Swerve Strickland Says The Phrase ‘What’s Up Turds?’ Is An Homage To His Military Days
Swerve Strickland reveals the origins of the phrase “What up, turds?”
Swerve Strickland has been part of a few special moments in AEW. Perhaps there was no moment more violent than when he bloodied Nick Wayne in his own training area. He arrived on the scene for that moment on the August 2 episode of AEW Dynamite and yelled, “What up, turds?”
Now, in a new interview with Fightful, Strickland has revealed that the phrase was a nod to his days in the military and one specific drill sergeant that would occasionally use the phrase “turds.”
“That was going back to my military days a little bit. I had a drill Sergeant, Drill Sergeant Purnell, back in the day, and he was one of the funniest drill sergeants ever. While he was punishing us, we would laugh while we were doing push-ups. He always had funny things to say in cadence while we were doing push-ups and stuff. Turds was one of the things he would call us. He had this gold tooth with a dollar sign. It was almost Major Payne-esque of a comedian this guy was. He was so serious, but also lesson-teaching. I was 17 or 18 at that time, he was one of the most influential people that I had ever met. I haven’t seen him in 20 years, but I’ll never forget that guy. ‘What up Turds’ is kind of a shot out to him,” he said.
Elsewhere in this interview, Swerve Strickland spoke about bringing the worst out of Hangman Page. Learn more here.
Strickland has also opened up about his partnership with Prince Nana. Read those comments here.
