Luke Gallows on What Inspired the Festus Character, Finn Balor and His Time in Impact Wrestling

Former Raw Tag Team Champion Luke Gallows was a guest on The Steve Austin Show podcast where he spoke about what inspired the Festus character, Finn Balor and his time in Impact Wrestling.

Gallows began the discussion by explaining how he got his first job with WWE after working a few years on the indies.

“I called Tommy Dreamer and Johnny Ace every week, like, ‘hey guys, you should probably hire me – I’m pretty good.’ I was having the bulls–t matches in West Virginia against guys in furniture stores and stuff! Terrible! So finally they were opening Deep South and I think they needed to fill it and I wouldn’t leave them alone, so I somehow got my ass in there after three years of terrible indies.”

Continuing on, Gallows explains how he pitched potentially doing a hillbilly gimmick to get over.

“They bring in Henry Godwinn and my partner eventually ended up being Terry Gordy’s son, Ray Gordy. And the way that happened was Michael [Hayes] brought Henry back and they were going to be the new Godwinns with Henry and Ray. And Ray was always really cool to me, sold me these Tex Slazenger boots. I wore them around for a while. And something happened with him. He had to leave the company. I don’t know what it was, but whatever. But they needed a partner, so some guys from TNA, some old school guys came in, but they couldn’t match this hillbilly thing, so I just watched, like, Larry The Cable Guy stuff and Bill Engvall. I got material for this stuff and I asked ‘Doctor’ Tom Prichard, who I always had a great relationship with, ‘can I please do something with Ray?’ because I know I’ve got nothing. They just killed this weird gimmick that I had. We cut a couple of promos and they loved it!”

Gallows gave light on the origin of the Festus character, claiming that Vince McMahon actually helped him create the character.

“So we go to Vince’s office and I’m 23 [years old] and this is Vince McMahon and I’m like, ‘I can’t be a mark, but this is some s–t right here.’ I’m looking at Vince and he goes, he starts telling me a story, ‘I knew this kid in school and he looked like this’ and he did this face. ‘This is the way he looked and when something would happen, he’d lose his mind like crazy!’ And I’m looking at him, going, ‘I can do that – that’s not a problem.’ So he goes, ‘do this face!’ and I do the Festus open mouth, tongue out face and he looked at me and he goes, ‘can you do that?’ And I start doing it and then we start doing it back and forth. And Vince is like, ‘not like that! Like this! Make you jaw more slack!’ And I’m like, ‘oh my God! I must make Vince happy!'”

He continues by confirming whether or not the experience as Festus is a bitter memory for him or not.

“When you’re that young and then they call you up, you’re just like, ‘I’m going to do this and good as I can and hope that they keep me for a minute,’ so that’s what I did, and had a pretty good time doing it, and the kids liked it and stuff. It was what it was, but I don’t look back on that stuff at all. I feel like a lot of wrestlers would get bitter about that stuff. I thought that was a good experience.”

Interestingly, Gallows mentioned several names he and Karl Anderson have traveled with in WWE. It is also of note that Anderson himself was interviewed by Austin and you can find his comments here.

“It’s always us and a rotating third or fourth. We get each other so [well] from when we first clicked, so sometimes Finn Bálor, sometimes Curt Hawkins. We were on SmackDown, so it was always AJ [Styles]. And then, we had Jinder [Mahal] for a while and he left to go to SmackDown and blew up. And we always do good, but we’re always together no matter what. I just think AJ and Jinder put up with us because we were funny and silly when we were reading.”

Gallows seems to have a (jokingly) love-hate relationship with Balor, who can be a persuasive coffee enthusiast.

“We love Finn Bálor. My best buddy, one of my best buddies. Well, he wants to wake up and go get coffee in the morning and I’m trying to shake off the night before. I don’t want [any] coffee at nine in the morning. I want to sleep in till 1 pm and then go to the gym. We always get our pump no matter what. We sweat the hate out, but I don’t want to get up at 9 am.”

Gallows explained what his feelings are towards Impact Wrestling after his stint with the company a few years back.

“It was fun. I don’t want to bury anybody there. It was a lot of fun and I had a lot of fun. It was just really different coming out of WWE because I went from bulls–t indies to the WWE. Then I left and I got fired right after my 26th birthday. I was a young cat. I started wrestling when I was just 18 [years old], so I was like, ‘this is not a bad thing – this is a good thing. I’m going to go everywhere and then hopefully go back.'”

“So I had a lot of fun there. I didn’t make a lot of money, but it was a lot of fun. It was a one-year run and then they were having their issues or whatever.”

WIth H/T to WrestlingInc for the transcription.

We have a hilarious video featured below where both Gallows and Anderson imitate Austin, the man they have both just been interviewed by.

Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows reenact Stone Cold's famous "Austin 3:16" speech

Are you a fan of ‘The Good Brothers?’ Did you watch WWE back when Festus was around?

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