By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

TNA wrestler "The Pope" D'Angelo Dinero tried to explain the back-story on his "street preacher" gimmick in an interview with Matt Fowler of IGN.com, while also talking about wrestling needing to be more simplistic with how characters are presented to the general audience.

"When I signed on with TNA and they wanted to bring me on as Elijah (Burke) as well, I told them about Pope and I gave them a little piece of Pope. I wasn't pushing it, but I let them see Pope and lo and behold they told me to do my thing. They didn't know who Pope was or what Pope was. All they knew was that they saw this image of Pope and they saw Pope do his thing and they told me I could be Pope. ... So Pope shows up and as you can see, week by week, that he's still evolving little by little. But man, Pope just burst onto the scene. Not one time did I have to tell them who he was.

"When Pope went out there for the very first time in the Impact Zone, for the very first time, and he's got the people are chanting 'Pope is Pimpin', that's a character that's so self-explanatory that you don't even have to have a back-story.

"And you know, I think that's at least what we're going back to. That's what wrestling needs to be. It needs to be so simple that the fans can actually grasp what's going on without overdoing it. So you might say 'Harlem Street Preacher,' but they say 'This guy's a pimp.' And that was the whole thing behind Pope. It's somebody who's playing both sides but he's a pimp without saying he's a pimp."

Caldwell's Analysis: Urbandictionary.com has 256 definitions for "pimp" and it seems like all of them could apply after Pope tried to explain the character. Make with it what you will. I'm just glad TNA has moved away from the heavy imagery and verbal descriptions of Pope being a "street preacher" character to what he's evolved into over the past few months. He just wasn't going anywhere being pigeonholed in that role.

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