Rob Terry Says TNA's The Menagerie Originally Had A Scarier Concept

Rob Terry says the original plans for The Menagerie were a lot scarier than the final circus-like gimmick we ended up seeing on TNA programming.

Terry recently spoke with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard ahead of the premiere of Generation Iron: Natty 4 Life, a new film documenting the life of a professional bodybuilder. Terry is featured in the film to tell his story about being a natural bodybuilder and also took some time to look back on his professional wrestling career with TNA Wrestling.

Terry’s TNA run saw him join the British Invasion stable, hold the TNA Television Championship and team with Robbie E before he was given a gimmick change as “The Freak” in The Menagerie. The stable featured Terry, Knux, Rebel and Crazzy Steve as a carnival sideshow act, and Terry explained how he first learned about his new role.

“A little bit before that, before any of The Menagerie stuff came up, I was in Japan and I’d spent a lot of time over there. I was doing tours, I was having a great time and I was doing really well over there. I had a good reception and I was just really, really looking forward to coming back and making as big of an impact as I could. And then me, Mike Knox, Rebel and Steve, we were told ‘this is the idea we’ve got for you’, and at first you know how it goes,” Terry said, “at first they’ll give you something and the best you can do with it is make it the best you can and just run with it.”

Terry says he tried to pull from horror movies when he was told he’d be wearing a mask for his role as “The Freak” and said he wanted to portray a silent but scary destroyer-like character. He said that TNA told him he needed to tone it down a bit and they went back and forth for a bit before creative settled on the final version we saw on TV. Terry explained that just like any other role the stable made the best of the situation and they had fun, but he felt it was very limiting for him since he couldn’t fully develop the original idea he had.

“I was trying to come up with these ideas and I’m a huge nerd, I love horror movies and that sort of stuff so I wanted to create this character that was—they said they wanted [me] under a mask so I wanted to design this mask that was scary as hell. I showed them the ideas and they were like ‘no, it’s too much.’ I just wanted to be this destroyer, this killer and they said they needed to change it, so there was a lot of this back and forth and then it came to the costume design and it just kept coming back and I didn’t know where this was going. None of us really did, we didn’t know what we were doing and then it got to the point where it was almost showtime and we found out that it was going to be more of a circus act.

“Again, I was in for it and I wanted to do the best that I could for it but for me personally, it was such a limited role of where I wanted to go with it. I felt like I had all of this experience prior [to that] and I went to Japan, I was ready at that point. I was ready to go and then I was under the mask, I was doing ‘The Freak’ and it was just a limited situation for me. Great bunch of guys to work with and we had fun but it was just a limitation factor of that.”

Terry added that it all came down to execution and they tried to make the best of it but it ultimately fizzled out.

Check out the full interview below:

Generation Iron: Natty 4 Life explores the “inner workings of professional natural bodybuilding in an attempt to expose the truth behind the all-natural claim of the sport.” Rob Terry is featured in the film along with Mike O’Hearn, and Kai Greene and it is available on video-on-demand services including Amazon now.

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