Braun Strowman has revealed that “get these hands,” one of WWE’s most popular catchphrases of the past decade, was born from an unscripted live television moment engineered by Vince McMahon as a prank.
Strowman shared the story on 10,000 Nos with Matthew Del Negro, explaining that McMahon enjoyed playing pranks on him during live Raw broadcasts and the Rhino segment was one of them.
It was a random Raw. I was wrestling Rhino at the time and Vince liked to goof off and we call rib, play pranks on me. He literally radios to the ref and he says ‘tell him to bump Rhino, roll out of the ring and cut a promo.’ And I was like, what does he want me to say? He said just cut a promo.
With Rhino out of the ring and Heath Slater jawing at ringside, Strowman improvised.
I was like, ‘Look Heath, there’s two things that you can do. You can sit on this floor and shut up or you can get in this ring and get these hands like your partner.’ And we came in the back and it was trending worldwide.
Despite the immediate online reaction, Strowman said WWE was reluctant to put the phrase on merchandise.
I had to fight tooth and nail for two weeks to get them to do merch with it. They didn’t want to do merch with it. And then it was the number one piece, number one selling piece of merch for a year and a half.
Strowman also revealed how McMahon first noticed him — while he was dressed in a costume as a Rosebud in Adam Rose’s entrance in NXT.
I was wearing this Fisher Price Roman Spartan plastic outfit, and Vince saw me out there goofing and it was like ‘who the hell is that and why is he doing this?’ So I literally took this tiny goofy opportunity to do something on TV, and I showed out, made the most out of it, and it caught the boss’ attention.
McMahon then moved him to the main roster with just four matches of in-ring experience.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZnIQuNON07He literally said ‘I see something in you, I know you don’t know what you’re doing, we’re gonna learn on the road’, and he debuted me the Monday Night Raw after SummerSlam, four matches in my entire career.