Powerhouse Hobbs on his ring name and Butch Reed

AEW star Powerhouse Hobbs recently appeared on the Wrestling Perspective podcast with Lars Frederiksen and Dennis Farrell, and revealed the original idea for his name in AEW, and a potential name change he’s interested in.

Hobbs noted how he came into AEW using a different name. Hobbs actually used Will Rood and Will.I.IS on the indies, and used “The Embodiment of Willpower” as his nickname. He recalled AEW President, CEO, General Manager & Head Of Creative Tony Khan coming up with the “Powerhouse” name, and also suggesting “Hacksaw” as a name. Hobbs is interested in being changed to “Hacksaw” in the future as he’s a big fan of the late legend “Hacksaw” Butch Reed.

“Originally when I first came into AEW, I did enhancement work, and I was Will Power. … Tony [Khan] came up to me, he’s like, ‘You’re such a powerhouse, we’re gonna call you Powerhouse Hobbs.’ And he actually said he was thinking of one-word names, and one of the first names that he said was ‘Hacksaw.’ And then he’s like, ‘No, you’re a powerhouse!’ So we’ve been rolling with that ever since. I’ve mentioned to Tony a few times that if the opportunity comes up to become ‘Hacksaw’, that’s something possibly that can happen,” Hobbs said.

Hobbs also recalled his reaction to an endorsement from Reed, who passed away in February 2021. He talked more about possibly carrying the “Hacksaw” name and said that is one of his goals.

“I was dropping my son Bam Bam off at pre-school one morning. We’re at a red light, and I get this Instagram tag, you know, Butch Reed has an Instagram, and he tagged one of my first shirts on it and said, ‘This is the new PowerHouse.’ I geeked out over it so much,” he said. “I sent a message to him and then he replied back to the message, and we exchanged phone numbers but we actually never got the chance to speak. We only chatted through Instagram messaging.

“I was told by him that he was a huge fan, and that was an honor to me because I had the old WCW Galoob Doom figures, so that meant the world to me. … I actually found out he passed away when I was in the Dallas airport. His son sent me a heartfelt message, you know, his dad was unable to speak, but when he saw me and my in-ring work, he smiled. That’s something that I will always hold dear to my heart, and if I ever have the opportunity to carry on the ‘Hacksaw’ name, I’ll do that 100%. That’s one of my goals.”

Hobbs and FTW Champion Ricky Starks will represent Team Taz at Sunday’s AEW Double Or Nothing pay-per-view as they compete in a Triple Threat for the AEW World Tag Team Titles with champions Jurassic Express and the team of Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland.