How John Cena Is Responsible For Enzo And Big Cass’ SAWFT Catchphrase

There have been a number of outstanding catchphrases in WWE, but few have been as infectious as Enzo Amore and Big Cass’ “SAWT” line. It’s chanted along with by every WWE crowd they perform in front of, it’s been on countless pieces of merchandise, and it along with their insurmountable charisma has made them stars. And, they owe it all to John Cena, and Damien Sandow’s butt.

On a recent episode of Chris Jericho’s “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, Big Cass talked about the genius of their iconic phrase.

“We wen’t on NXT at all, we weren’t being used on the television show” Big Cass said, “we were nothing. We were just put to together as guys who do promos together, we didn’t even work live events together, and then Enzo had that match against Mason Ryan on NXT. He went out there, you should get eyes on that footage. Enzo […] almost went flying out of the ring. It was excellent. But he cut a promo on the way to the ring and Cena was backstage because back then NXT needed some WWE guys to draw the house.”

“Cena was there and said ‘who’s that guy? great promo’, then he started asking around and I remember Tyler Breeze was sitting there and Tyler Breeze was like ‘oh, that’s Enzo. Him and Big Cass, you should see this shtick that they do. It’s really funny.’ And Cena was like ‘okay, are you kidding? Are they actually really good?’ And Breeze said, ‘yeah, I’ll put my stamp on it.’ [Cena’s] said ‘which one’s Cass?’ and [Breeze] pointed to me.”

“So, Cena was going out there at the end of the night to do a dark segment with [Damien] Sandow and they had nothing planned. So like five minutes before he went out Cena came up to me and Enzo in the viewing area and he asked us, ‘would you mind coming out and doing the dark segment with me and Sandow?’ And we were like, ‘yeah, of course.'” He was like, ‘can you get your gear on real quick?'”

“So me and Enzo ran down the hallway to the locker room, we put our gear on, we ran through the auditorium through the viewing area all the way to Gorilla [Position]. And Cena was already out there with Sandow. So we don’t know what’s going on, we had nothing planned. But me and Enzo know we have so much material from promo class we go out there. We had endless material cause me and Enzo used to sit in my living every Tuesday night in Tampa […] and we would just stay up until we had a promo for the next day.”

“Our music hit and Cena’s like ‘here’s my two friends.’ And we came out and fans at Full Sail had no idea who we were. They recognized Enzo as the guy who cut a promo and got his head smashed in.”

“We walk out there and pretty much start cutting promos on Sandow and Cena joined in and then Enzo said something about how Sandow had a soft ass. Like ‘there’s more dimples on your ass than there are on a golf ball.’ And he said ‘you’re S-A-W-F-T SAWFT’ and the fans started kinda saying SAWFT. And Cena was like, ‘what guys? What did you just say?’ S-A-W-F-T SAWFT, we kept repeating it and finally Cena was like, ‘that’s right, you’re S-A-W-F-T SAWFT!'”

“So the segment ended, Sandow went through a table, and everyone went home happy. And as we were leaving Full Sail the fans that are there they stay for autographs and stuff, we’re walking to our car. Me and Enzo are leaving together, everybody was just saying SAWFT and S-A-W-F-T as we’re leaving the building. So we knew something had caught on there, and from then on we started getting booked on NXT. I mean, we were in handicapped matches, we were losing to people in handicapped matches, but we were starting to get booked on NXT as a unit from there on.”

If you use any portion of these quotes, please credit “Talk Is Jericho” with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription.