Austin Theory Hits Back At Claims He Stole Released WWE Star's Gimmick

By Sai Mohan

WWE RAW Superstar Austin Theory does not believe his "selfie gimmick" is an offshoot of the character that Tyler Breeze used to portray.

"You see stuff online where people are like, 'It's ripping this off, it's ripping that off.' To me, it's a different way of doing it and I'm going about it a different way," Theory told SK Wrestling recently. "Anything that people might have seen before or think they might have seen before, they don't want to get along with it because they're like, 'Well, it's already happened.' But I think what I do is totally different."

Theory plans to ignore his detractors and take selfies upon winning the WWE Championship this Saturday at the Elimination Chamber event in Saudi Arabia.

"If anybody has a different opinion to that, that's theirs, but I think it's gonna be great," Theory said. "I think it's gonna be so great when I take that selfie in Saudi Arabia with the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber. People can tweet all they want that they hate that. It doesn't matter because that's a selfie that's gonna be in the history books forever."

Theory began workshopping his current gimmick in NXT, and actually took a selfie in a match against Breeze on the March 25, 2020 episode of NXT. The finish to the match saw Breeze hitting Theory with a Beauty Shot after the latter began recording their match on a phone. Theory revealed it was his idea to introduce the camera midway through a match.

"I remember back in NXT I had a match with Tyler Breeze and I pitched the idea about a phone," Theory recalled. "I was like, 'Hey, I know that used to be your thing, but if I come out and I have a phone and I try to take a picture of you and we do all this stuff...' If you go back and see the match, I think somebody tweeted about it recently. It was like, 'Oh, wow, look at the storytelling here.'

"What's cool is when I got to Monday Night RAW, that [selfie gimmick] wasn't really an idea. I didn't really have that in mind. They kinda told me, 'Hey, here's an idea. This is what we were thinking.' So first night on RAW I'm taking Jeff Hardy out and I'm taking a selfie, so I love it. I think it's great."

Theory will wrestle WWE Champion Bobby Lashley, Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins, Riddle and AJ Styles inside Elimination Chamber this Saturday. The final card for the premium live event can be found here.

You can watch Austin Theory's full chat with SK Wrestling below. The bit about his selfie gimmick can be found between 12:33 – 14:21.

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