Who is Bronson Reed? Is he a more-or-less one-for-one copy of the man born Jermaine Haley? A persona designed by creative to elicit crowd reactions? Or something in between?

Sitting down for an interview with Ryan Satin on Out of Character, Reed compared his character to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, in that both men took the core of their personality and ratcheted it up to 11 to really go over with the crowd.

“I actually think quite a lot,” Reed said. “Bronson Reed is very much like the ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, how he said he dialed himself up to 11. I think if you look at Bronson Reed and you look at my real self, it’s maybe a six or seven, and then Bronson Reed is that dialed to an 11. The thing that I think separates him most is that I get to bring that mean streak out on television, which I don’t really do on a daily basis.”

When Satin noted that the Reed fans see in RAW is a bit different than the man fans came to love in NXT, “Mr. Nice Guy” agreed with that assertion, suggesting that this new character has a bit more of a chip on his shoulder.

“Yeah, for sure,” Reed said. “The Bronson you see now has a big chip on his shoulder. I think I’ve become very comfortable where I was in NXT, I became the North American Champion and then not long after that I was released and I was gone from the company for a good 18 months. And in those 18 months, I really found myself again, found my edge, and I brought all of that with me when I debuted on Monday Night RAW, so now you see the Bronson of NXT with what I was doing in my time away and just put a chip on my shoulder and yeah, I think I can get in there with anyone on that show, so that’s what I wanted to convey with current Bronson.”

With Austin Theory and Bobby Lashley now on SmackDown, Reed will have to find a new feud to keep his momentum going in WWE. Fortunately, he's a pretty big target to find, so any Superstar looking to test their mettle won't have to look far to find him.

Bronson Reed explains his decision to leave NJPW for WWE.

Elsewhere in his interview with Satin, Reed was asked about the reaction he receives online from fans who wish he would have stuck around in New Japan Pro Wrestling, especially after he defeated Kazuchika Okada in the G1 Climax. For Reed, who was known as Jonah on the indies, the decision was simple: he wants to put his stamp on WWE like he did in NJPW.

“I thought exactly that; I beat Okada, and now I’m back in WWE,” Reed noted. “So rather than people being like, ‘ah he could have done this with this company, but now he’s here,’ and for me, it was I went to Japan, and I did something pretty incredible that a lot of men haven’t done in the past 10 years and that’s pin Okada in the G1. I was a standout in that tournament, and I made sure to stamp my name in New Japan Pro Wrestling and now that that chapter is shut, and now I’m back in WWE, and I want to do the same thing, I want to come to WWE, wrestle guys like Bobby Lashley, maybe future World Champions, things like that and stomp the Bronson Reed name here in WWE.

“So yeah, I think you’re always going to have those haters that hate you either way, I had the same thing when I was released, and I was being put in a place like New Japan, and people were like ‘oh he doesn’t deserve to be here’ or ‘go back to WWE’ or whatever and then I come back to WWE and it’s like ‘oh, you should have been in New Japan’ like, there’s always someone hating you for something, but I feel like if you don’t have any haters, you’re not successful, so I’m doing pretty good.”

To some professional wrestlers, securing a pin on Okada would be among the most incredible accomplishments imaginable; Okada is widely considered one of the best wrestlers in the world today and, considering he's the only man who actually defeated “The Rainmaker” in a G1 singles match over the past two years, Reed really did accomplish something special. Still, if his goal is to be a WWE Superstar, who is anyone to knock that, especially if Paul “Triple H” Levesque has similar plans for his RAW run?