Amazing Red (@amazingred_iod) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in TNA, ROH and House Of Glory. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Orlando, FL to discuss being inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame and why he didn’t expect it, returning to TNA after 15 years to compete in an Ultimate X match, being one of the most influential wrestlers of the past 20 years, how he invented the Code Red, having a dark match with CM Punk in WWE in 2005, why he started House Of Glory, breaking his leg while doing mocap for a WWE videogame, if going to WWE or AEW may still be possible, and more!
Let me be one of the first to congratulate you on becoming a TNA Hall of Famer.
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
You looked legitimately surprised.
“Yeah, I didn’t know what was happening. All I was told by Frankie was, ‘Stay here. There’s gonna be a shot between both of you.’ That’s all I kept hearing. Then before the last part of the match was happening, Frankie said, ‘Stay close. Stay close.’ As soon as people were powdering. He grabs the mic, and as soon as he grabbed the mic, I instantly knew something’s happening. Something’s up.”
What do you think it was?
“I thought he’s gonna cut a promo on me. So the last couple of matches I’ve had were dream match-type kind of things, and a lot of the guys would take it upon themselves to grab the mic and big me up and put me over and very grateful of it and I thought this was one of those things that he was gonna do. But I’m thinking this is not an indie, this is TNA, you can’t really do that here and then when he started talking he said, ‘Pay attention to the monitor in the back.’ Oh man they got me. They reached out a couple of times before about this situation about Hall of Fame, and I just kind of, I’m good, I’m good. Thank you. I’m good.”
Why’d you say no?
“To tell you the truth, man. I’m not that kind of a guy. I just feel like I’ve done one thing in my life, wrestled, and I think I’m good with doing that. And I think when people come up to me and say all these great stories, it just kind of like puts me in a box. I’m like, I’m just doing my own thing in my own lane, and I’m very appreciative I helped you out and stuff like that. But I think Hall of Fame is such a big. I don’t know. I just didn’t want to accept it.”
Also because Hall of Fame feels very final, and you’re still doing this. You’re still active:
“Yeah, that’s actually a good way of thinking about it for sure. And a lot of times, I don’t feel like I’m old. I know I’m older. I don’t feel like I’m Hall of Fame bound yet. It’s kind of the same thing you’re saying, because a lot of times I did feel like I called it quits, and then I came right back to wrestling. So I think from here on out, I’m never gonna retire. I’m just gonna let it happen. Let it just happen. Let’s see what happens.”
How did it feel getting back into a TNA ring after 15 years?
“Very surreal, very surreal. Especially coming back to a match like the Ultimate X. I’m afraid of heights. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’m afraid of heights. The Ultimate X match always scares me. The ropes that you have to climb up and grab, they’re not the local monkey bars. They’re harder ropes. They hurt. Sometimes it’s the buckle part of it. I know it doesn’t look like it’s high maybe on TV, but I’m shorter. So once I get to the top rope, I have to climb the truss on the side in order to jump up and grab the rope. But guys like Frankie Kazarian can just jump up and Spider-Man up there, and Frankie’s amazing, by the way.”
How did this opportunity come up for you to go back to TNA now?
“So I’ve been wrestling for House of Glory actively for the last couple of years, and a lot of people that knew of me from TNA didn’t know I was still wrestling. I even got the tweets where they’re like, ‘I thought Amazing Red died,’ and it just sucks to hear stuff like that. But the wrestlers knew, all the workers knew, and they would constantly hit me up and say, ‘TNA, we’re doing good. They would try to get me to come back in some kind of way, and they tried Hall of Fame, and once they knew I turned that down because I’m not that kind of guy, they were like, ‘How about a match?’ ‘How about helping us in the back?’ There was a certain point where I was just focusing on House of Glory. I was just focusing on my family, focusing on my relationship with God, and I just wanted to stay home, stay busy from what we were doing. Make HOG get bigger as a wrestling company, and I kind of wanted to turn everything around me off. So I kind of said no to a couple of things, but not in a way where it’s closed forever. Then once my body started getting better, like I’m healthier. I feel like I’ve grown a lot since the last couple of years. They kept a close eye on my social media or lack of social media because I only had Twitter at the time, and it’ll start off with, “Hey, you still wrestling?’ ‘Hey, you look good.’ ‘The last match you did was great.’ ‘This clip is insane.’ ‘You sure you don’t want to wrestle?’ As it got later and later on in my career, which is recently, I was like, you know what? I think it’s I think it’s time to get back out there and try this again. I think I’m mentally ready for that.”
You had the huge benefit in TNA at that time, where what you did in the ring could speak for you. You didn’t have to rely on your promos so much because, especially in those early days of TNA, what you did bell to bell was the most important thing.
“Thank you. I would have loved to agree with that more because I think what also hindered me really bad is the ability to speak. I think everybody, if you’re trying to be a professional wrestler, yes, the moves in the ring are gonna take you only so far, but you guys definitely need to work on your characters and your promos because I promise you, if I would have had those things in lock at that moment, sky was the limit for sure.”
How do you feel like you’ve worked on it in the last 10 years or so and gotten better?
“House of Glory. I’m gonna just jot all this down to House of Glory because being a wrestling trainer and then being forced into being people’s dad, and having to lead by example, it just forces you with so much responsibilities that you have to get better at what you’re doing. Everything at House of Glory, instead of being like a more visual kind of person, I have to teach with vocal. So I’m like, hey, look, do this, this, and this, and then be visual about it. Then also come back and okay, this isn’t this, and I’ve learned to be a better pro wrestler because of being a trainer at House of Glory. So, House of Glory definitely is one of the things. And just growing up, growing up in general, and being a fan of pro wrestling, I am such a fan of pro wrestling. I watch everything, good and bad, every promotion, and it just keeps my love strong.”
Do you think there was ever a path at any point during any of your TNA runs that would make you a World Champion?
“I think so, especially the whole thing with Raven. I think if I had stood with TNA, got better at promos, because right before that they had me with Kid Kash and I was feuding with him, which I didn’t understand. They had me feuding with Trinity [Stephanie Finochio]. Remember Trinity? She was his manager, and a lot of the ideas were you’re gonna be mad at Trinity and you’re gonna tell Trinity off and you’re gonna you’re gonna want to fight her, tell her you’re gonna fight her in this promo? I’m like, I’m not trying to fight a lady. That’s not what I would do as Amazing Red or as Red in general. That’s why those promos came across very awkward. She was in my face, and he was in my face. He said, ‘You’re gonna hit a girl.’ My thing is, why would a face tell a woman I’m gonna beat you up? Why would the heel stick up for the woman, and say, ‘You’re gonna hit a girl?’ Why can’t you beat me up? I was stuck in positions like that where, you know, it kind of sucked. But once it got to the Raven situation, I think if I would have helped the situation better, it would have been higher and higher and higher. Someone that was in my position, kind of, was AJ Styles. He got the world title, tag titles, and look at him now. He went on to do amazing things, and I think I would have been kind of like in that kind of order.”
How do you feel when people say you’re one of the most influential wrestlers of the last 20 or so years?
“I still can’t understand it. I still can’t believe it. Very humbling, but I will say what just happened recently in the TNA locker room. It came on the monitors: Amazing Red Hall of Fame, and I was still cringing about it inside. But once I went to the back, I saw Santana there. I saw tears in his eyes, and then I went to the locker room, and everyone’s there clapping and just hugging me and sharing stories of how I helped them in the business, and I’m just there like I have no idea, and it kind of just hit me where it’s like, wow, you did this, you really did do this. I’m just very humbled. There’s nothing else I can feel about this besides being very appreciative and giving the glory to God. I just feel like I was just a kid living a dream, moving straight, just moving straight. Nothing else in my pathway, and you could not tell me no.”
What did you feel you were doing that was particularly innovative around that time?
“A lot of the ideas of the things that came on my mind were because of how much they compared me to Rey Mysterio, and that’s that’s amazing. That’s great. I used to love watching Eddie, Benoit, the whole cruiserweight division in WCW. Rey, obviously, but I did not want to be Rey Mysterio. Respectfully, I knew I had to wrestle like him because I was smaller like him, but I always had my own pathway of how I wanted to be as Amazing Red. It was very movie, martial artist, Japan lucha American style. I wanted everything meshed to give me the moniker Amazing Red. I was like, wow, you know, this guy really is amazing. I kind of screwed myself by doing that, by the way. Because that meant like every match I’m probably gonna have to try to outdo myself, which is what I learned from my trainer, that you can only do so much every single match. But Rey Mysterio is someone that I’ve been compared to, where I was like, you know what, I gotta change this up. I gotta do what I’m thinking, and if this move is done this way by 10 people, I have to be the one guy that did it this way, and then that move is cool from the top rope, but can I do it from the bottom rope? This move probably looks like a complete failure, but let me keep trying it and see if people catch up with it. And then it’s little by little, it started being my own lane here and there, here and there.”
John Cena does a Code Red.
“It’s John Cena’s move. Ain’t no way I’m taking that from John Cena. I got to ask him for permission.”
But how crazy is that? You invented this move that John Cena does.
“Again, man, no words. I have no idea. It was a lot of people doing it where I don’t know if it was the move looks cool, or if they kind of took a liking to how I did it, or they just wanted to make it their own, which is all cool. But the amount of people, even Sting- Sting did a Code Red. Isn’t that crazy? But what wowed me the most was the John Cena thing because my phone was blowing up. John Cena just did Code Red! I’m like, that’s kind of cool. But it’s kind of cool to see the things that you come up with that sound and look impossible be a thing, and even S.A.T [Spanish Announce team], it’s called Spanish Fly. Every time someone does that move, Spanish Fly, and I think that’s also cool for them that they get like recognition by that alone.”
How did you invent the Code Red?
“So the Code Red was my younger brother. I had this on social media, you can check it out. I was literally 16 years old. I used to pick him up for a power bomb, and he always rolled behind me like a sunset flip, and I would always jump into it, just felt like a power bomb. So I would call it the baby power bomb. In order for my little brother to feel cool, he’s gonna power bomb me, but I would beat the crap out of him. I would beat the crap out of him. Did all my moves on him. My mother hated it because we ruined all our mattresses. And I have this all on VHS, by the way, which I’m gonna plan on releasing them on YouTube soon. He would power bomb me, and I kept seeing that. So I was thinking, you know what? What if this is a wrestling move? You just go for a power bomb, roll back, and pull him. It worked. Then I saw Tajiri come out of a sunset flip, like in a bridge kind of fashion, and I was like, let me see if this works.”
You had a dark match in WWE with CM Punk in 2005. What do you remember from getting the call for that match, and what do you remember about the match itself?
“I don’t remember. One of the things about me doing stuff like this is that my memory has been jacked, and yes, I can jot it down to pro wrestling and getting concussed and knocked, but I don’t remember how it started. But I know it was through friends looking out for me. I’ve never wrestled CM Punk at this point. It was supposed to be a squash match. It was supposed to be me versus Matt Morgan, maybe. I was supposed to lose in like two seconds.
I was like, that sounds cool. I was still ready for it, and I think it was Sgt Slaughter. Somebody called me by my government name and said, ‘Come here.’ I came over there, and one of the referees said, ‘Hey, Red’s got something else coming up. So Red’s gonna be pre-show, and you’re gonna have a dark match, and you guys do this.’ So they gave Matt somebody else, a different kind of wrestler. So then my cousins were there, and Jimmy Wang was there, and they were like, yo, when they give you dark matches, that means they’re looking at you to get signed. So I was like, all right, cool, cool. I’m nervous. I see CM Punk. I’ve known him from ROH, but we never chatted as much. He was very cool with me. We came up with cool ideas. Ricky Steamboat was the agent. Can I be transparent? This is how things went in my eyes, right? Ricky Steamboat wanted CM Punk to get signed. He needed CM Punk to get signed, obviously, right? So, right before this match, what I was hearing is that CM Punk, this was his last-ditch effort to be signed. I’ve heard he just wrestled with Val Venis and it was not good, and he was blown up. Or CM Punk told people he was sick, and they were like, Red, this is his last effort. So that’s added more pressure to me.
So then we go to the agent, and Steamboat was just giving him everything, ‘CM Punk will do this, this, and this.’ Then he asked me to do a heel thing. He said, ‘You ever wrestled heel before?’ I was like, yeah. Because at this point, I’m thinking he’s telling me to be a heel so CM Punk could be a face. I’m like yes, I wrestled heel before, but look at me and look at him. It’s not gonna work. CM Punk respectfully tells me, ‘Listen, we’ll do whatever you gotta do.’ Being very transparent here, the moves that I wanted to do, Code Red, my flatliner, my standing shooting star. I wanted to get that out in the world that I made this up at that point, because you’re on WWE. Once this happens in WWE, it is officially yours. Every time I mentioned something to him, I don’t know if it was him, but every time I mentioned something to him, it came back and got vetoed. ‘You can’t do a shooting star. Kidman does it, and Paul London said Kidman’s gonna get hot.’ ‘You can’t do Code Red because Rey does it, and he’s gonna get hot. You got this move, you can’t do that move.’
So Jimmy Wang is my boy. He’s like my brother, and he’s not gonna lie to me. So he’s coming up and he’s like, ‘They’re kiboshing all your stuff, bro, purposely.’ It felt like no one wanted me with a job here. I’m like, okay, that sucks. I wrestled with CM Punk at the time the match didn’t feel good at all. We just kept messing up and botching and going to different things. We go to the back. CM Punk gets taken by Johnny Ace. I’m there like waiting for CM Punk just to say thank you. I know the match wasn’t that good, and Steamboat’s just following him, saying, ‘Give him one more chance. Give him one more chance.’ Damn, I’ll get some receipt for this. Johnny Ace comes out of the room with CM Punk. He was in the room. He comes out of the room. He goes, ‘Hey, have you ever wrestled in a big ring before?’ I said, Yeah. He said, ‘Where?’ I said, All Japan. When I said All Japan, that blew his mind because that’s where he came from. It was all Japan. He was touring there. He was like, ‘You were in All Japan?’ I was like yeah, I was in All Japan. ‘How long?’ I said like three months. He was like, ‘Well, you look blown up, so we’ll give you a call.’ I did the unprofessional thing of saying, ‘I look blown up?’ Because I was just wondering. I know what he means because when we did mess up, we didn’t go to the different positions right away. We kind of had this like deer-in-the-headlights moment, so I guess he took that as you look blown up. He told me that, I said, ‘Anything else I have to work on?’ He said, ‘Yeah, get bigger.’ He walks away. I see CM Punk come out the door. Walks away. What’s going on? Jimmy Wang comes up to me, and he goes, ‘Bro, you could tell wholeheartedly that was all him. You did all of your stuff. You sold well, blah blah. Everyone loved you in the back, and it sucks.’ That’s how it has to be.
Fast forward to when I got my second chance at the WWE. I was supposed to get squashed by Ryback. He was supposed to beat up three jobbers. I don’t remember the year. I know that it was a lot of controversy that I showed up at No Way Out. It was like he was having a dark match, and I was just there because they asked me to pull up. I was one of the jobbers supposed to get beat up by Ryback, get thrown through a table. Ryback said, ‘How much you weigh?’ I was like, why? He said, ‘Because I’m gonna throw you through the table.’ That’s the first time I ever met him. I’m like, okay, I’m getting thrown through the table. Somebody shouts out, ‘Red’s not doing that. Red has something,’ and I got taken away from that. I didn’t do that either. From that moment, I was thinking I wanted to tell CM Punk something, like talk to him, and CM Punk shows up. I’m at the doctor, and I felt someone hugging me from behind, ‘Red! What’s up, man? What’s up?’ And I turn around; it’s him, and I don’t know what belt he had on, but he had on a belt. It was probably the world title or like one of the biggest belts. And I’m like, you know what? I’m not gonna tell him anything, because it’s just so much at this point, water under the bridge. But I was very bitter about that day, just because I feel like it was my opportunity also to be signed, and I didn’t get that. But I was bitter about it, where I felt like he ruined it for me. But I’m grown now to understand he had a job too. This was his thing, no hard feelings. That’s why a lot of my guys who find out the story, they’re like, ‘Oh, CM Punk, you probably hate him.’ I said, ‘No, no, I don’t hate him. I love that dude, honestly.'”
Then in 2016, you’re supposed to be in the Cruiserweight Classic?
“I’m super hyped. This is it. This is finally what this whole thing paid off for. I knew as soon as I stepped foot in any of these matches, confidently, I’m getting signed. That was just a thing, and maybe it probably was the idea for them also. So it’s about to show up, the Cruiserweight Classic, and I get hit up about doing the 2K video game, and that was one of my dreams at the at the time to be in the video game and do mocap. I thought that was one of my dreams. Doing this job sucks so bad. I would never do mocap for anything.”
What’s so bad?
“Mocap is trash. Anybody that tells you otherwise is a liar. Anybody you had on the show that told you mocap was good, they’re lying. That’s like doing five matches at once. You’re not bumping on the pillow. You’re bumping in the ring. Everything’s legit real, and you’re bumping constantly. I’m hyped. I’m seeing the 2K stuff. Cool. I get dressed. I got the little balls everywhere, right? Real early in the morning, they’re super excited to work with me. I do a couple of moves, then they go up there. They go right into AJ Styles stuff, Spiral Tap. ou could do that?’ Yeah. Let me see. Go up there. Went up there, Spiral Tap. ‘All right, so look, we’re gonna have you do it a couple of times.’ So in mocap, for this kind of game, you have to like do it and miss and sell, do it and hit someone and sell, do it and if there’s a ladder or a chair there, different sell. But you always have to get up a certain way so they can clip it and put it up there, so I had to do this move like seven or eight times, and a spiral tap is a move I don’t like because I’m looking at the ground, I’m looking at the ring instead of the infrared. I’m kind of like backwards, so I don’t see what I’m doing. I just throw myself. But with Spiral Tap, you can see everything, and I’m not a gymnast. I just learned this jumping on the beds, so I’m not really professional doing this. I’m up to like eighth, ninth at this point.
I get up there, and I just had a gut feeling, I gotta stop. Low Ki was there with me, and the guy goes, ‘Can you just do one more, man?’ I’m so sorry.’ Can you do just one more? And we’re gonna have you do this, and then we’ll go into a whole set of moves after this.’ I’m like, damn, my body’s killing me. I go up there. There’s two crash pads, just for this jump, right? And in the middle of the crash pad, it connects. So I go up there. I’m like, all right. For some reason, I just jump, and everything just blacks out for me, and I don’t know where I’m at. So I just jump, instant darkness, and I hear this [crack]. I wake up, and I’m on the crash pads, and my leg is backwards. So what happened is that whatever flip I did, my one foot went in between the crash pads that connected, and I went the other way, and I heard the loudest [snap], but I didn’t feel nothing. So I’m there. I’m hanging out. I’m just laying down, and everyone’s looking at me. And Low Ki screams at the top of his lungs, ‘Is anybody gonna effing help him? He broke his leg!’ Then they’re like, ‘Oh, call somebody!’ Then everybody started panicking. He said that when he took my leg out, it was backwards. Once I saw that, instant pain, heat everywhere, all of my body, and then I started screaming. And now, at this point, I’m bitter about the CM Punk situation. I’m bitter about the No Way Out situation, and this to me was like my last-ditch effort of being a part of WWE, doing a WWE game, no less. Broke my leg in half, and I’m screaming. I remember that at this point I think I was cursing God out, and I blamed it on him, and I was like, why don’t you want me to make it? Why don’t you want me to be great? All this stuff I did, paid my dues. I helped so many House of Glory guys. We gave them superstars to wrestle, and I felt like not in a genie kind of way, but in a way where it was like, man, I did all this good stuff, and I felt like this was my time. Why not now? Why do this to me now? To fast forward all that, I know why it happened. And that was a blessing in disguise. As weird as that may sound, as that may sound, breaking my leg was the best thing that happened to me.”
How’s that?
“My family. My family and God. I got cool and closer to my family and God, and it was more like you’re not ready. I don’t know God’s plans, but he definitely knows it, and it’s literally like you’re not ready. If I would have made it after the 2K game in the Cruiserweight Classic, I would have been so I would have lost my family completely, and that to me, that don’t that don’t that don’t go together.”
Do you think there’s a chance you could go to WWE now?
“I’m hoping. Like I said, WWE, AEW, TNA. If everything aligns well and we can work out something, I would be happy to be a part of anything.”
You want a contract, is what you’re saying?
“Yeah, I want to be taken care of, man. I feel like a lot of people in this industry respect me, and they want to be around whatever ideas we have and stuff like that. I feel like it should be a reality at this point because it’s so humbling and cool to hear people say stuff. But I gotta see it. I appreciate everybody, but I’ve never seen it in pro wrestling where it kind of blessed me back.”
Will Ospreay said you were a huge influence for him.
“God bless that man, bro. He said a lot of cool things to me about helping him, and I see that he does it to other people too. So kudos to Ospreay, man, Ricochet, so many people, Swerve. A lot of these guys is bigging me up and saying all these great things about me. Frankie, Kazarian, bro, I love you.”
Do you think about how much longer you want to do this?
“There’s just certain days where I get confused on which way God’s pulling me to, but I think as far as wrestling, I think I’m good.”
What is Amazing Red grateful for?
“Health, faith, and the ability to help people.”
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