Trick Williams’ ‘Lemon Pepper Steppers’ shirt is gone from WWE Shop, but Jonathan Coachman isn’t ready to let the story disappear along with it. He wants to make sure fans are directing their anger at the right people.
On Two Count Tuesday, Coachman didn’t hold back describing the shirt itself: a design built around Trick Williams’ expensive boot surrounded by chicken wings and dripping sauce, which he called baffling regardless of the backlash that followed.
His bigger point was about accountability. Coachman explained that WWE talent typically has very little say over their own merchandise, especially younger performers who are simply grateful to be getting a shirt at all and are often too intimidated to push back on whatever concept is presented to them.
Lemon pepper stepper. And then how about a bunch of chicken wings around a… Oh my god. $400 boot on the… I mean… And they also, I believe, have ranch or blue cheese that’s dripping off. I mean, this is so bad. This is so bad.”
“When you walk in and they tell you, ‘Hey, you got to meet with the merch people.’ When you’re young like Trick… I’ve seen it a million times with my own two eyes. You walk over, ‘Hey, here’s the first idea.’ ‘Love it. Love it. Love it.’ Because you’re scared to death to say that you don’t love it because not everybody gets a T-shirt.
Coachman argued that given how many people are actually involved in signing off on WWE merchandise, the responsibility for the design has to fall on the merch and creative teams, not on Williams.
He also highlighted the irony of Triple H previously admitting on camera that he didn’t even understand what “Lemon Pepper Steppers” meant, questioning how a design tied to a phrase the head of creative didn’t grasp still made it all the way to production and sale.
I want to know who, A, came up with this, who greenlit it, because it wasn’t Trick. A talent cannot walk in and go, ‘Yep,’ and then they print it and then they sell it. It had to be the merch, the creative.”
“So, you got your head of creative doesn’t even know what they are, but we’re selling the T-shirt. We’re selling the T-shirt.
For Coachman, the real unanswered question isn’t why WWE pulled the shirt, but how it ever made it through approval in the first place.
