Fred Rosser, FKA Darren Young, discusses his WWE career, Vince McMahon and being LGBTQ (Exclusive)

Darren Young was paired with the legendary Bob Backlund

You've already mentioned there how brilliant your career was in WWE. Of course, from NXT, the full Nexus movement and you were in Prime Time Players with Titus O'Neil, and we last saw you with Bob Backlund! What was your personal highlight?

My personal highlight... You know, of course winning the Tag Team Championships with Titus O'Neil. Whether people can say, "Oh, I wish WWE would have done this with you, or that with you better." I achieved my dreams by getting signed with WWE. I achieved my dreams by becoming Tag Team Champions with Titus O'Neil. I achieved my dream after teaming with Titus by teaming with Bob Backlund and him being my life coach.

What a lot of people don't know is... They thought Bob Backlund was paired with me, they thought it was the WWE writers that put the storyline together, it was actually me. Because tag teams don't last forever. So, I've done personal appearances with Bob Backlund, he's very energetic, I'm very energetic, he likes to stand during his autograph signings, I stand during my autograph signings.

I said to myself, when it's all said and done teaming with Titus O'Neil, I'd like to have Bob Backlund as my life coach, because I feel like the missing ingredient in all of professional wrestling are managers.

Managers are so fun and so important in the wrestling game, and I wanted to bring Bob Backlund along and just have him be my life coach. We are both strange bedfellows, very different personalities but we were actually really good friends, and it was actually me who wrote down the ideas, had visuals, and I proposed them to Vince McMahon and the most intimidating thing about Vince McMahon is his office door. Once you're past his office door, it's all gravy.

I proposed the idea, I actually took the idea from Mike Tyson and his former trainer Cus. They were both strange... You know, strange bedfellows, had an unorthodox relationship but Mike's trainer really loved him, and they both loved each other, so I took that idea and I proposed that to Vince McMahon, and he loved it.

He called up Bob Backlund for me personally, and said, "Oh, would you be down to come back and manage Darren Young, and do this Make Darren Young Great Again thing?" And he was down we ran with it. And it started to get some momentum going, and then it's just unfortunate, you know, the people at work under Vince McMahon didn't have my back.

It is what it is but there's footage on my social media, there's footage on YouTube of "make Darren Young gimmick get over" and my last big feud was with the Miz, and when I first met the Miz years ago, even as an extra and even when I got signed, when I first met the Miz, I thought he was so annoying, I thought he was so annoying not only from the Real World but also just being around him and just fast forward to the end of my career in WWE and Miz being my last feud, he actually really, really helped me out and he was actually rooting for me to take the title from him and of course, maybe the next day, he would have won it back or a week later or something like that, but it's all about give a dog a bone, you know?

Let me experience winning the Intercontinental Championship.

It's just unfortunate the people under Vince McMahon didn't have my back. I had a lot of fun with the Miz, he helped me out with the promo work that we did, he made me feel comfortable because Miz is one of the best at it, and for him to help me out and go to war for me, to win the championship title will always be near and dear to me.

Vince McMahon gave me many shots. He gave me shots teaming with Titus O'Neil, because Titus and I were backstage and Vince seen us backstage acting crazy and he saw that this could be on TV. He gave Titus and I and opportunity, he gave me an opportunity with Bob Backlund, so I will never honestly have a bad word to say about Vince McMahon, it's just that it still hurts sometimes that people under him didn't have my back, but you can't win everyone over and, like I said, I'm not going to complain about anything. I'm going to celebrate all of my successes.

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