Michaels in 1994 and Diesel in 1995... I think I was my own worst enemy."
PCO had a singles match with WWE World Champion Diesel in 1995 that took place in PCO's hometown of Montreal. The plan was PCO to win by countout or DQ so that WWE could later return to Montreal for a rematch between the two. However, Michaels and Diesel used their clout to change the finish to Diesel winning by pinfall. PCO wasn't willing to do that so it ended up being a double-countout and PCO would depart WWE shortly thereafter.
Even though things didn't work out in PCO's favor, he says that entire experience helped him evolve as a man.
"The great thing about that whole thing is that I learned so much. Everything that I didn't like about the Kliq... I was writing down a list of what I didn't like about those guys and I was reading that piece of paper and looking at myself in the mirror and I realized it was a pretty good picture of myself," admitted PCO. "It made me change. At that point, and it took a long time for me to understand a lot of things, but at that point I stopped trying to change my outbound world and started to change myself inside out instead of outside in."