Mr. Anderson’s WWE entrance became one of the most recognizable parts of his career, but the whole thing started with a simple direction from Paul Heyman during his OVW days.
While speaking on Tagging In with Chris Harris, Anderson looked back on how Heyman arrived in OVW and started giving him more television time. That eventually led to the idea that changed everything for him. Heyman wanted Anderson to interrupt the ring announcer, take over the introduction himself, and make the moment belong to him. Anderson explained that Heyman was the one who gave him the original setup for the gimmick.
“So it was um I was working I remember Paul Heymon had come into OVW taking over the pencil and you know he kind of had me just making a I really he was giving me a lot of TV time and uh he just told me one night he was like come out there tonight and cut the ring announcer off. The ring announcer at the time at OVW was Dean Dean Hill and he was like, ‘Cut him off, you know, because Dean Hill would do the ring introductions.’ He’s like, ‘Cut him off, snatch the mic from him, kind of, you know, dress him down and cut him out a little bit and then you do it, you do your own introduction and you do it like this.’ And he sort of like Paul did a variation of what I ended up doing, what I still do to this day.”
Anderson said the basic idea was that nobody could introduce him better than he could introduce himself. That was when something from his high school days suddenly came back to him.
“And uh so you know like nobody else nobody else can do your introduction like you can. And uh I so that night I went into the ring and I I was doing that and in the in the moment I had a flashback to I I used to announce basketball games when I was in high school and I would always say the last name twice for members of our team, right?”
He explained that when he announced players from his own team, he would make them sound huge. When it was the other team, he would quickly toss their names away.
“And then I would do like when it was the other team, I would just throw their name away, right? Like I would do the big big huge introduction for our players and their players. I would just be like Bob Jones. And uh and then I would hit the last name twice.”
That memory became the missing piece. Anderson said the double-name delivery came to him in the moment, and once he did it, the reaction backstage told him everything he needed to know.
“And so I here we are, you know, I’m like I don’t remember how old I was at the time, 27. So, like I’m almost 10 years, maybe even 10 years past being in high school and I just hadn’t even thought of that of you and it just hadn’t even dawned on me and I just thought like I’m going to hit my last name twice and I did it and I came back through the curtain and everybody was like keep doing that.”
Chris Harris pointed out that Heyman had no way of knowing Anderson’s voice would fit the concept so perfectly. Anderson said Heyman likely picked up on the way he used his voice in promos and how he carried himself. Anderson also said his delivery had roots in his military background. He liked the way drill sergeants spoke and naturally brought some of that into his promo style.
“I guess like the way that I always uh I I was in the military. I was in I went through boot camp and I used to just love the way that the drill sergeant talked and I always sort of wanted to do like a drill sergeant thing and so I guess when I was cutting promos a lot of times I would like revert back to the way that I would deliver something would be the way that a a drill sergeant would deliver stuff.”
That combination of Heyman’s direction, Anderson’s announcer background, and his booming voice helped create one of the loudest and most memorable entrances of that WWE era. Anderson’s “Kennedy… Kennedy” delivery became more than just an introduction. It became the hook that helped fans instantly know who he was, and it all came from an OVW experiment that clicked at the right time.
What do you think of Mr. Anderson’s explanation of how his WWE entrance came together? Drop your thoughts in the comments and let us know if you think it was one of the best entrances of that era.
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