During the summer of 2020, The Viking Raiders and The Street Profits were embroiled in a unique feud that saw the two teams compete outside of the ring. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, WWE was forced to get creative with its programming, and the Raw Tag Team Championship feud saw both teams compete at basketball, axe-throwing, golf, and a variety of other challenges.
Speaking on the Public Enemies podcast, former WWE writer Chris Dunn opened up about his time working with the two teams, and revealed that there was an internal pitch for the Viking Raiders to have their own dating site after Ivar inadvertently became a sort of “ladies’ man” during the course of the segments.
“One thing that got cut every single week was, I was doing all the off-sites with the Profits and the Viking Raiders. I became really close with those guys, all four of them. We – that’s also too, [we were] trying to take an idea that’s not great and turn it into something. Because the original concepts for that, not great, but it worked out really well.”
“When we kind of accidentally made Ivar a ladies man character, we wanted to have him talk and eventually open a website that would be ‘Vikings Only,’ like Farmers Only [laughs]. I think we changed it because of [a popular adult exclusive content site], to keep people [from] getting confused, to Vikings Mingle. We literally had it in the script for seven to eight weeks, and because of how crazy the pandemic stuff was, things kept on changing on the fly all the time.” (h/t WrestleZone)
The Viking Raiders Were Called Out For Gimmick Infringement After Sarah Logan’s Return To WWE
On the November 11th episode of SmackDown, Sarah Logan, the real life wife of Erik, returned to the company after being released in 2020. The former Riott Squad member sported a new look to match her fellow Viking Raiders and was given the new name of Valhalla, but fans online were quick to notice the stark similarities between her new appearance and that of IMPACT star Max the Impaler.
In conversation with WrestlingNewsCo, independent star Natalia Markova said Logan’s new gimmick was a a “rip-off,” branding the decision to go ahead with it “disrespectful.”
“I mean, honestly, I think it is a ripoff because I know for a fact that Sarah knows Max. I think it’s again, that goes back to this disrespect thing. You can do something similar. There are different versions. You could do this gimmick. You can do this type of personality. But I think that she just saw that it was successful and she was like, alright, I’m in a bigger company and I can do whatever I want.
I think people just feel like they could do whatever they want if they’re in WWE, which honestly, again, if it would be 50 years ago when there was no internet, you can get away with that. But now, everybody knows everything. I could go on Twitter and you can see Max. Even if you don’t know who Max is, we’re still in the same business and I think you need to respect each other, and just out of respect, you could maybe use different colors or different patterns. It was just totally similar.
To me, it feels like a disrespectful ripoff. I think that shouldn’t be happening in wrestling. I love Max. I think she’s awesome. So please, please, respect her career. She’s an independent wrestler at this point. It’s hard for her to do what she does. She’s not signed to a huge amount of money and she makes money out of this. So please, wrestlers, be respectful to each other.”