WWE

'I Didn't Know The Difference Between Austria And Australia' Why R-Truth's New Character Immediately Worked

Originally posted on The Sportster | By Shawn Van Horn | Last updated Jun 9, 2025 5:20 PM ET

For the past week, wrestling has been dominated by everything R-Truth. First, there was the shocking and infuriating news that WWE was going to let him go. Then, after the massive fan backlash, R-Truth was immediately brought back, returning at Money in the Bank to attack John Cena. With his serious attitude, and WWE Shop advertising him by his real name of Ron Killings, it looks like the comedy gimmick might be coming to an end. It makes sense if this is the end of that character, but there is only one reason why it ever worked so well in the first place and R-Truth knows what it is.

R-Truth's Comedy Gimmick Got Over Because It Was Real

Last year, R-Truth was a guest on the Busted Open Podcast, where Mark Henry spoke about R-Truth having more success in the last few years than he had during what should have been the prime of his career. This led to Henry telling the story about how R-Truth used his famous "My bad" line for the first time. During a WWE show in Austria, Truth confused them with Australia, before saying "My bad." R-Truth's confused character took off with stuff like this because, as R-Truth put it:

"I think it took this long because everybody had to realize who they was dealing with, and that it was real, that I didn't know the difference between Austria and Australia... That was legit. So once people start realizing, oh, dude is for real for real, I think that started opening the gates up to a lot more."

R-Truth Became WWE's Greatest Comedy Character

WWE has had plenty of effective comedy characters in the past, but they were just that. Eugene was a guy named Nick Dinsmore doing a voice and acting a certain way , just like Santino Marella still does today. But R-Truth's clueless gimmick has had such a long life, with fans never getting bored of it, because that's who Ron Killings genuinely is.

Killings is a great wrestler, but he was also able to use his own cluelessness at times to get over. He took a real-life personality characteristic and took it over-the-top, becoming the guy who would talk to Little Jimmy , get confused with who wrestlers were, and call John Cena his childhood hero even though he's older than him. That's not his bad.

This article first appeared on The Sportster and was syndicated with permission.

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