10 Wrestling Facts We Didn't Know Last Week (July 6)

7. Damien Sandow Asked The Genius For Permission

Imagine getting to go to work wearing a bath robe and badmouth everyone around you as an intellectual inferior. That was Damien Sandow's job, and he performed it with aplomb. At the same time though, he was worried that a former WWE favourite might view his gimmick as a total rip off.

Before debuting on the main roster under his new guise, Sandow asked for a meeting with Lanny Poffo at WWE's training centre in Tampa, Florida. Poffo, who had earlier worked as "The Genius", was only too happy to attend (at the request of Joe Gomez and Steve Keirn) so he could pass the torch to someone else.

Poffo told Sportskeeda that he settled a nervous Sandow's nerves by telling him he too had borrowed the gown gimmick and didn't think his Genius character was all that original, either. He gave Sandow his blessing and revealed how gracious Bobby "The Brain" Heenan had been to him years earlier when he had the same worries.