D’Lo Brown On Why He Started To Do The Head Shake

During the Attitude Era there were a number of gestures that became popular. DX was known for doing the crotch chop, Steve Austin became synonymous with flipping the bird, and D’Lo Brown had his infamous head shake.

Recently D’Lo Brown spoke to Sports Illustrated about the origin of his head shake, and he explained how a famous Chris Tucker scene from “Friday” played a role in it all coming together.

“Back in ’97, portable DVD players were just starting to come out. You’d have sleeves of DVDs kind of like you’d have sleeves of CDs. The movie Friday was part of the regular rotation on our road trips. The Rock and I finished a match on a Sunday and we were back at the hotel watching Friday, and there’s a scene where Deebo knocks out a guy and Chris Tucker yells, ‘You just got knocked the f— out!’ The next night at Raw, we’re getting ready to go to commercial break, and the spot is that Rocky is going to clothesline Ken Shamrock out of the ring and onto the floor, and then we’d go to the commercial. But I knew, if I had that 30 seconds, I was stealing it. So when Ken was knocked out of the ring. I ran up to the ropes, and screamed, ‘You just got knocked the f*** out!’ and I’m shaking my head. That’s when it dawned on me that I’d swore on TV. I figured Vince [McMahon] was going to be furious.”

“Vince had two looks. One was when he looked at you and gave a thumbs up. That was good. The other was when he looked up, pulled his glasses down, and waved a finger over to him. That’s what I got that night. And he looked at me and said, ‘That thing you’re doing with your head? Keep doing it.’ So I didn’t get fined for swearing and I did something that piqued Vince’s curiosity. Then I turned the volume up on the head shake, and people still tell me stories to this day about doing it in hallway or to their mom. It’s incredible.”