WWE Raw Tag Team Champions The Viking Raiders Talk About The Viking Experience, Being Called Ivar and Erik
They were not fans of the change.
Nov 28, 2019
Since debuting in WWE, The Viking Raiders (formerly The War Raiders) have captured gold on two occasions. Firstly, they defeated The Undisputed ERA for the NXT Tag Team Championship. Most recently they won the Raw Tag Team Championship, emerging victorious against Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode.
Ivar and Erik recently appeared on the
After The Bell podcast, in which they discussed the name change, along with their Monday Night Raw debut as The Viking Experience.
Erik/Rowe explained how he still finds it difficult adapting to the name change. He said: "It's weird because people call me Erik and I literally don't understand that they're talking to me. Like I walk right past them. D-Von (Dudley) only calls me Erik, which is weird because I've known him for years. But like he will only call me Erik now, and he's like “Erik, Erik Erik, Erik!” and I'm 30 feet past him.”
Graves then discussed their Raw debut in Montreal. He explained: "On that fateful day in Montreal I seem to recall two shell-shocked looking individuals walking out of a certain man's office with a thousand yard stare on your face, as you had just learned you would be Erik & Ivar, The Viking Experience."
The Tag Team champions then took turns in telling the story.
Erik explained how they were going through rehearsals ahead of the show, and on the screen it popped up The Viking Experience. They were unsure if it was real, or if someone was just messing with they. He asked Triple H, who just shook his head and told them they would have to speak to Vince: "So we went and talked to Vince."
Ivar/Hanson added: “At this point because it's so late in the day, we're not even going to approach the subject of Ivar and Erik. We needed to tackle this Viking Experience thing because that was not okay.”
Erik said: “We didn't even really know for sure that Ivar and Erik were a thing yet, but we knew we weren't going to be Hanson and Rowe. We knew there was going to be some more Vikingish names we were going to have.”
Ivar elaborated: “The primary focus was this Viking Experience name, and so we were able to catch Vince as he's going somewhere else [...] we were able to plead our case about the name. That it sounds like a Disney ride, and then we started shooting off other options [...] the last name that we gave him was Viking Raiders. He kind of paused on that one, and he's like alright, well this is how we're going to introduce you, as the Viking Experience, and if we're not feeling that going forward then maybe we can change it to something else. But then he also put over how much he loves the TV show Vikings, and he loves Vikings in general [...] we felt confident that he liked us and he told us he liked our work and stuff, so we were just happy to maybe [...] get that tag team name changed. Thank God the next week came and we were The Viking Raiders.”
You can watch their debut as the Viking Experience below:
