Brian Cage (@briancage) is a professional wrestler in AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles, CA to discuss winning the Mr. Nevada bodybuilding competition, being cast in the new Steven Spielberg movie “Disclosure Day” with Lance Archer, recovering from a knee injury, his AEW return, wanting to become AEW World Champion, giving Sting his first bump in AEW, how close he came to signing with WWE, and more!
Congrats! You’re wearing the medal right now.
“Mr. Nevada State, yeah, freaking body guy title, body guy medal. I am indeed the number one body guy, no doubt, no dispute.”
Was the plan all along to do another bodybuilding show?
“Not at all. To be honest, I only fully decided to do it like five, five and a half weeks out from the show date.”
So you only had five and a half weeks of prep?
“I mean, yes and no, because I was already in great shape. I wasn’t prepping for a show, but I was just doing everything. People that come around me, they know that I live the lifestyle, like contest prep, essentially, right? So I was like, all right, I won’t binge on anything, I’m not gonna eat anything bad, I’m just gonna go full tilt. Because I wanted to come back in the best shape that I could for wrestling. I had this TV show, I did the sequel to the He-Man movie that I had done years ago, so there’s a bunch of different things, and obviously you just want to come back looking better than you did. That for me has always been like the glass half full for any injury. It always reignites the flame higher and brighter than it was before. It’s not like I was ever unmotivated for wrestling or working out, but I’m like, all right, now I really gotta get into it.”
You’re in the best shape of your life now at 42
“It’s not just physically how I look too, it’s how I feel. I was trying to tell everyone, after all these years of wrestling, my age, everything else, you should be wearing down, and I feel so good. The amount of wrestling training, which I almost never really do a lot of, kind of get back in the ring and work off some rust. But then I was training all the time in the ring, training all the time in the gym. Actually, I’m doing a bunch of MMA and jiu jitsu training, I was just feeling so good. After tons of leg days trying to build my legs back up, and not once did I ever get out and go oh, this hurts, oh, that hurt. Everything was feeling great. I was like, this is the best I think I’ve ever [felt]. I feel better now than I think I was feeling in my 30s. This is crazy.”
Explain the Body Guy Title to me.
“So, the idea behind this thing [the championship], I actually got this made beginning of last year. So, what I wanted to do was take it on the Indies, get it over first, and then bring it to AEW. The idea was I would defend the Body Guy title, but the catch is you have to be a body guy to get a shot at the title, and that was kind of my jab at everyone, because then no one would actually ever get a shot at the title, because you’re not a body guy. So that was kind of the loose end. I just thought it was a great idea, and look cool, and I never got to do anything, and I tore my knee, so it just kind of sat there. Then, after winning the bodybuilding show, I was like, you know what, this is the perfect time to bring it back. Instead of bringing the overall trophy with the medal, I’ll just bring the freaking title to represent the overall trophy, and then we’ll just start to incorporate that. So, I had it backstage with me during the segment, and on Dynamite this past Wednesday, and I will be bringing it every week, and we will go from there.”
Do you feel like you’re a big man in wrestling?
“You know what? I’ve actually never called myself that, I’ve always just called myself body guy, and I think that too, because I’m not super tall, and I feel like everyone always acts like I’m a midget now, too. Which is so funny, because I’m so tall to so many people, especially in AEW.”
But it’s also funny that, like, the physique that people expected from superheroes 20 years ago, vastly different from what they expect now.
“It’s like when you bring in these outside athletes who become wrestlers, and only a handful of them become really good. But I feel like it’s because they fall in love with it, a la Kurt Angle, or whomever, and same thing. I think Jackman got so much more jacked because I think he just fell in love with actually training. I know it’s hard, but that’s why he kept doing it for a while, because I think he just enjoyed it, not just for the role but in general.”
So break it down, how many meals a day? What are your macros and your total calories?
“Even with that, too, it’s funny, I ate more carbs this prep than I’ve ever eaten. Usually pretty more of a low-carb, higher-fat guy, not fully keto, but close to it. I was actually vice versa, where it was just as high as protein, because I’m always eating over 300 grams of protein a day throughout the six meals, and then I had carbs pretty much every meal. Sometimes the last meal would just be egg whites, and then I wouldn’t have eaten rice with that. It was mainly just rice, too. Just keep it simple, and it’s easy on digestion. So throwing the fat is probably up to 4,000 calories at the peak of it, but then obviously you pull back towards the end of the show. The week of the show, you start to deplete everything and it’s mainly just protein with the carbs and then you carb load everything else and salt and manipulate your water. There’s all these different little variables that people realize, especially the better you look. I feel like the more self-conscious you are, which is funny, because you want to look like you’re top physical peak. Even right now. I came in, you’re like, ‘Oh, man, you’re so jacked.’ You want to look like that 24/7 but again, when you’re in really good shape, the smallest little water, salt, carbohydrate manipulations can like make a vast difference, which is so crazy how little things can make you look so much better or worse.”
For people who don’t know, you were out for 14 months dealing with two different injuries.
“So I tore my left quad tendon in a match. So I was even looking at the chronological breakdown of that, because then you mentioned, too, I’m sure we’ll touch on that, me being in Disclosure Day. So something happened to my left knee where I kind of felt it, which is completely abnormal. I kind of felt it in a match before or after Jericho Cruise, and on the Jericho Cruise. Then I remember on Disclosure Day, or during the match there with Lance [Archer], he had actually hurt his back. So Chavo [Guerrero] was freaking out, and didn’t want Lance to take any bumps. We’re filming everything, because if something happens to Lance, and he can’t do anything like that. So now everything that we had rehearsed and gone over, and we’re we’re switching everything on the fly. So now I’m thinking of all kinds of high fly stuff I can do, where now he doesn’t have to bump up. Something like doing head scissors, 619s, I was doing like springboard moonsaults and different divey stuff, and Spielberg popped hard too when he saw me do a springboard moonsault. [He said] ‘You could do that?’ Oh yeah, can do all kinds of stuff. Anyway, so we do the head scissors like 1,000 times, just like a movie. ‘Oh, it’s great, do it again, do it again, do it again…’ I don’t know if it’s because of his back or what, not to throw Lance under the bus, but he wasn’t picking me up, he wasn’t assisting with the head scissors, just me just jumping on my foot. After the 20th time we did it, I remember I hit the head scissors, and we did it differently that time, where I did the head scissors. He feeds up and did a super kick, and I was going to hit a lionsault, and I felt it on the head scissors, oh my knee. As he stood up, and I super kicked him, so I’m standing on that same knee right away. I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, that knee’s not feeling good. We stopped, and then I had to take a moment out, and I did get to go hang out with Spielberg and sit underneath the little tent and watch stuff and talk to him for quite a while during that, which was pretty neat. But once we’re done filming, we went to Sacramento and I did a spot with Briscoe that kind of hurt my knee. I didn’t see the doctor that night because all my family’s there, close to North Cal, and then the following week we had no like six man tag, and Briscoe wanted to do a similar spot, and I go, you know what, that kind of messed up my knee last week. Maybe do that with Takeshita, and we could do this, whatever, cool. Then the next day in the match with Chris Masters at Only Wrestlers Money Tour.”
“That’s why I kept on like acting up, and I was just thinking, you know, it’s whatever, and because the way it tore, I barely even start to spine buster Chris, and I felt like a piece of paper just tear right off my knee. I knew right away, I fell down, and the ref was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what do you want to?’ I go, ‘Stop the match, tore my knee, I don’t care.’ I had Chris Bey’s Memorial Show the next day against Ricochet and [Rich] Swann, which was excited about. Then my farewell tour in Australia for World Series of Wrestling, which is like my absolute favorite place to go to. So I remember laying there just looking up at the lights, like just so sad and depressed about that. Not so much that I hurt my knee, and that sucked too, but I wasn’t like writhing in pain, it hurt, but it was just more like, you gotta be kidding me. I remember he was trying to help me up, and the crowd started chanting my name like I’m gonna get up and walk off the field. We’re the main event here. I go no, I’m just gonna lay here, everybody can just leave, just let me sulk for a minute. Let me just have my moment. Just lay here. I’m like, man, this sucks, it was what it was, and I had been dealing with my right knee, and I know I had been planning on getting that done.”
The knees are 100%?
“Yeah, I don’t feel like there’s anything that I can’t do that I could do before.”
So you’re in the new Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day. How’d you get cast for this?
“So Chavo hits me up for this TV show…”
And Chavo is the guy in Hollywood when it comes to any wrestling scene.
“He’s like the liaison for wrestling in Hollywood. So, he hits me up for this TV show. It doesn’t happen. Well, it was gonna happen. It gets postponed. And then he goes, ‘Hey, I think you would fit really great for this role. Contact this guy and get him everything he wants.’ So I email him. I get everything he requests. Typical kind of like audition situation, where after a few weeks go by, you don’t hear anything, whatever. Easy come, easy go. So I’m in the gym and all of a sudden, I get an email, and it’s, ‘Hey, I just sat down and watched everything with the director. He absolutely loves you, your look, your persona, your charisma, and everything you do. He says you’re exactly perfect, and exactly what he wants.’ Great email to get. And he goes, give me a call immediately. So I call him, and again, I don’t even know what the project is.”
You don’t know who the director is?
“Nothing. [They say] ‘Yeah, I was watching it, and Steven loves you, loves you. He just wants you on the set, blah blah blah.’ He keeps saying, Steven, I go, ‘Who’s Steven?’ He goes, ‘Oh, the director, Steven Spielberg.’ I went, wait, what? Steven Spielberg’s watching my stuff and is like, ‘That’s it, I need Brian Cage in my movie.’ I go, this is amazing. He goes, ‘[Spielberg] likes you so much, we want you to work somebody else, preferably another big guy that looks a different type of big than you. But instead of casting it, we figured he just wants you, so you could just pick whoever you want.’ So I was like, what about my buddy Lance? Because he was in some of the photos they sent, my tag partner, and he goes, ‘Oh yeah, we did see him. We thought he looked good.’ I go, I mean, I’m fine with that. They’re okay. So then that’s how Lance got in the movie, too.”
Are you actually being directed by Steven Spielberg?
“Absolutely, yeah, the whole time.”
What kind of notes did he have for you?
“Some stuff we filmed, and there’s a couple of specific shots he wanted us to do.”
What kind of stuff are you doing?
“He wanted this one cool diving elbow or head butt off of the back, how it was filmed, he wanted the POV shot. But there’s one other thing he specifically wanted, and we didn’t use a lot of that. We were doing our bit, because I just kind of put together the match, essentially I was like, ‘Lance, let’s just give all of our hits, let’s just do this, this, this, this, this, and this.’ So we’re just going through it, and he loves it, then he was like, ‘Can you guys do from the same [angle]? This angle, that angle?’
Is Chavo Guerrero there the whole time?
“Yeah, he’s the referee for the whole match. So I did the suplex, 619, he did his bossman slam and his finisher, and it was great. Then I said that we had to change some stuff when he [Archer] hurt his back taking certain bumps. But then when I hurt my knee and I had to take a little time out. Then I went and I got my bag and I put on a different knee pad, I taped up my knee and I switched my outfit around, and then Spielberg was like, ‘Hey, come here, come here.’ He’s like, look at this, and he’s under his little tent in this TV, showing me different clips and showing me the moonsault. That’s why I talked to him one-on-one about wrestling. We still wanted to mark out and ask for a picture. None of us did, especially because we don’t have our phones on us while we’re on set. Then even afterwards, we kind of asked, one of the stunt guys, ‘Oh, hey, can we get a picture?’ He goes, ‘You know, it’s kind of like a taboo kind of situation.’ I go, ‘But he talked to us so much.’ He still liked us. I feel like if we would ask him just on the spot, he’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, no problem.’”
What are the goals now that you’re back in AEW?
“I definitely want to branch out and do more on my own, for sure, because I know we’ve had a couple squash matches. I just did that one tag match with Doyle, I do have a couple of different ideas. I do want to incorporate more of this winning this bodybuilding show. I mean the whole while too, I’ve always wanted to do more like solo stuff, because I feel like that’s how I get my stuff in. I feel like that’s how I stand out more, and there’s a plethora, and I think I said this on the last interview, too. There’s so much I feel like I haven’t done in AEW, especially compared to my time in Lucha Underground and Impact. Anywhere else I feel like I’ve done so much more.”
So, is the AEW world title something that you want?
“Oh, of course. I guess even then, well, we have so many titles there. I mean, I’ll take whatever I can get. What I do really want to be part of this year, for sure, is the Continental Classic. Obviously, that’s not until the end of the year, but that’s something I definitely want to. I would love to build up enough repertoire to have an awesome Continental Classic run by the end of the year.”
You look better than you’ve ever looked. You can obviously work in the ring. What else do you need to do to get to that main event level?
“I don’t know, and everybody goes, ‘Oh, you need someone to talk for him.’ I go look, am I Ric Flair on the mic? No, I’m not. But there’s plenty of great promos I’ve done, there’s plenty of good promos I’ve done. I just haven’t got to do that many promos. Every time they put a promo on social media, on anywhere, because remember we’re tracking this too, for a while. But every time, too, originally it was like that was Brian Cage’s best promo. I go, that’s funny, every time I cut a promo, it’s my best promo. So is it the fact that I can’t cut a promo, or is the fact that I just don’t get to cut that many promos? There’s a difference between not getting to hear me talk and not being able to talk. Am I as good as MJF? Obviously not, but I can do much better, I think, than people realize to give me credit for it. Again, just because there’s never any legs to it, too. Because if I’m just cutting a good promo for the one off match or this or that, that’s great, but then it’s here and gone. Five star matches on the independents or on AEW are great, but if it’s just a flash in the pan awesome match for no reason, it’s awesome, but then there’s no membranes of it. Because you can have a four star match with an amazing build and program that will be a lasting memory, as opposed to a freaking killer five star match that was just for no reason.”
I think there’s a lot of trust in your abilities, because you were the first one that got Sting physical for the first time, I think, since he left WWE in 2015. You gave him a power bomb, so that’s his first time getting physical in six years at that point. What’s the conversation like with Sting as you’re figuring all this out?
“Well, I remember being in the office with Tony Khan, because I know he wanted that to happen. It actually happened sooner than expected, because there was some crazy storm and a lot of people got like stuck in Texas, and Tony’s like, just do the power bomb tonight, and Sting was just kind of like, let me know, okay? And [Tony says] ‘Brian’s so great, I know you’ve worked a lot of great big guys, but Brian’s so athletic, and he’s so safe, and he could do this, it’ll be awesome.’ I’m like, yeah, I got you, and he was like, okay. We didn’t talk a lot, he felt secure enough, and I’m like, cool. Actually, I tried not to overthink it, because I was like, look, I can go out there and give him the most perfect power bomb of all time, and if he’s hurt, it’s my fault. Also I have to lay him out, so I can’t kill him, but I also can’t play patty cake with him, and make a little nice cozy bed, and lay him down gently either. So I was like, you know what, I’m just gonna power bomb him like I would just power bomb whoever. So I just erased any thought of it, not to overthink anything, and I power bombed him. Everything went fine, and I went backstage with, oh man, it was rad. I just freaking power bomb Sting. I’m like, that’s awesome. Because not only to give him his first bump back and be trusted with that, but he was also, and I told him afterwards, Sting is my very first wrestling action figure I ever owned, as well, too. So, to you know, look forward 30 years later, and me giving him a powerbomb, that was awesome.”
You recently re-signed a contract extension with AEW in 2024 and I know you talked about you were going back and forth. Were you going to re-sign with AEW or were you going to go to WWE? How close were you to going to WWE?
“I mean, there was a lot of interest, and it’s funny, because I wanted to go there. I mean, you don’t know what you’re gonna get either place. There’s no guarantees. They could say that, you know, we’re gonna use you this way, that way, whatever. But obviously, you don’t know anything. And after going back and forth, all the different pros and cons, a lot of stuff with AEW just seemed safer, if you will. It’s pretty hard to have some sort of security in this business, but I’m like, I’ve been here for a while; they [WWE] just randomly release anyone. A lot of the perks, so travel is way [easier]; he [Tony Khan] pays for all the travel, so hotel, ground transportation, and airfare, whereas WWE is just airfare. We’re an actual independent contractor, so I can do anything else outside of AEW, which is a plus too. Then I felt like I don’t have a fear of getting released if I stay here too long. The longer I feel like I can just keep staying to have longevity.”
But ultimately it came down to job security?
“Big time, that’s the main one, and just longevity. It’s so much more chill there. I mean, obviously, I haven’t been in WWE for a long time, was there developmentally years ago, many years ago.”
When you were there in developmental in 2008 and 2009, was there any talk of bringing you to Raw or SmackDown?
“There was. And then actually, even the day I got released, I thought I was getting the call to go up to Raw. Everyone thought that. I was so flabbergasted when I got the call, and I’m thinking I’m getting raised. I think I’m getting called to TV, I’m thinking I’m getting both, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’ve come to terms with your release.’ I’m like, wat the? You called the right person? But I mean, I left my time there, and I have nothing bad to say about in that regard, but you know, it’s been a back-and-forth thing, and there is the what if, and the WrestleMania moment that every fan has. But at the same time, I do feel like there’s a nice feather in my cap to have been as successful as I’ve been, to have the house, I have the cars, I have the life I’ve had, to live the career I’ve had, without ever having, like, the WWE rub, I do feel like that’s that’s been kind of a nice little bonus, which is pretty hard to get.”
What is Brian Cage grateful for?
“My health, my family and my faith.”
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