When Baron Corbin was called up to NXT, he made an immediate splash by winning the Andre the Giant Memorable Battle Royal. However, once that character had run its course, WWE saddled him with the career-killing "Constable Corbin" persona.
Eventually, he'd ditch that by becoming King of the Ring. However, he'd later be repackaged again, this time as "Bum Ass Corbin," a down-on-his-luck version of the character who very quickly got over with fans.
"There are some people in our world that would be like, ‘You want me to look like a bum and do what?! I'm a WWE Superstar!'" Corbin says. "I have no ego. ‘You want me to do that? Hell yeah, let's go. This is going to be fun. Let's turn it up to 12.’ That's something I've always learned from seeing it. How do you take what they give you and turn it into gold? And it's a lot of work. I mean, you have to fully commit."
His next evolution saw him become the less popular Happy Corbin, and WWE paired him with JBL in an attempt to give the former United States Champion a WWE Hall of Fame manager. The partnership didn't work out, leaving JBL to bury his new protégé on his way back to Bermuda following Corbin's embarrassing losing streak.
"I can’t put my finger on why it struggled," Corbin admits reflecting on the ill-fated storyline. "I think the people, and John and myself, wanted more out of it. I wanted [JBL] to be able to decapitate a few people, and it’s a process of getting him back in the ring and getting him doing that. He just became like a mouthpiece for me in the introduction thing, where he would get the crowd all riled up for me."
"But I think we all just wanted a little bit more from that, and it just didn’t click. I’ll take the fall for it," he continued. "I’m happy to do that because JBL is one of the greatest of all time, and sometimes things just don’t click. It is what it is."
The decision was ultimately made to send Corbin back to NXT where he had a successful run as Bron Breakker's tag team partner. However, when he was called back up to the main roster, Corbin was paired with Apollo Crews and soon released when there was seemingly nothing left to do with him.
You can watch the full interview in the player below.