War Raider Ivar was happy to see WWE decide to drop the Viking aspect of his character, an idea that was brought to him by Triple H.

When Ivar and Erik debuted on the main roster, they were known as The Viking Experience, though the name later changed to The Viking Raiders.

In October of this year, both men returned from injuries with the pair being known as The War Raiders, the name they’d previously used in NXT.

On a recent edition of the “Insight” podcast, Ivar recalled being told that WWE was looking to drop the Viking aspect of their characters. He said,

“When I had this opportunity to do the singles run and it was going well, I had a conversation with Triple H where he said, ‘Hey, how about we start pulling back off of the heavy Viking stuff, slowly peeling some of those layers off so we can tell more stories with you?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s great.’”

Ivar also recalled plans being changed for him after his injury and WWE opting to delay his and Erik’s return to TV. He said,

“I got hurt again, and then Erik and I were ready to come back. I think we were actually scheduled to return in Calgary at Raw. At the last second, they pulled our travel and said that we’re gonna hold off for now. Oh man, here we go. They’re like,’ No, nothing bad. We want to hold off. We want to have better creative for you.’ And then the next week, we got a phone call, Hey, how do you guys feel coming back as The War Raiders? And we were like yeah that sounds good. That sounds really good.”

On this week’s episode of WWE RAW, The War Raiders captured the World Tag Team Titles from Finn Balor & JD McDonagh, the pair’s first title win in five years.