Chaz Warrington (@ChazMosh) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE as Mosh, one-half of the tag team The Headbangers. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss how he was paired up with Glenn Ruth (Thrasher) to form the tag team, how Jim Cornette created their name and look, his Beaver Cleavage gimmick, returning to WWE in 2016 for a match on SmackDown, getting set for his final match with The Headbangers in 2026, and more!

Buy Mosh’s book “Beneath The Skirt” here: https://chazmosh.com 

Congratulations on the new book. What went into telling your story now? 

“It actually started probably seven or eight years ago, and it all started with me just wanting to jot things down for my son. My son never saw me wrestle at the point that we wrestled at WWE. He’s 21 now, he wasn’t even born [when I wrestled]. He was born in 04, I left WWE in 02. So he didn’t know anything about anything. So I just wanted to jot things down for him, just to give him a perspective of what I went through. If he hears about stuff I did, or something kind of like, I don’t know, like a journal or memoir for him, and the more I started writing, the more things just started coming back. But it was a lot of off and on. It was more off than on, because you get sidetracked. Life gets in the way. Then I went back to a high school reunion on October of 24 and someone there, her name is Tori. She’s the writing coach. She’s an editor/ghost writer and she was like, ‘Oh, I’d love to work on that project, can you send it over to me? I’d like to read it.’ I was like, Yeah, sure. So I sent it over to her, and she called me up. She’s like, ‘This is amazing. You got something here.’ She goes, ‘You need to finish it.’ At that point, I was probably 75-80% done. So what happened was, she started from the beginning, going through, editing, making notes for me on the side of the paper of Word and everything for me to go back and look and maybe add something here, it’s just really needed, and kind of helped me with it. But that motivated me to get it done, and I got it done, and here it is now.” 

It’s a crazy concept to think that your son wasn’t there for your best wrestling memories. 

“Yes, and the craziest part about that is, so when I lived in New Jersey before I moved to South Florida, where I’m at now, my basement in New Jersey was my man cave. I had a pool table, an air hockey table, you had the dart board, you had the bar, you had the big screen TV. But on the walls it was all of my pictures, the magazines, the belts, anything I had to do with us, I had framed. It was up on the walls. That was my mini Chaz shrine, I guess. But when I moved to Florida, there’s no basements, so I had nowhere to hang it for all those years. So I just moved probably about two and a half years ago into a three-story townhouse, and the first floor, I was like, this is perfect. I have shelves up with my figures on them, with the action figures. Then I was able to take all of those, because all the years, every time I moved, I kept all of this stuff in the big frames. I never got rid of them. So once I had that room, I was like, Oh, this would be perfect. So that’s what I did. I started going through it, but I had so much extra stuff that I actually went and bought one of those big art books. I bought a giant one. I was like, this is perfect, because now I have a coffee table book of me. So my son came home from college one time and he was downstairs, and I’m like, ‘Are you coming up?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll be up in a minute. I’m busy.’ So I walked down, he was sitting on the couch flipping through. He was reading. He read the stuff that I had hung on the wall, which was WrestleMania 13, the belts, all the big, important stuff, are the cool things I thought we did when I had enough room, I reframed it and hung it. But he was going through the book of newspaper clips, and when I threw out the first pitch at the Phillies game, he’s going through all that, and he stopped. He looked at me and goes, ‘Dad, I knew you were kind of like a big deal. I’ve never seen this stuff before. This is cool. I never realized how big you were.’ I guess he didn’t even know how to put it into words. He was like, ‘You’re a bigger deal than you played off or than I ever thought. This is some cool stuff you really got to do because you did this.’ Now he starts going through it, like showing me stuff that really stood out to him. Then it dawned on me at that point, he really has no idea to the extent of what I did. So the cool part about the book now is when he does get around to reading, and no he’s not gonna read it anytime soon, but when he does get around to reading it, he’ll be like, oh sh*t, I didn’t know that happened. My dad did that?”

So you’ve been at the PC quite a bit. You’ve been doing a lot of guest coaching. How did that all come together?

“It kind of came together, I don’t want to say it’s kind of just a joke I threw out, but Steve Corino and I, we’ve remained friends all these years out of nowhere, and he’s a Phillies fan also. So during baseball season, we’re always texting back and forth about something. He is awesome. So for someone who never, and I don’t mean this in a negative way, the way it may sound, because he made it, but he never made it like WWE status. ECW status is unreal. What he’s done in Japan, what he’s done is what most people haven’t done. But the knowledge that he has, and watching him work with these kids and pass it down is just amazing. So we were texting one day, and I was like, ‘Hey, just throwing it out there, if you ever need a coach up there, or is there a chance or an opportunity to come up and help out or something?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely. You have Bloom’s number?’ I’m like, I think so. He goes, ‘Just text Bloom.’ He came back to me. He goes, ‘You text Bloom?’ I’m like, ‘No, not yet.’ He goes, ‘I just talked to him. He said, Yeah, he’d love to have you come up here. So just text him and you guys figure it out.’ And two weeks later, there I was.”

At what point did you start to realize I love wrestling, this is something I might be able to try to do for a living?

“Well, I used to go with friends of mine, especially my best friend Mike, every month if the WWF was in the Spectrum in Philly. So we would jump on the Speed Line, take the subway down, and we made a whole venture out of it. But we would go, and I used to joke around with him and my other friends going, one day you’ll see me in that ring. But never thinking [anything of it], that was just kind of a funny thing, because I was just a huge fan of it, and I love the promos. The promos sucked me in. So that was it. Then riding down there was a town in New Jersey, which was like 10-15 minutes from my house. It was an old rundown flea mart, like you would walk in there and you would go, Oh, this is where the thrift stores come to buy stuff to sell at the thrift store, used underwear and bras with pink stitching in them. It was crap, stuff you would not really wear. But out front every now and then there was a big, giant white truck, and it was spray-painted on the side. ‘Pro Wrestling Saturday night at 8 pm.’ So one Saturday, I had nothing going on, let me go check this out. Now, meanwhile, the only wrestling I ever saw was WWE or WWF, and then WCW started running more. So they would run the convention center. So there’s the lights, there’s music. I had no idea what indie wrestling was. Never been to anything like it. I walked in and I sat down going, what is this? Because that’s where the Monster Factory was. I see the Monster Factory, I see WWE up on the wall, but I have no idea what any of that means. I watched it, the guys came out, and I was like, this is awful. Where are the lights? There was music. I’m like, where’s the lights, and the guys’ outfits weren’t anything. Everyone just had a singlet on. There was no flare. I’m like, where’s the Macho Man? I was expecting a production like that, and didn’t get it. But then I saw the Monster Factory logo and WWE logo on the wall. I’m like, I gotta find out what this is. I kind of lingered after the show, and at the time, the heavyweight champ was The Spider, and I saw The Spider hanging over by this door. The ring was here. There was a balcony to sit on, and then there was an office door. So I saw him standing there. Then as everyone was running out, I saw him take his mask off. I went, guy kind of looks familiar, so it turns out it’s Glenn, my partner. We started talking, and we never started talking before. We realized we knew of each other, because our high schools wrestled one another. So we never wrestled each other, but we kind of knew each other. So I started talking to him, and that’s when he explained to me, Oh, this is a school, just like a show that Larry does every month, and blah, blah, blah, and that’s when he convinced me to come and try out. And I was like, yeah, let me try out. What the hell? What else am I doing? At that point, I was in my fourth year at community college.” 

What were you studying?

“Nothing. It was college because my parents would let me stay at the house rent-free because I was still in college. So that was it. I went down to the school, and I tried out, and I signed up for the school, and at that point I was like, I’m in the ring. I did what I said I would do, and I had no idea it was gonna go where it went. It was just me getting in there, it was never one of those things where I was like, oh I can see myself being heavyweight champ or a tag team champion like that. It was always like, Oh, this would be a cool thing to try.”

Did you have aspirations to be a singles wrestler or a tag wrestler?

“At that point, the only aspiration I had was not to get hurt and just try to figure out life. Because at that point I was 22 I had no idea what I was doing with my life, and I was just trying to figure it out. So it was just one of those things. But then when Glenn and I started tagging together, and I realized, oh, there’s something here, that’s when it kind of started clicking with me that this is something that could really work or could really take off.”

What was the idea behind forming the tag team in the first place?

“So Glenn had been around for two or three years already doing independents, so he was kind of known in that northeast area, and he had gotten a herniated disc in his back, and his thing was, he approached me because the moment we met, we clicked. We just clicked. We got along really well. We were hanging out all the time together. He just kind of took me under his wing. He was helping me more than others, and his thing was he tried to do it by himself. He had been to Japan. He had been to Puerto Rico, and if anyone’s watching out there, I’ve never been to Japan. I want to go to Japan at least once, now put it out into the woods. Out there you go. I mean, NOAH’s got an agreement with WWE, and I am under contract with WWE, the legends contract. Yes, it’s still a contract. So, yeah. So I think Glenn’s thing was hey, I’ve been doing it singles by myself. I really haven’t gotten anywhere. Let me try a tag. We get along really well. Our body types at that point were very similar, except that was just a smaller, skinnier version of him, to the point where he was the heavyweight champ. I went out dressed as him and lost the belt for him, but I never took the jacket off, but no one knew that was me and not him. One time we had the masks on. We were at a show. His mom came over and had a 10-minute conversation with me thinking I was Glenn the whole time. So we just gelled like that right off the bat. So that’s why he was like, ‘Hey, we should try this. Are you interested in trying it?’ At that point, I was trying to figure out who I was and when I was in the ring. All I did was laugh and giggle because I was like, I’m in a wrestling ring. So the mask helped hide me laughing and smiling the whole time. I’m getting the sh*t beat out of me. I’m supposed to be selling, and I’m looking up at the crowd like laughing and smiling.”

Weren’t you training with some pretty big names at The Monster Factory?

“Yeah, D’Lo was down there. Boo Bradley [Balls Mahoney] was down there. Then when we had left, Big Show had come, but this was months later, Big Show was there. D’Lo actually was a huge part. So D’Lo kind of trained himself, did the backyard thing, and him and his friends would come down and rent the ring, and they put on a whole production. They were great. They had lights, they had ring music. They had their own matches. They videoed it all. It was great. Glenn and I would stay and watch, because they would rent the ring on a Saturday afternoon. So after we got done training, Glenn and I would sit there and watch. So when Larry convinced D’Lo to join the school. D’Lo is actually the one who helped us perfect the Stage Dive, our finisher. So he was a huge part of that.”

What a finisher! It’s one of the greatest tag team finishers in the history of wrestling.

“It’s not one of, it is the greatest tag team finisher of all time, the most underrated finisher. And we say that, and Glenn’s way more passionate about than I am. He gets hot when it comes up. But what’s so great about it is the timing, nothing else. You need timing for the 3D, LODs finisher, really no timing. You just stand up and jump off. Matt and Jeff’s finishers, The Hart Foundation, there’s really no [timing required] because you’re just holding one up. Even Demolition, as much as I love them, it’s just across the knee with the elbow coming off the timing. With ours, the timing is important. But what else is important is what you have to do. If I’m giving you the Power Bomb Leg Drop. There’s a way you have to land so you don’t get hurt, and Glenn doesn’t get hurt. You have to turn your head, you have to put your arm down. There’s a lot more to it, and it’s never been duplicated.”

So where did the idea come from to make you guys The Headbangers?

“That came from Jim Cornette. So we left, we packed up the car and I started in June of 93 we packed up the car in April of 94 and went to Memphis for USWA as The Spiders. So we worked as The Spiders there, and then we were in Ozark Mountain wrestling with Burt Prentice in Arkansas for a little over a year, maybe a year and a half. And what happened was, at the end of that, Burt started bringing in Ricky and Robert, The Rock and Roll Express, Tracy Smothers was bringing them in for our big show we had every Monday night. And then it was just Ricky and Tracy coming and we were working them. And the good part is that Larry would bring guys in. So he brought Jerry Lawler in back in the day, and then Cornette was there. So Glenn knew them and they knew of Glenn, and from being around and with Tracy and Ricky coming, we were giving them tapes like, ‘Hey, can you give this to Cornette? Can you give this to Cornette?’ Because USWA had the gateway into WWE back then, and so did Smoky Mountain. USWA, we went there as The Spiders. We were there a few months, and then we were gone. We couldn’t get back in. And so we’re like, okay, so Smoky Mountain is another way for us to try to get in. So Cornette called us one day, and he goes, ‘Hey, I got this idea. I’d like to bring you in. The Gangstas are getting ready to finish up. I’d like to bring you guys in.’ We’re like, Yeah, because with Burt Prentice, at that time, we were making 4 or $5 a night. 

So when Cornette called us, he goes, ‘Hey, I had this idea. I want to bring you guys in, but I don’t like the masks. I don’t like masked wrestlers.’ Which is funny, because when he brought us in at Ring of Honor, what did he do? He put us under a mask first. But yeah, so he told us that, and you’re gonna laugh at this knowing Jim Cornette, he was at a Danzig concert in New York. He goes, ‘It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. These guys had earrings and their noses were pierced, and they had makeup on their face. They’re wearing dresses and they had tattoos.’ He goes, ‘With your guys’ attitude from the northeast, I think you could pull this idea I have off. I don’t really know what the idea is, other than you’d be Headbangers.’ He goes, ‘You would come out, listen to loud, obnoxious music. I want you to spit on people.’ I mean, the first TV we did, I walked down the ringside and I spit on every single person in the front row, right in their face. He didn’t care. He was like, if you find roadkill on the road, throw it in the back of the car, put it on a leash and drag it to the ring. We didn’t want to go that far. But I knew what he was talking about, the music he was talking about. I knew what he was talking about. I knew I had been to the heavy metal concerts at the bank, and I’ve been to him in the spectrum in Philly with my buddies, so I knew exactly what he was talking about. I’d been in the mosh pits.”

You were part of that scene?

“Yes, I had done it. So we were like whatever you want us to do, it’s the opportunity, it’s gonna get us seen, it’s Cornette. We knew who was there, and we knew it was another gateway into WWE. So we’re like, Yeah, sure. So we show up at TV, and it’s actually funny, because we show up and The Gangstas were there. We walk in, and New Jack walks over to Cornette. He goes, ‘What the f*ck are these guys doing here?’ And Cornette’s like, ‘What do you mean what are they doing here? They’re coming in because you’re finishing up, they’re taking your spot.’ They’re like, ‘Well, f*ck you. We quit now then.’ The idea was to bring us in, give us two matches, and then do two interviews. So before weeks of TV, we’re on TV, and then we’d start doing the spot towns. Cornette was like, ‘All right, so leave.’ He turns around. He goes, ‘You guys doing anything this weekend? Now you’re booked.’ So we instantly got booked on everything, and he said, ‘I can’t guarantee you the world, but I’ll guarantee you 75 dollars a night.’ We’re like, 75 hours a night for three nights a week?! I’m like, that’s 225 dollars a week. Gold mine!”

What was the idea behind the makeup you wore and the way that you guys had it on your face?

“So when we showed up to the first TV, Cornette had the black acrylic paint you can buy in a tube at Walmart or any store. We were trying to put it on, trying to be nice and neat about it. We kept washing it off and then we would try it again. After like, the fourth or fifth time, Cornette comes over. He goes, No. He dips his finger like this, and he goes, swipe, swipe. He goes, That’s it, go. So there was no rhyme or reason. So some nights we would do it that way. Some nights do it this way, we’d let it run down. Then I learned that if I put water on my face first, and I just did a thick line here, it would kind of just run now, sometimes we just did it thicker, which spurred whatever it felt like that night. That’s what it was.”

Take me back to some of those early matches. So like, you’re super green, incredibly inexperienced, and you’re in the ring with people like Adam Bomb, people like Papa Shango. You punch Papa Shango in the face? 

“So, this is great too, because now it’s my second night. So, there’s a bunch of us from the school. We all went out that night, we had a few drinks. So I’m sitting there, I’m feeling confident. I’m like, I had a match last night, this is going to be good. They roll the board out, and it says Papa Shango versus Chaz. I’m like, Oh, another giant, okay. Then Glenn said to me, ‘Oh sh*t.’ I go, ‘What’s wrong?’ He goes, Larry [Sharpe] and Papa have heat.’ I don’t know what it is. There’s heat there, because Papa Shango went through the Monster Factory. Now I’m thinking, I knew Papa Shango went through the Monster Factory, I see that, and I’m golden. We went to the same school, we can talk about it. He goes, ‘Him and Larry have heat, it’s real heat.’ And I go, ‘What’s the heat?’ He goes, ‘I don’t know, but just don’t mention you went to the Monster Factory.’ So now I have to go over and introduce myself to him and say, ‘Hey, I’ll be sitting over here when you’re ready to tell me whatever you want to do to me.’ And now I’m thinking, what if he asked me what school I went to? What do I say? All this is going through my mind, so my confidence of being here quickly got squashed. So Papa comes over. He’s like, ‘Come on, let’s talk about it.’ We went through a couple of things. Then he says to me, ‘How do you throw a punch?’ I go, ‘I punch you right there’, and I’m pointing to his neck, I don’t want to hit you up here. I’m trying to talk him through what I’ve been told or what I’ve seen. I haven’t thrown a punch at the school. I’ve done nothing offensive at the school. I’ve just taken bumps and hit the ropes. So I’m like, ‘I punch you right there.’ And he’s like, ‘Okay, yeah, but how do you throw a punch?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I hit you down here.’ And he goes, ‘How do you throw a punch?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Now, looking back like me today, if I get into the locker room with someone and someone’s having that conversation back, I most likely would be like, kid I’ll see you out there, don’t worry about it, and I’m thinking I’m not gonna let you do anything. I’m just gonna bump you and that’s it. He had such patience. He looks at me, goes, ‘Throw a punch.’ I go, ‘You want me to punch you right now?’ He’s like, yes. I’m like, Okay. I punched him so hard. His head spins this way. He turns around. He’s like, ‘Kid, tonight you’re gonna throw kicks.’ I was like, ‘Okay. Do you want to see how I kick?’ He goes, No. Because I had never thrown a kick, and no offensive moves whatsoever. And then it’s great in the match, because we go through the stuff, and he shoots me to the corner, and he comes charged in, and I move, and I’m like, one, kick, two, kick, three, kicks. And he comes out of the corner, wham, and just squashes me. But those were my first offensive moves. And the best part about that story is, all the years we were in the locker room together, I never told him. I don’t know why. It’s just insecurities I always had, I never really felt like I fit. I guess maybe that was kind of why.” 

When The Headbangers won the Tag Team Championships the titles were vacated at this point?

“Technically, yes, because that’s when Dude Love and Stone Cold were tag champs, and Stone Cold had hurt his neck wrestling Owen at SummerSlam, so he couldn’t defend the belts. So we found out four or five days before the pay-per-view that we were going to be slid into that spot, and we’re just ecstatic to be on another pay-per-view. And yeah, so it was LOD, the Godwins, and then Owen and Davey Boy, and The Headbangers were, all of a sudden, just thrown into that mix. And again, we had no idea about anything other than we’re just in another pay-per-view. So every time we were on a pay-per-view, we tried to step up our outfits. So we went to the thrift store, we bought wedding gowns and we dyed them black, specifically because we’re in a title match on a pay-per-view, we need to have something a little bit different. To be in there with them, and, I mean, you know, we had worked the Godwins. We had worked Davey and Owen, we worked LOD, so we’ve worked all of them before. We wrestled Davey and Owen a night after WrestleMania 13 for the belt. So that was one thing. You know, we had a title shot, but to be in that environment, on the pay-per-view like that, we were just all jacked up.”

How many matches did Beaver Cleavage have? 

“One match. Four vignettes, undefeated.”

You have one match, but it lives on forever. Here we are, 27 years later, still talking about it.

“I have one of the worst gimmicks in the history of wrestling.” 

Do you think it was one of the worst gimmicks?

“Probably. I still to this day don’t know where it truly came from, how the idea came up. I mean, I think the vignettes could possibly be some of the best vignettes ever done. They’re hysterical. I mean, I’m sitting there, and I come out of a room, and I tell my mother that I can’t find the cat. I can’t find a cat anywhere. She turns around. She goes, ‘You can’t find pussy?’ I go, ‘No, I can’t find pussy anywhere.’ Meanwhile, she’s peeling a zucchini, and she goes, ‘Well, Pussy is probably under the bed. I know what would get pussy…’ I have a scrape on my knee, and she’s cleaning my knees, and I go, ‘When it comes to working on your knees, my mom knows best.’ I mean, they’re priceless. There were no rules back then. Do whatever you have to do to get over, to draw ratings.”

So you have no idea where this idea came from?

“I have a general guess. First overseas where we went to Kuwait. It’s the first overseas tour I was ever on. Jerry Brisco was the agent in charge of the trip. He gets my passport. He starts laughing. Now, my passport picture at that point was from when I was 20 years old. So he looks at it, and he starts laughing, and he goes, ‘Oh, look at you. You look just like Leave It to Beaver.’ I’m like, Okay? So like that trip I was called Beav, and then I found this out the other day. I didn’t know this. Bruce Pritchard was a huge Leave It to Beaver fan. So everyone wants to blame it on Russo. I mean, Russo helped with the vignettes, and he was there when we did all the vignettes. But I don’t know who actually came up with the idea of, let’s have a Leave It to Beaver character, and we’re going to insinuate that he’s having sex with his mother. I don’t know who came up with it, but when it was presented to me, I was like, okay. I was home, Glenn was hurt. He was rehabbing his knee. I’m gonna get used, I’m gonna be on TV. If I’m on TV, then I go to house shows. I make money when I’m on house shows, because back then, we didn’t have a guaranteed contract. So I’m like, sure, whatever. I’d never done singles before, other than those three matches I had my first when I first started down at Monster Factory. I was like, Yeah, this will be cool. The vignettes were funny. Then for me, it was a character. So I was able to dive into this big kid wearing a propeller hat, burying my face in my mother’s boobs every time I went out to the TV or staring at her boobs. Everything revolved around my head being in her boobs. So I was like, This is funny. It’s fun, I don’t know, we’ll see what happens.” 

I don’t think people realize it lasted like a month. 

“No, it was literally five weeks. Yeah, it was five weeks. So I did the four vignettes. Then I had the one match with Christian, and then I think it was maybe one or two weeks later, they had me walk off the set live. It was in Memphis. It was live on TV.”

What was the idea to kill this character? 

“I think there were things behind the scenes. Owen had just had his accident and passed. There was some sexual harassment charges being discussed or thrown out. I don’t know if they ever happened or not. So anything that was edgy like that, they were squashing right away.” 

So then were you like, well, what’s my character now? Where do I go?

“Yeah, so they said to me, ‘You’re just gonna be Chaz from Jersey. You’re just here to have fun.'” 

What kind of description is that? 

“So I’m like, here I am, Headbanger Mosh, who I know. Now I’m this Beaver Cleavage guy, I knew what I had to do. I just acted like a big kid, just wanted to make my mom happy. Then it was like Chaz with a girlfriend, because Mariana, the girl, they were like, oh, that’s gonna be your girlfriend. And the whole idea was she convinced me just to be Chaz, a kid from New Jersey, and I didn’t know what to do. I’m like, Who is Chaz? I had to try and figure out who Chaz was. And then they came up with the storyline of me beating my girlfriend. So now I’m a woman beater on TV, and which actually leaked into my personal life a little bit, because some people don’t realize it’s TV, it’s entertainment. Guys at the airport, TSA. Same TSA agents going through Philly. All of a sudden, they’re like, ‘What’s up with this new thing?’ I go, ‘Dude, it’s work. It’s not real. I’m not beating my girlfriend up.’ But you got treated differently, my bags would get searched more at TSA because of this. But Glenn and I, when we were Tag Champs, we’d put our belt in the bag and boom, go through. Now I go through, ‘You have nail clippers in your bag? You can’t have those.’ I’m like, what? That’s not real. But, yeah, it just kind of leaked in, but the whole time I was trying to figure out who Chaz was. It wasn’t easy to try to figure that out, because you had to figure out, Okay, what moves do I want to do? I didn’t know what to do.”

Did you end up figuring it out?

“I think I started to. Then they brought Glenn back, and then they put us back together as The Headbangers. So I think as I really started feeling my groove and figuring out and I’ve started having decent matches, other than just me going out there and trying to act like a goofball or just getting beat up because the locker room was now against me, because they showed vignettes at the locker room throwing me out and I wasn’t allowed in the locker room. There was times I wasn’t allowed in a building because I was a woman beater and all these other things. I think I literally started to get comfortable, and then Glenn came back.”

Was it a huge surprise when you get called to come back to WWE in 2016?

“Yes. So what happened with that is, I would see Road Dogg at indie shows, and whenever WWE was in town or anywhere near me, I would call. I would try and get a hold of Hunter and say, ‘Hey, is there any way for me to [do one match]? I’m not looking to come back, just want to do one match.’ At this point, I had a son. My son was born in 04. He had seen me do hundreds of indie shows, then when Glenn came back and him and I started tagging again, he’s seen that. All I wanted was one time for him to see me in a WWE ring. That’s it, in an arena, or whatever it was, that’s all I wanted. Every time I reached out to the office, I got no because of insurance purposes. ‘You don’t have physical.’ I’m like I’ll get a physical. I’ll get blood work, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll sign a waiver. I’ll sign all the waivers you want. I just need one match, please. That’s all I’m asking for. And I kept being told no. But I would see Road Dogg, and I’d be like, ‘Dude, you’re still close with Hunter, can you talk to him? Just one match? That’s all I want. I don’t care where it is, what it is. Then so all of a sudden, 2016 I got a text and it said, ‘Hey, are you and Glenn available to do SmackDown Live on Tuesday night?’ And it was like, Foxwoods Casino or something up in Connecticut. I’m like, okay, yeah, nice rib. Then immediately he called me, and it was Road Dogg, and he goes, ‘No, no, it’s not a rib. We got the storyline we’re doing, we’d love to have you on.’ I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Then a couple of days later, I get a text, ‘Sorry, dude.’ I didn’t realize in Foxwood, wherever the casino was, you had to have full blood work done, full physical. He goes, ‘We won’t have enough time to get that done by Tuesday. I want to try and keep the storyline going to bring you to Dallas the following Tuesday. But no promises. I’ll do my best.’ I text him back, ‘Thanks, Brian. Appreciate you thinking of me. I’m like it’s not happening. So I actually hadn’t watched WWE in a while, I hadn’t watched anything. I was a little bit bitter and salty about being the way I was, not re-signed and all it says I just kind of separated myself. But at Tuesday night, I’m watching SmackDown, and I’m trying to see the storyline where we would have fit in, never saw it. I’m like, oh, I don’t see where [we’d be], so I let it go. Wednesday comes and goes, nothing. Thursday comes and goes, nothing. And then I got a message on Twitter from Howard Finkel, saying, ‘Please call me at this number.’ Before I even saw it, five minutes later, my phone rang and it said it was a 203 number, so which I know is Stanford. So I’m like, hello, and he’s like, ‘Chaz, Howard Finkel here. I don’t know if you saw my message on Twitter, but you and Glenn are needed in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday night for SmackDown Live. Are you available?’ Hell yeah, we’re available. So that and that was three, four o’clock on Friday. So that’s when I’m like oh my god, this is really happening. Hadn’t been there in 15 years, on TV in 15 years, and now it was the opportunity for my son to actually see me [wrestle]. But not only see me, but see it on TV, live in a WWE ring, which was even better. So leading up to that, I had said to him, ‘What can I do?’ Because that whole thing for me was for him, that it’s all I wanted. In 2016 he was 12, so he I talked about him earlier. He had no idea the level that I did it, or anything like that. So I said to him, ‘What can I do for you so you know it’s just for you when I get to the ring?’ We went through a bunch of stuff. He goes, ‘I want you to dab.’ I looked at him, and that’s when the dab was big with Cam Newton. I looked at him and I go, ‘I hate the dab. I think it’s stupid, I’m not doing the dab.’ He goes, ‘That is exactly why I want you to do the dab.’ So I went, Okay. So we went back. It just worked out perfectly. Because a lot of times when you’re doing stuff in the ring, you want to make sure your camera gets it. You talk to the camera guys or production and say, ‘Hey, I do this, can you get this camera over here?’ I didn’t talk to anyone about it, was just a perfect thing. I did my roll in, I hit that corner, and bam, there it was. The greatest part about is my wife at the time, she set up her phone behind Tyler and she videoed him watching me. So I got to see his reaction. I got my entrance coming down. I watched the TV, but the TV was here, and he was here. I got to see the whole thing. As I’m coming down, and you could see his face, he was smiling. But the reaction of when I hit the dab, he was like, [cheers]. I go, ‘You teared up?’ He goes, ‘No, I had something in my eye. The ceiling fan was going, wind blew in my eye.’ But that’s probably the greatest two minutes. I have it saved on my phone. That’s the greatest two-minute video I have of him. I’m so grateful to my ex for filming that, because all I wanted was for him to see me, but then I got to watch him watch me. It’s goosebumps. And for him to be able to do that. At the end of the book, I write kind of chronological order of my top 10. So the only reason it’s not number one is because I did it chronologically, but that’s got to be the highlight of my career. Watching him watch me get in that ring, was just, and then we had a decent match with Heath and Rhino, because we knew them also. So they were like, ‘No, whatever you guys want to do, let us know what we’re going to do. We want you to get your stuff in. And it was just amazing.”

When you go back to catering, are you seeing some faces you recognize? 

“So what happened was we heard stories about how the locker room was so different than when we were there. Because when we were there, it was guys playing dominoes and guys playing cards, and guys just ribbing on each other. It was just fun. We got there, was so quiet and reserved. We’re walking down the hall, and we see the signs, it says male locker room on this door, and then it said extras on this door. We’re like, are we extras? Are we male wrestlers? We didn’t know where to go. Matt Cardona, back then he was Zack Ryder. He pops out of the locker room and he sees us. He’s like, ‘Oh, Headbangers, come on in here with us.’ So we were like, Oh my God, thank goodness Matt ran out and saw us, so we sat with him. But then the next thing was, all right, let’s go somewhere. And because the thing was, when we were there and somebody would come, you could tell it was awkward for them. Then we felt awkward, this isn’t our house anymore, we’re guests here. So you want to kind of just be quiet, stay out of the way. So the idea was going to catering and to eat, but then to find someone we knew that we could just sit down with right away, you kind of get out of the way. Our idea was, where’s Chioda? We’re looking for Mike Chioda. He’s awesome, or Chimel. We walked in, and we kind of stood there and kind of looked around for a second, and then from across the room, it was instant eye contact. It was John Cena. Cena jumps up. He’s like, ‘Sh*t, Headbangers are here! Heard you guys were coming.’ He comes running across, literally running across the thing. He gives us a hug and he’s like, ‘Man, I’m so happy you guys are here, this is great. I heard you were gonna be here. I’m so excited. You know what? Grab some food and come over and sit down and talk to me, because I’d love to catch up with you guys and see what’s going on now.’ Before then, we only met Cena one time. We did an indie show in California when he was Prototype. He was just starting. So, I never met John Cena. I met Prototype. So for him to do that, we were like so maybe we do still kind of fit in. We didn’t feel like outsiders, but we sat down with him for 10-15 minutes, and then he was like, ‘Guys, I’d like to talk more…’ We’re like, ‘No, John. We understand, go ahead.’ But it just eased us so much. Then when we went out, we started talking to Heath and Rhino and Mike Rotundo was our agent. We walk over and we say hi to him, and he’s like, ‘Oh, this is going to be easy.’ We’re like, ‘All right, cool. What are we doing?’ He goes, ‘Whatever you want. Just tell me what you’re doing, here’s the time limit you have, you guys figure it out. Just tell me what you’re doing. I have no worries about this match.’ We were like, cool. So then Heath and Rhino were both like, ‘So we want to make sure you guys get your [stuff in]. Heath’s like, ‘You got your drop down clothesline. I want to take your flapjack. We want Power Bomb leg drop in here. We’re like, oh sh*t. This is awesome, they want to take all of our stuff. We expect to just come and bump around and bounce for you guys. But yeah, it was awesome.”

What is Mosh grateful for?

“My son, my ex and life.”