The Evil History Of Pro Wrestling | Bill DeMott
Yes, the actual wrestling was significantly better and more futuristic. Yes, the storylines were far simpler, logical, and more engaging. Yes, Triple H actually respected and pushed smaller indie darlings. But the real magic was in the feel-good factor, the promise of real change, which Triple H was savvy enough to reflect in the tone of the product. Bayley wasn’t cool; she was joyous. American Alpha’s NXT Tag Team title win was a similarly beautiful ascent. Baron Corbin as the blundering curmudgeon - a Vince McMahon-coded baddie who didn’t win in the end - was also inspired. NXT was nice. Except, behind the scenes, it wasn’t.
Bill DeMott was instated as the Head Coach in developmental, replacing Dr. Tom Prichard, in the spring of 2012 ahead of the relocation to the Orlando Performance Center from Florida Championship Wrestling. DeMott had developed a reputation during his previous stint as a trainer for WWE feeder league Deep South Wrestling in the mid 2000s. DeMott was said to be a strict disciplinarian, obsessed with intense drills said to be so brutal that the wrestlers would rather endure humiliation than pain. This allowed DeMott to further indulge his sadism. Once class, exhausted and in agony, pitched an offer to DeMott, per Devon ‘Hannibal’ Nicholson. Zack Ryder would crouch by the turnbuckle and place a jelly donut over his face as a bare-assed Luke Gallows smeared it to crumbs by performing a ‘Stinkface’. This degrading stunt, which DeMott corroborated and described as the funniest thing he’d ever seen, spared the class from that day’s training. DeMott did not change upon returning to what, only on the surface, was a more respectable corporate environment.
Whispers had followed DeMott for a while - all the way back in 2007, when Devon Matthews accused DeMott of misconduct in a 2007 MySpace post. Before the allegations erupted into a full-blown scandal in the spring of 2015, the former Chad Baxter in a 2013 interview with The Shoot alleged that DeMott would break a yardstick over the backs of trainees if they were to botch a move. In 2014, Ryan Nemeth participated in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), in which he accused DeMott of kicking him in the cast that protected his broken leg.
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