Exclusive interview w/ WWE's Royce Keys, plus NCW at Raw & SummerSlam Preview | No-Contest Wrestling

Royce Keys came into No-Contest Wrestling with a new name, a SummerSlam match against a friend of fourteen years, and a story that starts with a Greyhound bus.

His grandparents took that bus from Mississippi with his father and moved in right across the street from the Cow Palace. They went to shows every other weekend and watched Ray Stevens, Pat Patterson, High Chief Peter Maivia, Kenji Shibuya, Pepper Gomez.

"Wrestling was on in my house before I was even thought of," Keys told O'Shea Jackson Jr. and TJ Jefferson.

He grew up in East Palo Alto, a two square mile city in the Bay that he notes was once the murder capital of the United States. When the hosts asked who he could not have gotten here without, he did not hesitate.

"100% my grandparents. They raised their kids and turned around and raised their grandkids. They didn't have to do that. That wasn't their job. We weren't their responsibility."

Then he said the harder version out loud. Without them, he figures he would be in San Quentin or a cemetery.

The name change is the thing wrestling fans have been arguing about, and Keys gave it the meaning behind it. Royce is his middle son. Keys is a dedication to his mother, who is no longer here.

"I can't fumble the ball with rocking two names of people that I care about."

The pushback online has not stopped, and Keys says it used to bother him. It cannot anymore, because he has too much on the table. He had his own day in East Palo Alto on July 23rd, and what stuck with him was not the award. It was the people he grew up with, some of them formerly incarcerated, telling him they were proud, and their kids looking up at him.

"That's the motivation I need. I won't let them down."

The hosts played him a clip of CM Punk defending the name, which Punk framed as a new start people would reflexively reject. Keys' response was simpler.

"Not everybody's going to like you. Not everybody's meant to like you."

Saturday in Minnesota, Keys teams with Solo Sikoa and LA Knight against Jacob Fatu and the Usos. He and Fatu go back fourteen years, from blizzards outside Reno to ten-hour drives to Vegas for indie bookings. Then Fatu put a chair around his head.

Asked whether he trusts Sikoa across the ring from that family, Keys gave the only answer his upbringing allows.

"I keep my head on a swivel 24/7. It seems like I can trust him, but my head is always on the swivel."

The back half of the episode was the hosts' SummerSlam card walkthrough and a recap of Monday's Raw at the Intuit Dome, which they attended in person. They watched the Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar weigh-in end without contact, with Lesnar locking Femi in the cage and Paul Heyman cutting a promo, then debated whether Hell in a Cell will be Lesnar's last match.

They also pushed back hard on the online consensus that it was the worst Raw ever. Their argument was simple: they were in the building, Bear was having the time of his life, and Mario Lopez's son was hyped the entire show.

"It's not for me," one of them said of the segment everyone complained about. "I can take six minutes out of my wrestling program and let people have fun."

The night's real payoff came backstage. TJ met Roman Reigns, who opened with a question about Seth Rollins guest hosting The Rich Eisen Show.

"What's up with your coworker, man?"

Reigns went on to compliment Rollins at that job, appreciated the SummerSlam promotion, and gave TJ the nod on a future No-Contest appearance. Which Jackson, for the record, refused to be happy about.

"I don't give a damn that he watches the Rich show with Seth host."