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Billy Gunn (@realbillygunn) is a professional wrestler with AEW and a WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss still being in amazing shape at 62 years old, if he wants one more singles title run, if he plans to wrestle into his 70s, working with his kids Austin and Colten, if DX was a greater faction than the nWo, his hidden gem match with Brock Lesnar on SmackDown, his friendship with Mike O’Hearn, who was the best person he has been in the ring with, and more!

You don’t just look like you’re in great shape at 62, you’re in great shape, period. 

“So here comes my Titan Medical plug. Everybody’s going to take this the wrong way, and it’s what it is. Everybody has their opinion. But you need help in longevity, help in health, help in nutrition, help in your fitness. And I have all that. Titan Medical is one of the leading peptide companies in Tampa that has just made me an ambassador, whatever, a sponsored athlete. So it’s not Mike [O’Hearn’s] company. Mike is also a me, Mike did it first and then I jumped on board. When you work or do what I do at a level that I do. Am I a WrestleMania five-star guy? No, I’m not anymore, and I know that, and I’ve never once said that I was, but there’s still a part of me that loves to do this. It’s not for egotistical things, it’s not for any of that. It’s because I genuinely love what I do, and I work for 1FW, which is QT Marshall’s company. It’s a Georgia company. We just had a huge show in Rome that was awesome, little Arn Anderson thing, because that’s where he’s from. I will break it here. I was in a cage, not for long, but I was in there and I touched it. But yeah, Titan Medical is one of the leading people in helping you be that way, getting you through those injuries, make you feel better. I’m not going to go on a peptide thing here, but they’re naturally found in your body anyway. As we get older, we’re just kind of losing that so we kick it back in gear for longevity, health, hair, whatever you need it for.”

It’s not just that you look good. You have agility still in the ring, like you really haven’t lost a step.

“Well, to me, I’ve lost a step, but I appreciate that. I fake it very well. I think it was, like a few months ago, I was like, getting too heavy, because I was really eating and trying to put on size for some ungodly reason.” 

What do you weigh now?

“260. 260 for me right now is really good. I could be 255 and be okay. But anything over that I start getting like, I feel it. I know the minute I start gaining weight, because I can instantly feel it, and I know what I can do and what my body feels like. But yeah, 260 is good. I was doing something. I would run, I was leaving my feet behind me, and it was driving me absolutely batty. I was like okay, this isn’t a thing. So now I’m in class running spots and stuff with every one of the students trying to figure because they all move differently. So I’m trying to figure it out, and just going, Okay, you’re too heavy and you’re just being sluggish and you’re being lazy. So I dropped some weight, and now I feel amazing.”

Do you want to wrestle into your 70s?

“I don’t. So I want to do it while I still can, and while I’m still having fun. I mean, you can ask my wife, she hates watching me, because I’m just such a goof. I’m such a goof because I just don’t have any stress anymore. There’s no stress for me to go out there and have everybody go, Oh, watch, it’s going to be an unbelievable wrestling match. They’re going to go, we’re about to have so much fun and be interactive in what we do, because that’s what he does, you know. So that’s what I’m doing. Do I want to? No, I don’t want to work until I’m 70. But is it possible? Sure, anything’s possible. But I’m getting to the point where I’m kind of slowing down a little. I think it’s because the gym is taking over my life.”

What does training look like specifically?

So my training now is I just stopped my six-day split. I went back to the five days so I could have two days off. About two weeks ago, I had to take a week off. But for me to take a week off, the gym has to happen here first, because I was playing catch-up with my body, I was really aching and I was hurting. But I said every morning I just go to the gym and it’ll go away. Sure, it goes away, but it comes right back, because I’m one. I’m not recovering as fast. So I have to put the brakes on that and realize, hey, I’m just spinning my wheels. I just need to take a week off. But that takes a couple of days of mental preparation, and my wife telling me, and then I’m going go to her and go, Hey, I’m going to take a week off.

Do you want another run at a singles title?

“No, I’m not a singles guy, I know that, and I’ve always known that. Plus, I really don’t have the air for that anymore, just being older and stuff. I guess it’s because I don’t really put an effort into that, because it’s not something I want to do. I feed better off of more chaos, and I can work better like that than I can working on my own. Can I direct a little better? Yeah, I can direct a little bit, but I can also direct in tags or trios or whatever that looks like as well. I’ve always been a tag guy, because I love the structure of how to get all these pieces together and put it together so it makes something good. Yeah, singles negative.”

What do you think of this discussion that goes on in wrestling so often of what was the better all time? Faction, DX, or the nWo?

“It’s people’s opinion, and you can have one of those, right? Of course, I say DX is number one. Kevin [Nash] is going to say nWo. They were both super impactful that literally, I don’t think, even as today, there’s not one wrestling person that doesn’t know what each one of those are. Because it was so impactful and it was so good. I know the only thing that hurt the nWo is it was so good, and then everybody jumped on. Where DX was so good, and you couldn’t get on board with, I don’t care if you had a golden ticket from Willy Wonka, you weren’t getting on that ride.”

What’s the career highlight for you? You’ve done it all, like you said. But what’s the one moment that you’re most proud of?

“Working with my kids. Above anything, and above all, is being able to work with my kids. I get all weird when I talk, because it was so good, and it was so, I don’t know, I can’t explain it, because you’re a parent, right? Every time they do something, it’s like, that’s the most amazing thing. Then they do something else, and you go, that’s the most amazing thing. My kids were awesome. They really were just amazing kids. Great in school, go to school, go to college, do all that stuff. But then, when Austin did it, it was one thing, and then Colton doing it, and then being able to be in the ring and work next to them while I yell at them when they’re working, and them going, Dad, stop it! There’s nothing that tops that. There really isn’t. I wish there was, but it ain’t getting better than that.”

Who was the best person you’ve ever been in the ring with?

“Although Eddie probably was one of them, because even though our stuff that we did wasn’t long, him, Chris Benoit, I know that’s a no, but it’s just a fact, the intensity that he was was amazing to work with. Of course, The Headshrinkers, because they had to take us for the first year. The patience and the way that they taught us, and they never got frustrated. They just knew. The cool thing was they knew what their job was, to help new guys, and they did an awesome job. I like to say that everybody that I’ve been in the ring with is good in one way or another, because I hate picking out just one thing, because that would mean that I kind of feel like I diminish everybody else that I’ve been in there with. But the most significant, of course, would be Ron and Don Harris, because they’re the ones that got me started. Then it would have to be The Headshrinkers, because they had to teach us. And they literally taught us everything that they knew in a year, you know, that made us kind of start understanding what we were doing and understanding where we had to go, and how to put stuff together and psychology and stuff, because they were stuck with us. So that would be the most significant part of my wrestling career.”

I don’t know if you know this or not, but WWE Vault just uploaded one of your matches from February 26, 2004. It was a SmackDown match with Brock Lesnar. Do you remember that? 

“So I do a little bit, and somebody sent it to me, and it’s not bad. It’s pretty good. The people don’t realize is that if he likes you, he would work with you, and me and him always got along. He is awesome. I’ve worked him a couple of times, I think that was one of the only times I really worked him on TV. But we would do some house shows together, and he was amazing. He really was and he was good because he was one that would never take over either. It was kind of like he let me kind of put some stuff together, then we kind of just kind of went where he wanted to go. That’s how stuff happens. When lead guys, and I’m talking like the most experienced one of the one that thinks he’s got to control everything and call everything and not listen, is not how you have good things. It’s okay, this is the direction we’re going. It’s not working. If you have something, give it to me, let’s go. I’m super open to go there. What’s the worst? It doesn’t work either. We just go another direction. That’s the working part of what we do.” 

What do you think is the biggest difference you’ve seen in the business now versus, say, 30 years ago? 

“Oh God, this is where I get laced. I feel it’s all about moves now. I feel it’s just moves. It’s just, you want to learn how to wrestle? Okay. I’m going to show you a bunch of moves. Okay, we have a show tonight. You want to go work it? Sure. What are you going to do? You’re going to do everything I taught you. There’s no structure to it. There’s no sense to it. There’s nothing you’re just doing all the moves that I taught you how to do in however long we have. So the problem is the people won’t know any different, other than it’s the first time that they see you. But you’re diving out of the ring, you’re landing on your head. You’re getting slammed on the apron for some ungodly reason, which seems to be a thing these days. If they took their time and did them in the middle of the ring where they’re supposed to, they get the same reaction if you do it right as they do when you get slammed on the hardest part of the ring, because now it’s cool to be killed halfway through your match. But it’s just moves now to where back then it was, yeah, there was no moves, because everything was structured so good, and the storylines were so good, that it’s where the people are at. Oh, The Rock comes out, or let’s say, Stone Cold comes out, and the place goes absolutely ballistic, right? How do you get them out of the ceiling? Oh, you punch him right in his mouth and get him down. Get him to where the people don’t want him. Is he going to get there? No. Does he know that? Yes, because Steve’s probably not a good one, because he’s just such a butt-beater upper. I don’t want to cuss on your show. So let’s go with The Rock. I’ve worked him a couple times in singles. To get the people out of the ceiling to so we can go somewhere to where you get a reaction. He’s already got a reaction, because they’re already doing all the stuff. So you punch him in the mouth, right? You put him on the sell. Now the people are down here because they’re going, Oh, now it’s come on. They’re just waiting. And the minute you spin him around, and he pops me, and I flop around like that. The people lose their minds. So now we’ve done really nothing, but got a monster reaction, because we’re just playing with the people. We’re just taking them where I want to take them. If we’re here, how much higher can they go? Nowhere. So they have to come here so I can get them back to here, so I just feel that it’s just a bunch of wrestling moves now.”

So what’s a match that you would point to and go, this is my kind of match?

“So I thought Brody King and Kyle Fletcher on our show did a great job. Brody took him out of all his stuff. Those two, Kyle and Takeshita, so is Will [Ospreay]. But I think Will, he knows so much that you can’t rope him in. But the last one that I saw that was really good like that was Brody and Kyle. Because Brody literally took everything away from Kyle every time he tried to do something, he jerked it out from under him, and never gave it to him. Then at the right moment, he let Kyle could start doing his stuff, and it was amazing of what the reaction and how that match felt do it, because I literally couldn’t stop watching it. It was that good.”

What is Billy Gunn grateful for?

“My wife, my kids and my job.”

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Fabian Aichner (@VinciWWE) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE as Giovanni Vinci. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles, CA to discuss his WWE release, getting kicked out of Imperium, his repackaged character, losing to Apollo Crews in less than 10 seconds on SmackDown, the way he was introduced by ring announcer Samantha Irvin, staying in NXT when Imperium was called up to main roster, his match with John Cena and Seth Rollins in India, and more!

You posted this photo on Instagram in March, and you basically said, new chapter, and you’re flexing, and you look like you’re ready to go. What does that new chapter look like? 

“When I got that call about a year ago, the first thing I did was, immediately after that, I thought, Okay, I’m taking a month off the gym because I’ve been going really hard. In NXT, I made the decision, okay, it’s time now to get in the best shape of my life. So I did step up my workout regimen pretty intensely. Did cardio twice a day. Worked out five days a week, wrestling three matches. I did make good progress, but you can only maintain that for so long. I just kept going, kept going, and then got called up to the main roster, so I definitely didn’t want to slow down. Yeah, it’s just one of those things where I got the call. I knew this was the first time for sure that I wasn’t going to step in the ring for three months. So I definitely gave my body the break, because I didn’t get the results that I was used to getting, my body started getting really stubborn, if I dieted, things just didn’t move as fast. So I gave my body a break, gave my mind a break. Just been resting up a little bit. I live in Vegas, so there’s always something to do. I like racing. Always been a Formula One fan, so tried a couple of spots out there, just took some trips, enjoyed the fruits of my labor and just recharged, because I didn’t want to come back too quick. I didn’t want to get into things too quick, because I didn’t want to have acid, basically. So I gave myself the time. Didn’t really have a timeline in mind of how long I was going to be out for, or whatever. But then as time went by, batteries recharged, I started feeling better and started working out again. That was a lot of fun again. And just for the first time, go by how I feel. I feel like it’s obviously when you listen to your gut, and go by how you feel, then it’s not that drag or forcing things to do. I just felt ready, that’s what I basically had in mind. I’m going to take the time that I need, and when I’m ready, I’ll be back and I’ll go all in.”

We didn’t hear from you for over a year until you posted this photo on Instagram. Was the idea to go away for a year?

“Not really, no. I just knew that after the call, because it was such a surreal feeling, man. It was like, on the one hand, it sucked that that chapter was over, because that’s what I wanted to do since I was 13 years old. But on the other hand, because it was such a roller coaster leading up to that, it felt freeing, in a way. I told a friend of mine, he asked me if I was okay. I said, ‘Yeah, man, I’m good.’ It’s almost like when you’re in school and school ends and you’re going on summer vacation, just all the weight was off because at least I knew there was no more thinking about it. And really, after that, all I did was I just knew I was taking some time. Didn’t know how much it was, and, yeah, I didn’t think about how long exactly I was going to be out for. Just like okay, we need some space. Take some time for myself, figure myself out, and yeah, enjoy life a little bit.”

How surprised were you by that call that you were getting released?

“I was and I wasn’t because, I mean, during the summer of the year previous, I wasn’t on TV, but I knew there was a plan to come back eventually. We did those vignettes and everything, but that didn’t last long, unfortunately. So after that, I noticed when some thoughts started to creep in. I tried to focus on the positive, and I always had high hopes. Like, for example, when the new year started, I know SmackDown went from two hours to three hours, and I was told, you know, there’s a quote from one of the producers, we have all the real estate in the world, there’s just not enough land. Basically, you have all the great wrestlers, there’s just not enough time on the show. So when SmackDown went to three hours, I thought, well, maybe now it’s gonna happen, maybe here’s the chance, and whatever. Then, yeah, I wasn’t needed for TV for a couple of weeks. You don’t want to hear that call. But when it happened, I can’t say that I was really surprised at it. So it was kind of a weird mix of feelings.”

A lot of people, right after their 90 days are up, they hit the Indies, or they start doing conventions. You haven’t done any of that, How do you feel about wrestling right now? 

“It’s funny, because this is what I wanted to do since I was 13 years old, and when that chapter ended, I knew I wanted to take some time away, but I feel like there’s way more things to do for me. I feel like I haven’t reached my full potential yet. I feel like some people know what I can do, but I know I can do a lot more. I just really wanted to take enough time to not come back and go in halfway. So I definitely work out, I want to wrestle again. I feel like there’s many things still to do, nothing set in stone yet, but when that opportunity comes, I know I’ll be ready for it.” 

Do you have a timeline in your own mind of when you want to have another match?

“I mean, we’ll see. We’ll see what’s coming up. I did have some talks with a couple of people, some really good talks, and we’ll see. I always believe in the timing of the universe, that everything happens for a reason. Yeah, it’s just a feeling that I got. At some point, I just felt like working out more. At some point, I just felt like dialing in my diet again, just getting more serious with cardio and all those things. I don’t have to force myself to do that. So I know when that opportunity comes, it’ll be the perfect timing. I’ll be in the perfect spot, mentally, physically, and I’m gonna kill it.”

 So if you fell in love with WWE when you were a kid, and this is the dream, this is the goal, you’re working your way up through the Indies, you finally get signed by WWE, and you’re there for eight years. Then you get that phone call that you released, that’s got to be heartbreaking?

“I mean, it did suck to know that that chapter was over. Especially because you make big sacrifices to come here. You leave your family behind, you move halfway across the world. You start out at the bottom of the ladder again, with people who have never done a roll in their life, basically, even though you’ve been wrestling for six, seven years. But you just got to not let your pride or your ego take over when it comes to that. So you go through the whole process again, eventually get to the main roster, and then it’s so weird, because I really did put a lot of effort into those vignettes, I planned out where to shoot what, where in Vegas with the guys there. I loved how the vignettes turned out. I was super happy with those, and I thought, man, here we go. This is it. This is the time, and then it just went the way it did. So, yeah, just having that thought in your mind, okay, here we go. But then it’s kind of taken away. It sucked. But like I said earlier, it was such an emotional roller coaster leading up to that that it’s okay. I do believe everything happens for a reason. So, especially in wrestling, never say never. So we’ll see what happens from here on out. But I’m more focused on the future and the present now and looking forward to it.”

Right before you got released, you were kind of repackaged. So you had these vignettes that you’re talking about. It’s like Italian elegance. You’re driving a Ferrari in Las Vegas, and then you come out and you lose to Apollo Crews in less than 10 seconds. So what was the original plan with these vignettes and where your character would go?

“I thought the plan was to get me going right away, and I didn’t find out about that till basically the day of the show. So at the end of the day, you’re a professional. Whatever the plan is, you try to make the most of it. I do have to say, as far as entrance-wise, that was my favorite entrance I’ve ever done. Because in the group, I always felt a little bit like I tried to fit in. That’s why I didn’t stand out. Whereas with that character that I did in NXT, and it worked great there, doing that on the main roster, I just felt like, Okay, I have some sort of direction, who I am, what I’m supposed to do. Was my favorite entrance, personality-wise, charisma-wise and everything, and then the plan changed the day of. Looking back now, I feel like from a business standpoint, if you look at the positives, it definitely got attention, definitely got people talking. The unfortunate thing for me is just that not more came out of it, because I feel like we could have done a lot of cool stuff with that character on SmackDown. I know Apollo and I could have tore it up in a match. We did in NXT. We did on Main Event. We have great chemistry. It was just things just kept happening. We moved to a different channel two weeks after then the next thing happened. I wasn’t on TV for a little bit. And, yeah, that’s just one of those things that are a little unfortunate. Because I saw myself actually having really good matches with the guys in the United States title picture at the time, like Melo, LA Knight, Andrade at the time. I think we could have done some cool stuff there. But, yeah, it is what it is.”

Is wrestling still the main focus for you right now? 

“Yeah, it’s been my passion since I was 13 years old. It gave me purpose in life. It was the one thing that drove me, motivated me, made me realize my dream of moving to America and doing what I do. It gave me the life that I have now, so I could never be bitter about wrestling itself. I just needed some time away, like you do sometimes. I had my first match in 2011, so 14-15, years, non-stop. I wouldn’t have made the decision myself, but the decision was made for me, and when it happened, because I was determined. When I signed with WWE, I’m WWE all the way, stick it out till the end. But when it happened, I was like, Okay, well, that’s that. I’m gonna take some time away. I’m gonna take some time for myself, and when I’m ready, I’m going back to doing the things that I love.”

How did you get on WWE’s radar in the first place for the Cruiserweight Classic?

“So I actually started out, like I said, I always watch wrestling and whatever, and I was always really into it. So I read up on backstage news the whole time. There was a page, a German website called wrestling infos, where I always read up on the results and whatever. One day I went on it and there was a picture of a guy pointing at the screen, and it said, Do you have what it takes? So I clicked on it, and it was Alex Wright, and it said Nuremberg, Germany, which was like a four-hour drive for me every time I wanted to get in the ring. But I knew he was the guy that was where I wanted to go. He was in the States. He worked for WCW for nine years, and I texted him asking if he trains people from Italy. He said, Yeah, sure, come by. I just did the four-hour drives like, 200 times, there and back, worked all week. I’m very grateful because he allowed me to be in the ring as much as I wanted. He had like, 14-hour days on Saturday and 14-hour days on Sunday, and I hung around all day. End up wrestling with him after that, and then driving home. I remember one time that a 4-hour drive turned into an 11-hour drive because I just couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. And yeah, I did that for a little bit, got on his shows eventually, because he has his own promotion there. I think my big break was when I went from wrestling once or twice a month in Germany to England, where I worked for All-Star Wrestling. Sheamus has worked for them, I think Drew, Stu Bennett/Wade Barrett. So a lot of guys work for them. You go from wrestling twice a month in Germany, maybe, if you’re lucky, to wrestling 50 matches in seven weeks, like all summer, you work once or twice a day. The promoter there, Brian Dixon, actually had some good contacts to WWE, and he was like, You got to check this guy out. I did actually have a tryout a year after I started in Munich, where WWE did a tour in Germany; they had me do a tryout, and they actually flew me into Orlando to train a week in the PC. But at the time, they weren’t really looking for [what I had]. They said they were looking for a seven-foot, 300-pound monster. So I was like, it’s all good because I’ve only been wrestling for a year, and I knew it wouldn’t hurt me to get some more experience, which is exactly what I did in England. Then I just got a message from one of the talent guys back in the day. He asked me, How much do you weigh? I tried to get big. I went from 205 to 230. He said, Can you get yourself to 205 or less? Sure, no problem. He said, Yeah, we have this tournament coming up in June. Just be ready for it. Okay, sounds good. So I did my last show in England, and the last day of the tour, I break my shin. Yes, it was three months before that tournament. I was like, man, what am I going to do now? Everything was up in the open. I had never broken my leg before. I didn’t know how long is this going to take? All the guys kept saying, Dude, I feel so sorry. I was like I think I’ll be all right, just making it. So I spent like eight weeks on a couch in England just sitting there watching wrestling matches because I didn’t want to be home, sitting in my room doing nothing. At least I had the guys that were coming back from the road, had a couple of good days there, and then just slowly started walking in England, eventually flew home, and I think six days before the Cruiserweight Classic was the first time where I started jogging a little bit. My leg kept swelling up and everything. Then, yeah, did the Cruiserweight Classic, which originally wasn’t really supposed to happen, because they thought I was German, just because I speak German naturally and Italian. I said, Well, I’m Italian, but I mean, could be cool if you have an Italian guy in the tournament too. They agreed to it, thankfully. There was actually one spot in the match where I did that double Springboard moonsault. I remember when I landed, I was like, Is my leg whole? I think we’re good. Covered the guy, finished the match, thank God.”

Your leg is still pretty much broken at that point.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s very fragile. Well, it was strange. Yeah, I lost a lot of weight because my leg got so small. I was like, Oh, well, I’m 210. 205 is gonna be a piece of cake. But then I put the muscle back on and I was 230 so I had to lose like, almost 30 pounds in three weeks.”

That’s so funny to me that you had to legit be 205 to enter the Cruiserweight Classic, even though it’s pro wrestling:

“I actually asked Brian Kendrick, because he was here before. I said, ‘Do you really think they’re going to do a shoot weigh-in?’ He said, ‘Man, I don’t know. I don’t want to tell you they’re not.’ But he’s never experienced it, but I just didn’t want to risk it. The day before, I still had to do two hours of cardio with a hoodie on and whatever, brought my own scale. I think I was, [205] would have been 93 kilos. I was 92.8 when I stepped on the scale, right on the dot. So yeah, that was actually the thing that I think really got me noticed, because Triple H saw me for the first time actually wrestling on WWE platform. William Regal was a big fan at the time. He said, You need to be here as a heavyweight. It was weird, because the tournament happened in June, and then I think they did 205 Live right after, and I didn’t hear anything for a while. So like everyone told me I did good, but we’ll see. So I kept wrestling that schedule in England again, and then I had a show in Germany that year in December, and we went out after the show, just partying a little bit. When I got back to the hotel room, I set my alarm for the next day, and an email popped up from Canyon Seman at the time, why is he texting me now? I’m getting goose bumps already. He said, William Regal and Triple H told me to put you in the hiring process. Best Christmas present ever. I couldn’t wait to tell my coach the next day. And, yeah, that’s, that’s that’s how it all started. I got my visa six months after, moved here, and got started in NXT.”

You guys were a standout tag team in NXT UK, and then NXT as well, two-time Tag Team Champions. When do you go from there to the main roster?

“Well, that all came a little bit unexpected, because we were that group in NXT, where it was the three of us. When the call-up happened, they got called up. I didn’t. So that was a bit of a mix-up. That was also a bit of a like, what’s going on here. We started at the same time, Walter came over after that, but they went up there said, you guys, do your thing. I’ll do my thing in NXT, it will all workout. But it was a little bit like, like, an avalanche of emotions at the time, because you don’t know what’s going on here. Am I not going anywhere? What’s happening? Like, do I have to move back or whatever?”

You feel like you’re being left behind?

“A little bit. Yeah, yeah, but I didn’t really know why, because we did everything together all the time. Everything went well with the matches and all that. But after three days, I had a great talk with Shawn. He’s like, Hey, don’t worry about it. We’re gonna figure it out. He’s the man. Matt Bloom as well. They were both great. And I remember three days after that, I got myself three burgers. I’m like, I’m gonna eat these, and tomorrow we go to work, show them. That’s when we came up with that character, that Giovanni Vinci character, which I had a ton of fun with. I think I did more in those three months in NXT that I had done in five, six years prior to NXT. Did promos every week, had great matches, did commentary. So that was great. And then I heard rumors about me getting called up. But you know, in wrestling, you never get too excited until it actually happens, because nothing’s ever set in stone. I mean, the debut was great, in front of 70,000 people at Clash at the Castle.”

I think the way that Samantha Irvin introduced you really helped to get you over, especially early on 

“Oh, for sure, she did an amazing job. I was actually looking forward to the introduction every time myself, like, oh, here we go. ‘Giovanni!’ She did amazing.”

Did she tell you she was going to do that? 

“No, no. Caught me off guard myself. Like, oh, that was cool.”

I’ve heard a lot of people saying that this new El Grande Americano looks a lot like Ludwig Kaiser. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but what do you think of the work that he’s doing? 

“I think he’s killing it at whatever he’s doing. I think he has a good feel for what the people want to see and what people want to get out of it, and the reaction speak for themselves.”

You had a match where it was Imperium versus John Cena and Seth Rollins. I don’t know if a lot of people know that you were in the ring with John Cena. How did that match come about?

“Man, was such a surreal moment. It was announced that Cena was going to be on that show in India. It was kind of last-minute. It was kind of thrown together, or was announced that Seth and Cena against Ludwig and I at the time, and I tell you, that was the loudest reaction I’ve ever heard in my life. That building of the floor was vibrating. It was shaking when we were standing there. He did his entrance, and then it was one of those. It’s almost like you wear a real-life VR, you know, those virtual reality things. Because he was my brother’s favorite wrestler. Growing up in 2004 2005 obviously watched him my whole life myself, and then he gets a tag, and I get a tag, okay, wrestling John Cena now, crazy moment. Obviously you want to still be professional like 99%, but that 1% in the back of your mind is like, Oh, this is cool. This is very cool.”

You had some really fun moments with Kevin Owens. So there’s this moment you’re in the ring with Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, and he’s talking about everybody in Imperium. He’s like, we never hear from this guy, what’s up with baldy? And the crowd starts chanting baldy

“Whatever can entertain the crowd is great. The fact that they got into it was surprising to me. Yeah, same thing with there’s this video out there of him at commentary, like we said, wipe the sweat off your head and you see me.”

Right after he says it, you wipe the sweat. Could you hear him? 

“No, no idea. It was just a crazy coincidence, great. I saw a couple of days after it happened. I was like, well, look at that. Like, who would have thought?”

So your 90 days would have been up, I think around May 8, 2025. Did you have conversations with AEW or TNA about doing something with them? 

“Not really. I did eventually have some good conversations. But nothing is set in stone yet. I just know that the way I’m working out now, I think I’m good to go already, and the longer it goes on, the better setup I will be. And when that opportunity comes, wherever it is, I know I’m going to go all in and I’m going to kill it, because that was the whole point of taking that time off just to completely recharge the batteries and come back fresh.”

What is Giovanni Vinci grateful for?

“My family, my health, and that I get to live my dream.”

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Becky Lynch (@BeckyLynchWWE) is a professional wrestler with WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss her time away from wrestling and her return at WrestleMania 41, her new theme song performed by The Wonder Years, having to keep Seth Rollins’ fake injury a secret, fans believing that she doesn’t put other wrestlers over, her upcoming 10th WrestleMania match against AJ Lee, auditioning for Happy Gilmore 2, her new coffee company, and more!

I have to say I’m a huge pop punk fan, so The Wonder Years doing your theme song, amazing. 

“I love it. When Dan, he first started off by telling me the lyrics. There was a few tears as well.” 

What lyrics hit you? 

“Well, the lyric about my dad, which is, ‘I talk to your ghost every night in my sleep.’ It’s a reference to my dad and, you know, he has little easter eggs about ‘they’ll rue the day’ and ‘burn it down’ and watch something better grow, like it’s all little references to my family. Yeah, so got me good. Then I heard it all together, and I was like, Oh, damn.”

How did that come together? Because not a lot of WWE Superstars get an outside band to be able to do their theme song. 

“It was a bit of a struggle. I was thinking of coming back, and I was like, you know, I just don’t feel like my entrance music represents me anymore, probably didn’t represent me for about seven years, didn’t feel it. It always felt too happy-go-lucky, so I reached out to Dan Campbell from The Wonder Years, and I was like, ‘If I can get it through, is there any chance you guys would be interested in writing me a new theme song?’ Instantly, he wrote back, yes, hell yes, and he got to work, and I was like, okay, but let me just clear it through Hunter. They have ways of doing things where they want their guys to write the song and then the other band does the cover. Dan was already too far gone, and I was already too in love with his song that it ended up being a whole thing. But we got it done. There was a lot of phone calls and a few fights. So we got it done.” 

You were already friends with The Wonder Years. How did that come about? 

“From Colby, aka Seth Rollins, my hot husband. I wasn’t really in on the pop punk scene at all. I’m mostly a 90s grunge kid and 70s rock and The Beatles and Dylan, you know, that’s kind of what I tend to listen to. He would play his music, and most of the time I was like, Oh, God, these lads with their whiny, nasally voices. Then he puts on The Wonder Years, and The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me came on. I was like, Oh, damn that, that guy’s voice, oh, this band. Then he played me more and I was like, oh, I love this guy. Then we were supposed to get married in 2020, the pandemic happened and all that. For the day that we were supposed to get married, Colby surprised me with having Dan make a cover of a song Fala Amo by Bring Me the Horizon, which is a song that Colby played me when we were first getting together, then Dan did the cover, and it was all lights out, and that became our wedding song. You may have seen on Unreal, we put the phone in a bowl, and that was the one song that we had at our wedding.”

You had some time away before WrestleMania 41:

“It was mostly like, Okay, let me just be at home. Let me enjoy my home and my child, and be there for her and take her to all her classes. Let’s have a steady life for a second. Let’s try this out. How is this? Oh, it’s very nice. Then acting roles came up. So then I was doing Star Trek, and I was doing Happy Gilmore, and then we got the pilot for movies and did that.” 

What’s the balance look like? Because it’s WWE, it’s acting, the new coffee brand. It’s being a mom. It’s also staying in shape, and it’s getting rest. So what’s the balance look like? 

“I don’t know that there is balance. Is there ever balance? I think the schedule now helps a lot. We do TV one day a week, we don’t have the live events that we used to. I mean, the beginning of this year was insane. We had a European tour. I was also filming Star Trek. We had Saudi Arabia, so that was pretty intense. But other than that, week to week is pretty easy. We’re not gone very often. We’re gone for one sleep in her eyes, and yeah, and then the other stuff, you know, you just try to make it all work, wedge it in here. I mean, I need sleep.” 

How hard was it to lie about Seth’s injury leading up to SummerSlam?

“Not hard to the public. I mean that with love for everybody, but that’s what we do. The job is acting. I’m letting you in on a story, here is the story that we were telling. To our friends and family, that was a little bit trickier. Yeah, that was the hard part.” 

So who knew?

“Roux, she knew. A few of our friends and family. I let my mom know, she wasn’t gonna tell the dirt sheets. His mom knew, yeah, but the worst part was I had people texting me. Bianca was texting me. She was like, ‘I think Colby got hurt. Do you want me to go check on him?’ I was like, ‘Ah, no, that’s okay. I’m sure he’ll text me back whenever he is ready.’ She was like, ‘Oh, are you sure? Oh, wait, no, I think this might be work now, never mind. I’ll stop asking.'”

Do you share the same disdain for AJ Lee that your husband has for CM Punk?

“Not on that level, I just want her gone. To me, she’s like a fly I gotta get rid of. Get out of here. Nobody wants you. Nobody wanted you back. Be gone. You weren’t here for me when I was wrestling, when I was coming up. So I don’t want you now. Saying she’s proud of me. She wasn’t proud of me when she left. She was scared of me. That’s what happened. She was scared of me. She saw it in my eyes. She saw the fire. She went bye-bye, so long. But then, you know, she didn’t go ahead and say crap about me for years. It’s a little bit different.”

Who has the home-field advantage in Las Vegas? 

“Oh, that’s me. Because WrestleMania is my home. This is my 10th WrestleMania, which makes it an anniversary, which makes it special. Started WrestleMania 32, here we are, 42. I missed one because of the child.”

Was 32 special because it was your first one?

“Yeah. But also what that match meant. We got rid of that stupid butterfly belt that AJ Lee is so proud of, got rid of that crap, and we brought in the women’s title. So it was really ushering in a new era. I know we say that a lot, but that one really was. That was a game changer for women, the way that they spotlighted that match, and dare I say, best match on the card, in front of 100,000 people.”

You recently said that this contract you’re on right now is your final contract. This is your final run.

“I mean, I didn’t say it with such assuredness as you did, right? I said it’s probably my last one. I think I said this is likely my last one. That’s not a sure [thing], but, yeah, no, it might be, could be.”

What makes you feel that way? 

“I don’t know, it could be longer, but you never want to outstay your welcome. Although, I’m in my prime, I can go, plenty left in the tank. But I also have my daughter at home, and maybe I’ll want another one, and at some point, you have to just be happy with what you’ve done. But again, the love of what I do, that’s not going anywhere, but there’s a lot that goes in, around it and behind it. I suppose you never want to just leave spinning your wheels. You always want to move up. But again, that’s also not true, because sometimes I just go, what do I want to do? What would I think is fun? Maybe nobody else will, but this is what I want to do, and this is what I’m happy doing.”

Well, what do you want to do?

“I just want to tell good stories, have good matches. Want to make sure that the business is better when I leave it than how I found it. I know that what I have done is prove that women could be the biggest stars in this company, and they are and can be. I think sometimes we need to fight to make sure we’re positioned as such, because you can be a huge name, but if you’re not positioned in the main event. It’s very easy when we condition the audience, this person’s the main event, this person’s the main event, this person’s the main event, we see them as the main event. When we don’t condition the audience, then it becomes a little bit harder. And for the last few years, I think we’ve, for the most part, those main events have gone to two, maybe three, four dudes constantly. I think we need to change that again. I think we need to. I don’t know what that means, whether that means fighting a bit more, whether it’s me or somebody else. Do you think we need to get our backs up a little bit again?” 

There was this idea online that you don’t put people over. I’d like to go through the list of all the people. Liv Morgan, Bianca Belair, Rhea Ripley, Maxxine Dupri, Zoey Stark, Lyra Valkyria, so I don’t know where this idea comes from. 

“I don’t know. I think that’s when you’re the top of the card, it happens to everybody. Nobody is unscathed. It was Sami Hogan. It might still be Sami Hogan. It’s Cody Hogan, it’s Roman Hogan, Seth Hogan, we’re all Hogan, which say what you will about the man, one of the biggest stars to ever exist. So, yeah, I think it becomes this thing. People don’t understand how creative happens and if they see somebody that is in a preferable spot for a long period of time, they go, okay, that’s because that person is politicking and trying to hold everybody down. So, you know, it’s just people don’t know how it happens, and they don’t know what goes into it, and that’s fine, you know? They’re entitled to have their opinions. I want you to have your opinions, go nuts with your opinions. But now I’m just gonna do what I do, and how you feel about me is how you’re gonna feel about me.”

What’s been the most fun you’ve had going toe to toe with someone on the mic? 

“Oh gosh, I don’t know. Bianca comes to mind. But really, anybody, even this absolute joke, Loser Lee, Nasty Nikki, seeing Loser Lyra come out of her shell. Even watching Moody Maxxine progress, all of them. Getting to see them bring something out of themselves, because they’re like, I don’t want to be walked over here. She might do that, but they step up to the plate and they bring it, and I love it.”

How has your time on Happy Gilmore two and Star Trek helped you as a performer? 

“I don’t know. I think it’s all just transferable skills. I mean, they both help each other, but it’s just a transferable skill of being able to perform and tell a story and what’s your role and know your lines.”

How was your audition for Happy Gilmore?

“Oh, yeah, that was a fun one. They gave me a kayfabe script and it was two different roles. So they gave me a role of some guy, like, I had to play this guy and then this girl. They just said, just do both of them. All right, what would this character be like? This character would totally be from the manosphere. Yeah, okay, all right.”

You got to wrestle with and against Trish Stratus

“That was awesome. That cage match was one of my favorite matches. Trish Stratus, I mean, I’m the greatest female wrestler of all time, it’s not just me saying it, other people are saying it. Sports Illustrated says it, The Bleacher Report says it. But, you know, she is always going to be in that list of the greatest female wrestlers of all time, and she’s out there taking superplexes off the top of a cage! Good on you. I’m like, you got kids, two of them. She’s dedicated, man. She loves this, and she wanted to put her all into it.”

I feel like Molly Holly could probably still wrestle.

“Can still bust out that Molly Go Round. I’ve hit it a couple of times. She’s let me know it needs improvement. I don’t do it like she does. I’m not really a high flyer. As Mick [Foley] said, can’t jump high, but I can jump off of high things.”

What is Becky Lynch grateful for?

“My family, my husband, and nature.”

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Stephanie Vaquer (@Steph_Vaquer) is a professional wrestler with WWE and the current Women’s World Champion. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas, NV to discuss winning the Women’s Championship at Wrestlepalooza and celebrating with her father afterwards, her upcoming championship defense against Liv Morgan at WrestleMania 42, her new finisher and new entrance theme, how Booker T reacts to The Devil’s Kiss on commentary, possibly turning heel, how she has improved her English and more!

What have these last six months or so been like since I saw you?

“Many things happened. I’m always saying my life is like a crazy TV show. When I have a dream or something, in my head, it always happens differently, but better. So the last six months, the last year, was amazing.” 

So how does it feel going into your first WrestleMania, and not just your first WrestleMania, but you’re going into this match defending your world title?

“Yeah, I remember, one year ago, I was in the WrestleMania arena. I saw all the arena, and I said, one day I really want to be here. But in that moment, I never think I can do that so fast. This year, I’m not just there with the title, I’m with my WWE Women’s Championship. So it’s amazing. It’s more than my dream.” 

What a special moment when you won this championship. It was at Wrestlepalooza, and your dad is sitting there in the front row, and on top of that, it’s his birthday. Couldn’t be a better birthday present for him? 

“No, but this is amazing, because that’s a long history. Before Wrestlepalooza, [it was] supposed to be I go to Clash in Paris. I was really, really sick, so they cancel my participation in Clash in Paris. I’m so, so sad. So after, WWE said, Don’t worry, we have iced the story for you. Wrestlepalooza is a big event; it’s the first Wrestlepalooza, so I’m excited. One week before, I get sick again, I feel like sick again. So medical say, Okay, I’m sorry, but you can’t go to Wrestlepalooza. I already have the ticket, the flight for my dad and everything and like that. That was so hard in that moment, but I talked with Triple H, and I talk with many people in WWE and say, No, I’m ready. I’m not sick. I feel good. I can do that. Please just let me go, I can do that. Finally, I was there, and that was amazing, because it’s not just Wrestlepalooza, big event with IYO SKY, my dad was there and my dream that Women’s World Champion.”

You’ve had this championship now since September, you’ve had some amazing matches. I want to start off with this one that you’ve had with IYO SKY. You guys stole the show in Indianapolis at Wrestlepalooza. What was the idea putting that match together? Because it was just a banger.

“I really enjoyed that a lot, because I respect IYO so much. She’s amazing. She’s really so professional. I really enjoyed that match. It was an amazing match. I always say, I’m not just the Women’s World Champion, I won with IYO SKY, the best, one of the best in the world. So it’s like, for me, it’s really special. I respect IYO SKY so much. I remember after that show, many people say, Yeah, you really make that show amazing, because that match the more important match that day. I remember Randy Orton saying you made Wrestlepalooza, because that was the best match.”

Why do you feel like you have so much great chemistry with IYO SKY?

“I don’t know. I think maybe because I trained in Japan. So I know the Japanese style and language. Not perfect, but we can have good communication, and we can understand that the style. We have many, many things in the same style. So I think for that reason, we can have really good chemistry in the ring.”

The promos you’ve been cutting in Spanish are great, and even if someone doesn’t understand what you’re saying, they understand the passion that you’re speaking with. I think that’s the great thing about it. Even if the audience doesn’t speak Spanish, they’re like, oh, I can tell she’s getting angry, or she’s getting emotional, or whatever the case may be. Is it easier for you to cut a promo in Spanish?

Yeah, because, I mean, many people on social media sometimes say she cut a promo in Spanish because she can’t in English. No, I can do it, but if WWE want it in Spanish, for me, it’s better because I’m Latina. I love my language, and I love when people can understand that, and I love people can know about me, about my language, and I feel different. I mean, when I speak in Spanish, I can feel different, because if I speak another language I need to think about the translation to say it. It’s not the same when I say in Spanish, just say in Spanish. I really enjoy the promo in Spanish, and I can do in English too. But I love that mix between Spanish and English promo.”

You made Liv Morgan cry with one of your promos in Spanish, yeah?

“But you know what? I think maybe, I don’t know why, but I think maybe crocodile tears, fake. Maybe because she’s a really good actress. So I don’t know if Liv is sometimes fake crying.”

When Liv Morgan won the Royal Rumble, she had the ability to go after your championship or after Jade Cargill’s championship. How did you feel when she chose you and your Women’s World Championship?

“Really happy. I love that. I am sure we can have a good match in WrestleMania, and I really hope Liv work hard, because we have a big responsibility in WrestleMania. I’m happy. I’m really happy with this history, with this match.”

How do you feel about your new entrance theme?

“I like it. I love my old song. But, you know, many issues, so we need a new song. I just hope people can understand that.”

How do you feel when people say that you’re the best wrestler on the planet right now?

“I don’t want to believe that. Because I tell you this, if I think I’m the best, I’m still learning, and I don’t want that. Humble, I think that’s important always. Yeah, I feel like I always try to be better than before, just me, against me or with me. But, yeah, I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to think about that.”

Your new finisher is a little bit like AJ Styles’ spiral tap? 

“One time he said to me, oh, it’s like my move. I’m like, Oops. And he say, No, you look better. And I say, No, I can’t believe you say that. I love him.”

You had quite the moment with Rhea Ripley. You guys did the double Devil’s kiss, timed out perfectly, too.

“That was so funny. She’s so nice. She asked me first, I have an idea. I’m like, yeah. She said, “It’s okay for you? She asked me. I say, of course, I mean, it’s an honor. And she said, can you show me how? And I say, Yeah, sure. She does it perfectly.” 

The move itself is great, but how much do you think Booker T really helped to get that move over?

“You know what? Before WWE, I did that move for a long time. But when I did that move before WWE, was little different than now. When I sign with WWE, I think, Okay, I want to stop doing that move for many reasons. I think sometimes people take that move different ways, and I don’t like that. In NXT one day, and we were training, and I showed that move, and the coach is saying, No, that’s good, people know that move and people like that move. I’m thinking yeah, but I don’t know why I don’t like it anymore. I don’t want to do that move because I hate what people say, it’s just because that move and like no people can sometimes understand that move, and I’m gonna start to do it again. I feel good because Booker T make that move so people love this move, so I’m starting to love this move again, because Booker T make me feel like that.” 

In 2025 you won the Slammy Award for breakout star of the year. What did being called the breakout star mean for you?

“It’s great because many, many different things happened at that time. I never believed that can happen. So in that moment they say, and I didn’t know in that moment. Wait what? People say that? And they say yes, and I’m so excited, because when I came to WWE, I worked really hard. Istill work really hard every day. So that kind of thing made me feel like, okay, people can see how hard I work here.”

Do you remember getting that call that you were going to the main roster? 

“I remember because when I was in NXT, I love NXT. I felt at home. I remember many people say, okay, many people are waiting for you on Raw, on main roster, but at the same time Shawn Michaels is like, we need you here, and we want you here. At the same time, I want to stay here, but I want to go for main roster. In that moment, I didn’t feel very good, because I’m still learning, and my English was not good. Now it’s better, not perfect, but better. Sometimes I feel like, no, I need more time. But at the same time no, I talked to myself and okay, I need to be brave and just do it. So I feel good, because people on Raw and main roster made me feel so good. Made me feel at home too. Many different challenges and big challenges.”

What is Stephanie Vaquer grateful for?

“The support for all my people, health and I don’t have injuries.”

Quotes have been edited for clarity.

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Liv Morgan (@YaOnlyLivvOnce) is a professional wrestler with WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas, NV to discuss winning the Women’s Royal Rumble after being in the match every year since it began, the upcoming WWE Women’s World Championship match against Stephanie Vaquer, her return from injury at Survivor Series and her low blow John Cena, why she believes she and Dominik Mysterio are the greatest couple in WWE history, her memorable NXT debut and much more!

This is your eighth WrestleMania. How’s that feel?

“Iconic. We’re just going, and we’re just getting better matches every single year.”

Do you feel the pressure going into this one?

“Not right now, and not in a bad way. I don’t know. I feel like since I’ve come back from my injury, I’m very much just trying to stay in the moment and be present. Obviously, WrestleMania is heavy on my mind, but I’m not feeling any anxiety or pressure yet. I’m just kind of taking everything day by day and just preparing as best as I can. So no, I don’t feel pressure right now in this moment.”

What happened with this injury, and did you immediately know something?

“Yeah, I just took a weird fall, tried to brace myself, which is stupid. As soon as it happened, I knew, just because you can’t feel anything. But first of all, it’s like such an intense pain, then it just goes away, and then you can’t feel anything because your shoulder is just not connected. So yeah, I knew. I rolled out the ring. I tried to pop it back in. Medical came and tried to pop it back in, and it was kind of just like, I can’t continue, I can’t do anything else. So I had to throw in the towel, which I hated. I think I tried to be really optimistic until my MRI news, I was like, I think I’m okay, but I had done the same thing two years prior. So I knew it wasn’t okay, but I didn’t really want to speak it into existence.”

What a return at Survivor Series. The look on your face just sold that moment so perfectly.

“I don’t even know how I did that. My eyes, I was like, Whoa, dilated. I must have tapped into something right there. I don’t know. But yeah, it was so iconic, and I couldn’t have written a better return, and I mean that so wholeheartedly. I couldn’t, first of all, I would not even have come up with that myself that was so much more grand and special to me than anything I could have thought of myself. So I was just so happy and honored.”

Walk me through winning the Royal Rumble, and what that moment meant, eliminating Tiffany Stratton

“I’ve been in every single Royal Rumble since we started doing these in 2018. I think myself and Natalya are the only women that can say that at this point. I’ve had every position in that match. I’ve come out first, I’ve come out last. I’ve had the fastest elimination time. I’ve had the time for the shortest elimination. To finally be the bride and not the bridesmaid this year, and not only that, but to solidify myself a WrestleMania spot where I was able to pick a champion of my choosing. None of that is lost on me. Even 11 years in, none of that is lost on me. So I don’t know, I kind of felt like how I felt when I won the Money in the Bank match. Just kind of like, overwhelming awe and gratitude and it just being so surreal that all I can do was just look out into the audience, just because I wanted to really remember that feeling and try to, like, I said, just be really present in the moment. So it was a dream come true.”

You are on a whole new level over the last two or three years. Do you recognize it too? 

“For sure, yeah, I’ve been saying, ever since the Liv Morgan Revenge Tour, I feel like I’ve just, been able to tap into something else. I think I just really needed something to sink my teeth into, and that was that for me. Then I feel like I just understood everything better after that.”

Then you and Dom being paired together leveled both of you up. What is it about that chemistry that works so well?

“I think, ultimately, we just understand the assignment. I feel like the fans love to hate us, or they hate to love us. It’s such an intriguing, complex, messy, wholesome, love story that we haven’t seen for a while, and I feel like the audience really loves that. I think, honestly, we’re just iconic. I know I say that word a lot, but we’re just iconic together. I think we are the greatest couple in the history of WWE. I’m not just saying that. I mean that wholeheartedly. We’re better than Becky and Seth, we’re better than AJ and CM Punk. We’re better than Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth. I stand on that. I feel like we’ve resurged couples in WWE. What couples were couples before Dominik and I? Now you have tons of people coupling up, trying to do what we do, but they just can’t.”

I feel like fans are so used to seeing you in this role now, but if we go back to your NXT debut, Tyler Breeze is making his entrance, and you’re a crazed fan who jumps out and jumps on him.

“I guess I’ve always been a little bit crazy, huh?”

What was your gimmick even at that time?

“I don’t think I had one. I think that was my very first feature on WWE TV, and I think they just wanted to have someone obsess over Tyler Breeze, so they chose me and I was like, okay. It was just very, we’re gonna give you a little spotlight on this takeover I just started. I probably was there for like, two months maybe. So I was surprised. I was like, okay, yeah, I totally will do it. I just got a phone call while I was at home, ‘Come to rehearsal,’ and I was like, why? And they’re like, ‘We have something for you.’ I was just like, okay, and it was just that. Then I think I was also in his entrance a couple of months later.”

So how did you become Liv Morgan?

“I walked into work one day and they were like, ‘Okay, you’re either Liv Morgan or Liv Gallow, pick.’ I was like, oh. I had known we had Luke Gallows at some point in time there, he wasn’t employed in that moment in time when I was there. But I had known of him and his history. So I was like, I’ll be Liv Morgan, and that was really it. I never really liked Morgan, now I like it. But I remember, first time signing an autograph, I was like, I’m just gonna sign Liv, and that’s all I’ve done. That just stayed with me my whole career. Only because I didn’t like Morgan.”

Do you have a favorite moment from the last 11 years? One that you come back to, one that maybe replays in your head.

“No, and not in a bad way. But no, I don’t think that there’s a moment that stands out to me multiple times. I just feel like my career as a whole, I guess I think of so many moments in my career as a whole. I just feel like, I don’t know, I’m just so grateful, really, I’m just so f*cking grateful. I don’t know how else to put it, I just feel blessed. I feel lucky. I feel like I’m living the life of my dreams.”

You were on the receiving end of one of Bianca Belair’s hardest, loudest hair whips ever. How long did it take for that to heal up? 

“I had a scar for quite a while. Honestly, I haven’t looked at it in a bit. I still think I have a very bit of a tail end mark still. Also my back too. I have a scar on my back from some injury I had taken from the Elimination Chamber. So yeah, it scarred me up pretty well. But honestly, that’s like one of my favorite matches ever. That was one of my favorite matches ever, and like the final two with Bianca and I is one of my favorite moments. I feel like the audience really didn’t know who was going to take it. I think just that Chamber specifically in and of itself, with Jade and Naomi. I just think it was so well done. I think that was like one of the best Chamber matches, in my opinion, for the women.”

What is Liv Morgan grateful for?

“My family, my job and my health.”

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Paul Wight (@PaulWight) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW and known for his time in WWE and WCW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss how much longer he intends to wrestle, the amount of times he has turned face or heel throughout his career, working with The Rock, being cast as Captain Insano in The Waterboy, a hilarious Arnold Schwarzenegger story after starring in Jingle All The Way, the scary stretcher spot with Rey Mysterio, Floyd Mayweather breaking his nose for real before their WrestleMania match and more!

So are you feeling good now?

“I’m feeling real good. I think my main thing now is I understand there’s a short window left, and listen, I’m not in any way, shape or form delusional that I’m going to go out and compete for championships and pull the wagon, those days are done. Also, in fairness to the younger talent that’s digging and striving now, they don’t need to see my ass every week, taking up TV time and ring time. There’s nothing I can do that’s going to make my career any bigger or better. All I can do is enjoy some of the last years that I have under contract with AEW and hopefully have some fun with some of the younger talent and teach them some of the lessons that have been passed down to me and just, you know, have a little bit of fun. I’m in a really good spot. I got a good boss that believes in me, supports me, and gives me an opportunity to be a part of the business.”

Do you have a number in mind for how much longer you want to keep doing this?

“It’s funny, with wrestling, I think for me to get back in the ring and compete, I’m going to have to be a certain level. I’ll never be what I was. Got two fake knees and two hips. The proprioception is different. The connection between your joints is different. You feel different as an athlete, so I have to accept what am I now, and does that enhance the product that I’m doing? Sure, I’m smart enough and old enough. There are certain things that I can do that will still give a little kickback to nostalgia, will still look like a big, dangerous giant that is my character and teach. But at the same time, if it looks like, oh, put a bullet in [him], well, I’m not going to do that. So that’s what all this hard work now is, okay, what’s the one thing that I can really control? That’s conditioning and weight. I don’t need to be 500 pounds anymore. I need to be about 350.”

What were you at your very heaviest? 

“537. But I’m doing it right. It’s not rocket science, I’ve tried to shortcut so many ways with it. This gimmick, we’ll do carb cycling, and we’ll do keto, and we’ll do this. Dude, it comes down to the same thing. You have to take in less calories than you burn, and it takes 3,500 calories to burn a pound of fat. So in a week, I have to at least minimally create a 3,500-calorie deficit. Right now, I’m almost a 7,000-calorie deficit a week, so that puts me right at a pound and a half, two pounds a week. It’s slow. It sucks. You look worse before you look better. There are some days I get in the gym and I’m like, Oh, all right, something’s happening. And then, you know, a couple of pounds change, I go, wait, I went down in weight and look worse. WTF? But that’s just part of the cycle. Your body changes and grows. And unfortunately, fat is not targeted. It’s like, okay, yeah, well I’ve got two, three abs on one side. They’re coming in really good. Then I got one side that’s just smooth. It’s like the other side didn’t show up.” 

What’s the thing that you’ve been most proud of in your career?

“I would honestly have to say respect of the guys that I worked with. I never effed anybody over behind their back. I never intentionally hurt anybody. I was always careful with them, and guys that would come up and tell me that they enjoyed working me, that it was easy working with me, that meant a lot, because it wasn’t that way in the beginning. In the beginning, I was too athletic, I was too strong, guys were scared, they didn’t want to help. As the business went along, and I got better and seasoned and trustworthy. That means a lot. I have guys now that will still call me and, just good buds that call me, and we laugh about old stuff, and they tell me what’s going on with them. That means a lot to me. It does. I got a few guys. I’ve been in a group text chat with a couple of guys for going on 16 years, something like that. It’s pretty cool. It’s nice to have that you made a difference in other talent’s lives, other co workers lives, you meant something to them. I think that that means a lot to me, and I’m always grateful, of course, for the fans, you know, because, I mean, I wouldn’t be anywhere without them. But just as a personal note, I think the respect to the guys that I worked with means a lot.”

Your size is obvious, but I think your athleticism gets slept on sometimes

“You know I used to jump over the top rope. You know why I stopped doing that? Because Vince fined me 500 bucks for doing it.” 

What do you mean? 

“Because that’s not how giants move. He was in a different mindset. That was the thing that I was battling. Vince had Andre. Vince wanted Andre. ‘Andre ruled the locker with an iron fist. Andre did this, and Andre did that…’ I’m not Andre. I’m not a raging alcoholic and I’m not a mean person. Don’t get me wrong, if you talk to Woods and Big E, they’ll say that I’m grumpy, but that’s just from traveling. I’m not really that grumpy person. But I think he was always struggling with that. Everyone had an opinion of how I should work. Some people wanted me to work like Andre. When I was younger, I had so much athleticism, I was like, oh, I need to show this. I need to show this. And then it was like, No, take it away. I had Hogan call me. Rest in peace. I had Hogan call me in Japan. I threw a drop kick in Japan off the top rope and hit Yasuda with it. I got to my room, there was a blinking light in my hotel, and the message says, ‘Please call Mr. Bollea when you get to your room.’ Oh, hell, they didn’t even say Hulk. It’s Mr. Bollea. I’m in trouble. So I called Terry collect from Japan back then, ‘Brother, did you just do a drop kick off the top rope in Japan?’ I went, ‘Yeah, I did.’ He just goes, ‘Brother, you ever do that again, I’ll never work with you.’ Click. Because there were guys who wanted Andre. I wasn’t Andre. I wasn’t Kane or Taker either. Those guys are tremendous athletes like Kane and Taker, two of the best big men I’ve ever seen in the business. In my opinion, they’re two of the best big men ever. So I wasn’t them either. I was kind of a weird hybrid. So we tried to find along the way.”

How was it working with The Rock? 

“Easy, other than the fact that he wouldn’t look at me when he punched me. Rock used to love to tell the story of me being on one knee and him being the same height with me on one knee. So he would spread his legs out really wide when he’s throwing those punches. And he loved that visual. Here’s this giant on one knee, and here’s The Rock. But most of the time he’s looking at himself punching me on the Titantron. It’s like, Hey, if you looked at me, you might not potato me every time. But no, I’m just breaking his balls. He was great. Rock was always fun to work with, and he always knew what Rock was gonna do. Rock was gonna pop the crowd. He’s gonna make fun. Just sell for him. I used to love to sell for rock making fun, like, ‘Somebody got a haircut.’”

It’s become an observation of how many times you turned face or heel

“Arn Anderson told me, ‘The dumbest thing you ever did is learn how to work.’ So any minute, I was able to be a good opponent for what we were doing. I knew that me, personally, I don’t think I should ever have been champion. You don’t need a giant to be a champion. You need a giant to be an obstacle for the upcoming champion. You need somebody, something, a wall, a mountain, something that has to be overcome so that the next talent can be on its way. There’s a damn good living to be made in that position. I think the last time I got the title was just because I had been five or six years in title matches all the time, hadn’t won the damn thing. ‘Well, he’s been in here while, we might want to put it on him, so get some validity out of it.’ But I was okay with that. I enjoyed that, because I look back at my career now, I got to help create some big, big stars. I was working early with Roman and working early with Cody. There are a lot of talents that I had a great [time with], Kofi and Woods and Cesaro. Big moment, Cesaro at WrestleMania, those are all good moments for me. I always understood that I’m not, and this is no way am I putting myself down. I’m not a leading man, I’m not Rock, I’m not Stone Cold. I’m not John Cena. I’m not the leading guy, I’m the funny sidekick, or I’m Thanos, the villain. That’s where I fall in, and that’s okay.”

It’s great to hear the perspective of why you turn face or heel so many times. If you were working a heel, you’re a babyface. If you’re working a babyface, you’re a heel. Yeah, you’re trying to make them look good. 

“That’s the whole name of the game. My philosophy is different. What I took to the business and brought to it, not that it’s any super algorithmic formula that’s going to guarantee success. I looked at what I brought to the table, and what are my responsibilities? Get the match over, get my opponent over, and the third thing is going to happen, I will get myself over. I didn’t know how to do those things early in the beginning, because it was, oh, do I just go out, get myself over? Do I do this? Just figuring out how to respond on things, just a couple of little tweaks, and then also trusting the other talent, and talking to them, explaining to them what we’re doing. And once you explain to guys now, if we do this right, and we build this here, this will get a bigger reaction, and then guys get crazy, like your buddy, Rey.”

The stuff on the stretcher is crazy! 

“I hate that spot! That gives me nightmares. That went so bad. Oh, that went terrible because it was my idea, because Rey was tied in it, and then I thought I’d rib him in the afternoon, whereas I’ll just pick him up scare him. Oh, I can [pick him up]. This isn’t that tough. So what about swinging the pole? My God, that’ll look crazy. But the whole thing was, I was gonna swing him on the pole, swing him on the pole again, and I was gonna shove him back in the ring. Somewhere, somebody before us, because it sure as hell wasn’t me, the guys used to put this conditioner crap on their hair. And sometimes it would get on the ropes, and it makes your hands so slimy, like even if you grab the top rope, getting out of the ring, your hand just comes right off. So when I swung Rey into that pole, that thing popped right out of my hands, like it squeezed, like a hard-boiled egg or something. It just popped right out, then I saw Rey go, and I went, Oh, I just killed Rey. Oh, Jesus. So I’m freaking out on the inside, but we’re still doing our thing. He’s moving. Oh god, they’re putting him in the ambulance. Oh my god. So I ran back to the locker room, grabbed my clothes, threw them in the car, and drove to the hospital in my rental car, because I’m thinking, man, if Rey’s seriously f*cked up, I’m done. I’m quitting. I’m done. Because I really cared about taking care of the other guys. I get there and Rey sits in the hospital bed with his hands behind his head, just chilling. ‘Hey, man, that was good, huh?’ I’m like, ‘You’re okay?’ [He says] ‘Oh yeah, man, I’m fine.’ I’m like, ‘You know what I went through driving over here worrying?!’ Rey used to love in the house shows when he worked, he used to love to sit on the top turnbuckle and have me chop him in the chest. And he would bump from the top turnbuckle to the floor, and it looked like he got assassinated. There’s a loud smack, and then boom, there’s no more Rey. He just disappears and goes down. Arn Anderson was the agent. Arn said, ‘You know, when I see you do that to Rey, I want to call the police on you.’ It’s not me. It’s his idea. That’s not me doing that. That’s Rey. That’s getting me in trouble.”

Captain Insano was legendary:

“One take. And that was just me blatantly ripping off Hulk because I wasn’t even going to do it. They were doing interviews at Orlando and I heard Jim Duggan had gone and read for it. I was like, Oh, well, Duggan will get it. He’s amazing. Captain Insano, Jim Duggan, yeah, he’ll get it. Then the casting director, she saw me, ‘Would you please just come read?’ I was like, Sure, okay. So I just took the verbiage and did Hogan, ripped him off, and then she said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s what we’re looking for. That’s it. Congratulations. You’re Captain Insano.’ I’m like, Okay, what did I just do? I didn’t know. Funny thing about Adam Sandler, too, that whole group, his whole crew, dude, they’re so amazing. They were so nice to me and Adam’s mom. I would run into them at the Super Bowl, this little Jewish lady comes up and she grabs my hand and she says, ‘You’re in a movie with my son.’ I said ‘I was?’ [She said] ‘Yes, yes, my son, Adam.’ Oh, you’re Adam Sandler’s mom. Yes, ma’am, I sure was. ‘You’ve got to come say hello to Adam.’ So she held me by my hand and took me over to where Adam’s people were at the Super Bowl. And she’s like, ‘This is Adam’s big friend Paul. He’s a pro wrestler.’ But she was so darn sweet, you know? And Adam was like, Hey, man. I said, Dude, it’s awesome. But all those guys were super cool. And that was a great, great moment. And then I did Jingle All the Way.” 

I love that every Christmas we get to see you in Jingle All the Way. 

“I’m pretty proud of that. It was a lot of fun. I had a good time on that set, hanging out with Arnold. Again, I shot myself in the foot on that movie, too. So I’m sitting around, we’re waiting on a lens for the warehouse scene, and I guess it was like a million dollars to rent this lens, and there’s only two of them in LA and the original crew that had it rented was six hours late, and our production is held. Anyway, I don’t know how those things worked, but apparently it was a big hoodoo, and a lot of producers are mad and everything. So I’m just sitting around in my Santa suit chilling, you know, I’m sitting next to the little monitors and stuff. This guy comes in like a jogging suit, short hair, round glasses, like he’d gone for a run, obviously, to work out some stress. So he sits down, and I thought he was a sound guy. I didn’t know who he was, the number one rule I learned, everybody’s important. Be careful who you talk to. So I’m sitting here, I’m like, ‘Hey, can you believe how much f*cking money they waste doing this sh*t. Really? A million dollars on a lens, whose f*cking dumb idea was that?’ He said, ‘I know it’s crazy, you know, some of these shots are just sometimes got to have it.’ Yeah, it makes me want to be in the lens business, whatever my stupid conversation was. He goes, ‘Hi, I’m Christopher Columbus.’ [The director]. Yeah, the guy that’s making all these decisions. You went for a run because you’re so pissed because production is being held up because you don’t have your lens? Yeah. And then hanging out with Arnold, which was great.” 

How was he on set? 

“He was awesome. At one point, he was supposed to hook my suspenders in one of those hooks, and it was supposed to yank me through the warehouse. But they couldn’t figure out how to rig it up. So while I’m hanging the harness, I’m just hanging there, my feet off the ground. He slaps me in the nuts and goes, pay attention. I’m like, Oh! I’m swinging. You know, it’s fun, guy sh*t. So then we were doing a shot where Verne Troyer was supposed to get zip-lined when I punched him off Arnold’s back. But they were trying to figure out how to do the close-up without getting the wires and the harness and all that stuff. So I said, I can just stand off camera and chunk him. I can do it safely, he’s like, 40 pounds, yeah, I got it. So the part where poor Verne Troyer hits the toy boxes, I’m off camera, like this, holding him by his little Santa suit, like this, and they go, Okay. Meanwhile, Verne Troyer is mad as sh*t because I treated him like a pillow. You know what I mean? He was a big fan of mine, so he went from talking to me every day to not talking me to the rest of the rest of the entire shoot. So all right, well, learned a lesson there.” 

“I have a story for you about Mr. Schwarzenegger. I felt like Arnold and I bonded on Jingle All the Way. I had met a childhood hero. We talked about cigars, we talked about Andre, I felt like I know Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can call Arnold Schwarzenegger at least an acquaintance, and quite possibly a friend. A couple of years go by, doing something, Arnold’s there. I come up. ‘Hey, Arnold.’ He looks at me, ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger, nice to meet you.’ Oh sh*t. He doesn’t remember me. Wow, that sucks, but hey, I get it. He’s Arnold. Who am I at the time? Then some time goes by. Meanwhile, I’m getting a little bit more famous, a little bit more recognizable. I’m starting to understand that people don’t forget me. Run into him again. ‘Hey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, nice to meet you.’ I’m like wow, he really doesn’t remember meeting me. Okay, well, it’s Arnold, you know, busy dude. Lot going on. So now he comes to WWE Raw. I think he’s the Governor at the time, actually, because he had security. So I went by to say hi to Arnold. Again, I’m still looking for that, ‘Oh, I remember you.’ We bonded. Dude, really? So I go in. I talked to the security, says, ‘Oh, Big Show. You want to say hi to Arnold?’ I said, Yeah, man, absolutely. So he’d open his door. I go in the dressing room. Joe Manganiello’s there. Meet Joe. Joe and I became fast friends. We had D and D, just a good dude. So Arnold’s in a conversation. Arnold turns around, looks right at me, goes, ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger, nice to meet you.’ I’m like, Oh, damn. Really? Now this is four times you’ve met me. I get if you don’t remember my name, but now you don’t remember me. Okay, didn’t sell. Even Joe’s looking at me like, oh, that’s kind of rough. Even Joe goes, ‘Weren’t you in Jingle All the Way?’ I’m like, Yeah. All right, man, I gotta get to work. I’m pissed. So now this is going on. I’m on the wall in Gold’s Gym in Venice. I’m on the frickin wall, okay. I know he’s walked by and seen that picture. I know he has. So I see Arnold. He’s walking I just went, ‘Hey, what’s up, Arnold?’ He stops, turns around, sticks out his hand, and goes, ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger, nice to meet you.’ I’m like this over dramatic, like it’s the first time we’ve ever met. I couldn’t work out. I was like, wow, this son of a bitch. I mean, Arnold was living in my head, rent-free. You know what? Next time he’s around, I’m not gonna say hi to him. I’m not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. So then I get a call from WWE that I have to go to the Arnold Classic. He’s getting an award. WWE had done something, and he’s getting an award, so they want me to get it. So I’m there with Mark Henry, and Mark Henry knows this whole story, and Mark Henry’s trying to calm me down, because I’m like, No, you know what? If he pulls that ‘Nice to meet you’ sh*t, I’m gonna go off. I said there’s respect, and there’s like, Nah man, you’re gonna remember me this time. You might not ever like me, but you’re gonna remember me. This is bullsh*t. And Mark’s like, calm down, dude. It’s not that big a deal. I’m like, nah, dude, he’s gonna remember me. No, this is bullsh*t. So I’ve created this whole scenario in my mind, that I am so unmemorable that Arnold can’t take the time to remember me, but he knows all these stories about Andre. So it’s like, Really? Okay, all right, you’re gonna remember me now. So while I’m waiting off to the side to go out to get this award that he’s presenting. He starts telling stories, ‘My good friend Paul, we were in Jingle All the Way together, and so big and such a tremendous athlete…’ He goes into his whole spiel where he puts you over, and I go out there to get there, where he looks at me and winks. He ribbed me for 12 years! Because that’s how brilliant Arnold is. What’s the one thing that I know I bring to the table? Not the most handsome, not the most athletic, not the strongest, none of that. But you’re going to remember meeting me. I know that I have that gift. You don’t forget meeting me. That’s my ticket to the dance. Sure he knew that would be my card, and he took that from me for 12 years!”

What’s the story behind working with Floyd Mayweather?

“Great. That was a happy accident, too. Originally, that was supposed to be a tag. It was supposed to be Floyd and I against Rey and Dave [Batista]. Unfortunately, due to injuries, Dave tore a lat or a bicep, and Rey messed something up, all before we got to the TV part to start the angle. Then they were like, ‘Will you work with Mayweather?’ I’m like, hell yeah! Split the payoff between two guys? Well, really, Mayweather got most of the payoff, and I got thanks for showing up. But anyway. I thought, Yeah, that’s great. When we were doing that, we’re trying to talk to Floyd, there was such a size difference. I remember they were like, ‘How do we make this believable?’ I said, ‘It’s easy. I’ll get on one knee,’ because I’m so big and arrogant, I will get on one knee in front of him, and I said, ‘Yeah, just break my nose.’ They were like, what? I said, ‘Dude, I just spent the last year boxing, getting punched in the face. It’s not that big a deal.’ I told Floyd, because Floyd’s a pro. I said, ‘Don’t break the bone. Just give me a little tap.’ It’ll bleed because you get tapped in the nose, it’ll bleed. It’s not broken, it’s just cartilage. So he was like, ‘You want me to punch you?’ Yeah, man. I said, ‘Don’t shove it through the back of my head. But you got to. If we don’t make it look like something’s happening, nobody’s going to buy it. We need to get this off the ground and running, where people go, Oh, damn. That’s what we need.’ I said, ‘But when you bust me in the nose, and it bleeds, run, because there’s gonna be 5-10 seconds that I’m not going to be in the right frame of mind. If I get my hands on you, I might hurt you, and you’re worth half a billion dollars, so just make sure you’re not around.’ He got that point, and we went out there and did it, and just as soon as that hot blood hit the back of my neck, I was pissed. Even though I know it’s work, I was pissed.”

I can’t believe you asked for it.

“It’s for the business. It’s for the industry. It’s within the realm of what we’re doing. It’s a punch in the nose, like shit. I’ve been punched in the nose for free, we’re trying to suspend belief. We’re trying to pull you in. We’re trying to make you think, Oh, wow. We weren’t expecting that. That’s crazy. What’s gonna happen next? And it’s part of doing business. I remember tearing after him. I remember I grabbed one of his guys that I thought was him, and that guy started going, ‘Not me, it’s not me. It’s not me.’ He started screaming because I had him by the upper hip, the lower love handle in the ribs. I had him like this, and he wasn’t going anywhere. It’s almost like a big dog grabbing a little dog, a little dog yelping. That’s what was going on. So then he tore ass out of there, and nobody came around me, not a camera man, it was like I smelled bad. There was nobody within 20 [feet]. I remember Shane coming over. I love Shane to death. Shane and I have been through some great battles together, too. Shane looks at me, goes, ‘You’re all right.’ I was calm. I was like, I remember going because I licked the butt off my lip, ‘Yeah.’ Shane looks at me, goes, ‘That was f*cking awesome!’ So then I was like, okay, good. We did good. Then we get to the back. I’m excited to see Floyd. He left. He got in his car and left like, nope, not hanging around. This is not for me. I don’t want any part of this. Then we had to call him and his manager to come back. He stuck his head in Vince’s office. He says, ‘We cool, man?’ I said, ‘Dude, you did awesome. Come here, man.’ I gave him a big hug. And then we were off and running. He was so great to work with. We had to talk him out of doing stuff. And thank God they pulled in. Hunter, who I think is brilliant on ideas and putting stuff like this together. Hunter gets the story of it. Hunter was like, wow, this guy wants to do everything. I was like, I know. What are we going to do? He’s like, ‘Well, he’s worth a lot of money. Let’s be careful what we do.’ I got it. But he wanted me to chop him and body slam him through a table. He wanted all this crazy stuff. When I threw the guy out of the ring, we had to do a double, because he wanted that to be him. Nah, dude. They’re not going to let us do that. Then I remember after that WrestleMania, getting assaulted by his grandma. She slapped the bejesus out of me for beating up her grandbaby. Floyd had to come over and calm her. She was mad because I stood on him. That’s what she was mad about, that I stood on him. She was not having it. I mean, her and I became friends a little bit later on, but when we first got back there, she was ready to rip my ass apart. We did good business.”

Did you know Goldberg could get you out for that jackhammer? 

“Oh yeah, with ease. Well, here’s the thing. I could take suplexes, I could take hip tosses, I could take all that stuff. I think one of the first big bumps I took that freaked everybody was I took Kurt’s angle slam one time. Just fed and took it. Kurt was like, ‘You took that so easy! Oh my god’. Yeah, it’s kind of why I have a job, because I’m big and I’m also good. I mean, you know, that’s how I took Hennig’s Perfect Plex. Unfortunately, I’m a giant that’s good at taking finishes. So there you go.” 

What is Paul Wight grateful for?

“My family, my health and my cats.”

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Drew McIntyre (@DMcIntyreWWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, TN to discuss his shock WWE Championship win in Berlin and bringing the title home to Scotland the next night, a possible match with SmackDown GM Nick Aldis, why he faced The Big Show at WrestleMania 36 after defeating Brock Lesnar, not getting a singles match with John Cena on the retirement tour, being in The Undertaker’s final live match, and more!

You look like you’ve taken it up a level with your fitness recently. What’s been the biggest change?

“Roughly nine months ago, I’d had five weeks off, which was the first five weeks off I’ve ever really had in my life. I came straight from school to WWE to being released back on the road a few weeks later, where I was like, oh my goodness, I’m not injured. I’m not doing rehab. I’ve actually got this time off, let’s have an honest look at myself, especially approaching 40 and wrestling 25 years, everyone thinks I’m as old as Punk or something, but I’m not, old man. But honestly, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, what’s going on with you? Let’s take some inventory here. Okay, good shape, one of the best built guys in WWE, that’s cool, but things are starting to catch up. Things are hurting. Is there anything you can do about that? I never really followed a diet. I was still eating burgers all the time, pizza all the time, sometimes eating two times a day, sometimes eating eight times a day. I decided to get a trainer who actively came to my garage and worked with me and helped me out with training and diet and the big thing, mobility, which I’ve never done, proper mobility work. I worked with Rob McIntyre for years. He’s phenomenal, but he was sending my workouts, especially when I moved to Nashville five years ago, and it was a lot more difficult not working one-on-one with him. Having this new trainer, Jeff, coming to the garage and pushing me. He’s five foot tall, five foot wide. He’s a very angry little man, and he was pushing me through my paces. But the big difference was the mobility work. I couldn’t throw a super kick, not that I wanted to, because everybody and their mother throws a super kick these days, but I’d love to be able to and have the choice to do it, but my hips were so tight, it just wasn’t physically possible. Things were locking up. I was aware, oh, my goodness, maybe you’re closer to the end than the beginning, not just because of your age, but because of how my body felt and going through all this mobility work. The new diet, which reduced inflammation dramatically, I not only saw a difference in how I looked on screen, but how I felt overall. I was throwing head kicks, I could literally kick Omos in the face right now, and I feel better now than I did at legitimately 30 years old.”

So what is range of motion? Is it more stretching?

“It’s more active stretching, and these things I never heard of, called CARs [Controlled Articular Rotations]. So all the boys and girls out there, if you’ve not heard of CARs, it’s just basically creating space in the joint, with the hips, with the shoulders, you can do it with anything, the hands, the fingers. But it’s for me specifically, the biggest difference maker was in the hips, the knees and the shoulders. I really thought to stretch my shoulders, I would spend 20 minutes in the gym just holding stretches made zero difference whatsoever. But now doing some active stretching and some prehab, instead of rehab, like when I tore my bicep, for example, and I had rehab, I was doing things to strengthen up the knees, strengthen up the shoulders and these CARs creating space in the joints and movements I may actually do in the ring. And I just could not believe how good I felt as the month started passing by.”

You turned 40 last year. Do you think about how much longer you want to do this?

“Yeah. I mean, I know my wife feels like it’s gonna be a lot shorter than I probably feel it’s going to be, especially with how I feel now and how creatively fulfilled I feel these days. But as long as I’m happy, as long as she’s happy, and as long as the fans are happy with what I’m doing, I don’t see any reason to slow down anytime soon, especially when I see guys getting up there in age right now and moving as well as they’re moving right now, because we’ve just moved so far forward with athletes. Look at LeBron James or Ronaldo, for example, the same age as me, and they’re just still at the top of their game.”

So creatively fulfilled at work right now?

“Very creatively fulfilled. There were a couple of moments where I was like damn, it sucks personally, but I can also look at the big picture these days. I’ve been knocked down enough times and fed a few disappointments sometimes where I didn’t always deal with it the right way for the bigger picture and understanding, okay, the company needs this right now. How does this screw me up? It doesn’t really. It actually works for the character, and as long as it works for the character, I can be personally disappointed, but professionally, I know we’re still on the right track, and the fans are still going to be emotionally invested, and that’s all that matters, because I’ve been in situations where they were not emotionally invested. And the worst thing in the world in pro wrestling is silence.”

Have you had silence?

“Not for years, but I’ve had it. It’s not fun. I can still clearly remember moments. Actually, the worst one ever, if anyone wants to get on the YouTube, as those older people call it, my first pay-per-view match was following Randy Orton versus John Cena, Hell in a Cell, the peak of Cena vs. Randy, their first big feud. The end of their blood feud, Hell in the Cell, beat each other to death. Hell in a Cell finished, and the next match was R-Truth versus Drew McIntyre, not with Broken Dreams, just me strolling out, hi everybody, and I’m 1,000% sure I could have heard a pin drop as I walked out there with that many people in the building. It was very depressing. But never want to feel that again. I feel bad for anybody when I see I want to message them and go, Okay, let’s figure out how to get any kind of noise. If you have to show your arse, then show your arse.”

You’re in an interesting spot because, like you said, you’re speaking the truth. You’re doing things that make sense, but you’re still doing it from a heel’s point of view. 

“The way that I just see is a very logical, human point of view. I always tell everybody when they call me a heel, debate me, and you will lose. Every interview I do, when they say you’re a heel, whatever, every fan goes I am the bad guy, explain to me how I’m the bad guy. I’ll explain my point of view, how I got to this point, the PTSD I’ve suffered, the trauma I’ve suffered. The things I went through with The Bloodline and the likes, the amount of titles I was screwed out of, the moments have been taken away from me, including even recently. And I react the way I react. If you’re in my position, you’re as big as me with the job I’m in, would you do what I do? Of course you would. I’ll win every single debate, because I’m very, very conscious about the details. And just tell them the truth like a good relationship. If you never lie, you never have nothing to worry about.”

How is Cody Rhodes the champion right now? He was not supposed to get a rematch ever.

“I was under the impression that contracts, not someone’s word. If you’ve looked back at the clips, I literally said I got the clause put in there that Cody Rhodes will not get a title match if he loses against me in Berlin. That was in there in a contract. Those exact words, I said it in London. I said a few times, go back and fact-check, but I definitely said it in London for sure. Then he was in the Royal Rumble, [but] wait a minute, if he wins the Royal Rumble, he’s gonna get a title match. That’s not what the clause says. So I have to fix that, helping Nick out to do his job properly. Suddenly, Elimination Chamber, I had to get in there as well. Wait a minute. It says no title match, not go ahead and win this match, or go ahead and win that match. So all I’m doing is trying to do the right thing. Make them not breach contract. And they still breached the contract, because they’re always screwing Drew McIntyre.”

What did this most recent championship win mean to you? 

“Awesome. Nobody saw it coming, for one. I think everybody assumed that the Cody Express would keep moving on forward. He’s been in that position for a long time. After he finished the story, he was on fire. I’m not saying he wasn’t doing a great job. He’s a great champion, he’s a great performer, but it was a lot of the same. I think there needed to be a shake-up, and there was a shake-up that no one saw coming when I won in Berlin. I could hear the crowd, I could hear the response, I could see the response, and it put Cody in a position where he had to chase. Gave Cody a bit of that edge back, which he, in my opinion, desperately needed. For me, it gave me some of that legitimacy. ‘Oh yeah, Drew can win the big one,’ and not going to be so sympathetic that we need to start cheering for this guy if you feel so bad for him. Where I could be more of a, like I mentioned, if I got the title and people challenge me to fight, what would I gain? No, I’m Gollum from Lord of the Rings. This is my precious. I’m not letting this go, no matter what. So it did a lot of things, but I know it made SmackDown way more compelling at the time, especially so many people hate me for some reason. So now you’ve got the champion right in the middle with the target on him. And as Cody mentioned, you know, it’s not just we want the title. It’s because you’re an arsehole, they’re all coming for you, which made SmackDown more interesting for me personally. I win it in Berlin, and the next night was Glasgow, so I got to walk out in Glasgow with the title for the first time as champion, with live fans, with a whole family in attendance. I tell Scotland, I promised you would bring you the championship, and I brought you the championship, and the only ever, not just Scotland person to do it, but British person to do it.”

And there was a moment there where the WWE Champion and the NXT Champion were both from Scotland. 

“I text Joe Hendry all these facts. I don’t have them off the top of my head, but the percentage of people from Scotland who are legitimately from Scotland, you know, [in American accent], ‘I’m from Scotland.’ Yeah, sure you are, mate. Everyone always says, ‘I’m Irish’ or ‘I’m Scottish.’ No one ever says I’m English. No one ever admits to that. But there’s legitimately 5.5 million of us. I’m just pulling these off my head. I had to text them to Joe, the actual figures, but there’s about 63 million English people, America is like 362 million? It doesn’t matter. It’s a lot. But the percentage of the world who are Scottish is so significantly lower than people think. We’re a tiny country. We invented everything, television, radio, penicillin, you’re welcome, cloning. We invented literally everything for such a small nation. And the fact that two of the three top male WWE champions were Scottish was unbelievable.”

The feud with CM Punk is now behind you. How do you feel about CM Punk now? 

“A piece of crap. Can’t stand him. I watch him every week, and I see he is doing good things with the world title, good for you. That’s a good run right there. As a fighting champion, I think fighting champions are stupid, because I was one, and why would you defend it all the time? That’s just disrespectful to the title. The opponent should earn it. So I did it before, that’s why I can say that stuff. But at the same time, he’s nowhere close to what he did with me, and it pains me to admit I’m still chasing the dragon for what I did with him. So opposites attract.”

We talked earlier about how Cody Rhodes got this rematch, Nick Aldis made this thing happen. A lot of animosity with Nick Aldis. There are a lot of fans calling for maybe a match with Drew McIntyre and Nick Aldis. Would you love to go in there and have a match with him? 

“Oh yeah, I can feel it when I’m out there with him. Whenever we go back and forth on the microphone, I can feel the people starting to get into it. I don’t feel it with Jacob. And I think Jacob and I turned a big corner after fighting like Peter Griffin and the giant chicken for three straight hours before we fell off a giant platform where I dragged him to hell with me. So we’ve turned a big corner for our feud, even though Jacob and I, you look at the basics of it. It could just be Godzilla Kong, two big guys fighting. People are happy to see it. But we have this story. We’ve screwed each other along the way. He took away the biggest moment for me, being champion at WrestleMania. We have the story built in, and then we have the physicality and how good the match is going to be, how good the people know the match is going to be, and then the big fight on SmackDown, and who knows where it’s going to go. I’ve got plenty of ideas about what I want, so it’ll be good. But at the same time, there’s this Aldis thing simmering at the side, and every time we go back and forth, you can feel the tension. You can cut it with a knife. We’ve known each other a long time. I name-dropped his son because I have known him for that long. But what a corporate stooge he is, his Donovan must be ashamed of him having such a corporate stooge for a father instead of backing me, the one who’s in the right and the one that he’s known for years, and his one is his actual friend. So when the time is right, be it Mania, be after Mania. I think we should have a match, and I don’t think there should be any sanctioning around it. I don’t think anyone should be allowed to interfere. He tapes up the fists. He’s been up in the ring a long time. He thinks he can go with a four-time former world champion in WWE in the big leagues. He’s probably the greatest NWA champion of the modern era, since Billy took over NWA. But he’s not been in there for a long time. He’s a big guy. I would love to get in there with him, and I’d love to see what damage I could do, and no one’s allowed to interfere, then come up close and ask me to stop politely.”

You talk about winning the Rumble in 2020 which leads to the WrestleMania match, which right before they decide there can’t be any fans there. I’ve always wondered, why was there this extra match with Big Show, like a dark match main event. What was the story behind that? 

“I don’t know. I mean, I guess I do know that the story is, but we’re just trying to throw things against the wall and see what sticks. I guess it was some kind of hook for the next Raw rather than just, I come out as champion, and here’s a promo in an empty warehouse with zero people reacting. Oh, by the way, there was also this match that happened once the cameras went off the air. I’ll never quite know, but it does allow me to say I beat Brock Lesnar and The Big Show in one night within about 15 minutes. That’s pretty cool.”

So how did Highlander come about?

“I don’t go into the ins and outs backstage in these things, but I had the chance to talk to a couple of people and get offered an opportunity. When we talk about this next time, if something’s out there and it’s not edited, and I don’t feel like an arse, because some people have been edited out, we just look like arses. And then we will go into details about it. But if it comes around the way you just mentioned, and Dave ends up killing me, I have an idea that we just keep doing feature after feature after feature where he murders me. I think he even mentioned me one time, ‘We can keep this going, and then you can get me the next time.’ No, screw that, I want it to be like Undertaker’s streak. I want it to be like 20 films in a row [where] I just get murdered, and then just out of nowhere, I go, ah! Like Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, where he gets the Sheriff of Nottingham, just out of nowhere, and the whole place pops and lose their minds. I finally broke the streak.” 

You had a match where not only did you beat Kurt Angle, but you made Kurt Angle tap out to his own finisher, the ankle lock. 

“I did it twice.”

How did this come about?

“Well, the big one is obviously in WWE. I believe they were both in Manchester? That’d be crazy. Someone can fact-check it for me and get it in the comments. But yeah, the one in WWE, I want to say there was some kind of injury, or somebody was out, and it might have been when Roman was sick, and we had to start building some big, credible main event performers, and I needed some significant moments. That’s what makes you a top-level Main Event performer, racking up moment after moment after moment. I believe it was maybe when Roman went out sick initially, especially to build an opponent for when Roman came back, and that’s what came of it. I wasn’t going to not just beat Kurt Angle, I was going to annihilate Kurt Angle, and I was going to tap him out to his own submission, the ankle lock. Thankfully, Kurt was gracious enough to do it, because obviously, he could tie me up like a pretzel if he wanted to. But, you know, he was great. I was in his face. I was mocking him, basically tears in his face. I was ripping on his family, his kids, beating his arse and just being a terrible, terrible human being. He did so much for me that night, but he’d also done that for me a few years prior, in TNA, where he told me, I want you to not just beat me, but tap me out, because we’re trying to make me in TNA as the top babyface at the time, and I believe it was Manchester. I’m almost convinced they’re both in Manchester. Maybe Kurt likes to tap out in Manchester. Someone definitely needs to check that out for me. But I was tagging with Johnny Gargano at the time, Evolve Tag Team Champions. I couldn’t think of a submission. I’ll do the Gargano escape as a tribute to Johnny there. So I got Kurt with a Gargano escape there, then the ankle lock. So thank you, Kurt.”

When you talk about plans changing, John Cena said in an interview on the No Contest wrestling podcast that it was supposed to be you versus him at Crown Jewel. Do you feel like your match with John Cena got taken away from you? 

“It sucks, and I wish I did get that opportunity with John, not just for a one on one match, which we never had, as long as we were around each other, but a chance to get the microphone with him after showing what I could do with like CM Punk and so many others that are known for being the best on the mic. John is unbelievable. I would love that moment. Love the chance to go back and forth with him. I mean, the public never knew about it. I knew there was a plan before that, actually, that had to change. Then there was that plan, and there was a pivot again. I believe it came down to like John said, because initially people thought, Oh, my God, you see what Cena said? What? The match with Drew never happened. And then the match with AJ happened, and the way they worded it was like, you know, John said it was public, or whatever it was. It wasn’t public. Nobody knew. He tweeted, ‘Want to see me and AJ’ and they went hell yeah we do! If he tweeted, ‘Want to see me and Drew?’ They probably would have been happy to see both as well. So like, yeah, behind-the-scenes stuff, you know, that did happen, and it was disappointing. But at the same time, a great match with John and AJ. They got John’s last few months back on track, which I was happy for him, because I felt like we could have done a little better in that first part of the journey, and maybe I would have got one of the matches. But again, crap happens. Sometimes you go one path. It doesn’t work. You got to go back on the path and just fall out from it. I can be personally upset, or I can be like, All right, I’m in a tag match here. It’s disappointing, but I was around him. I learned for years, and he’s retired now. I was the World Champion for a few months, so I’m fine.”

This fact is crazy to me. So it’s you and Shane McMahon versus Roman Reigns and Undertaker at Extreme Rules 2019, it has 107 million views on the WWE YouTube channel. That’s Undertaker’s last match in front of a crowd. You get to be part of it.

“I’ve talked about this publicly in my book, My Chosen Destiny, still available now, where Vince put Undertaker in charge of me. ‘You don’t listen to anybody but The Undertaker, he’s your mentor.’ I spent so many years with him, around him, learning from him, and to have his last match in front of a live audience was insane. Obviously, we didn’t know that was the case at the time, but looking back, it’s absolutely wild. The match was coming off the other match, it was a big disappointment. We don’t have to mention what it was, but we know, and we really wanted to give Taker a match to remind everybody who The Undertaker is, that he can still go. We went out of our way to make sure that night he was The Undertaker and back whole again. At the start, I got in his camera shot. Shane and I were in the ring, and I used to stand chest up, shoulders back, and I felt like I always had to be the big, tough guy. I see people doing it now, and I’m like, relax, relax. But it’s easy for me to say, because Triple H every week going relax. We know you’re a big guy. You don’t have to stand like this the entire time. Your money’s here, body Lucy goosey, you’re blowing yourself up. But I was standing there waiting for him to come in the ring. I didn’t realize I was in his camera shot. He’s doing the whole presentation, taking off the jacket, getting ready for the hat. Looks at me and says, ‘Back the f*ck up.’ Oh, f*ck! Got out of his camera shot. Didn’t realize I was blocking his camera shot, yeah, that was my first so far, so bad. But the crowd were unreal. We were on first, the match was unreal. You could say whatever you want at the end for the tombstone, like being a little split second off. But there’s something to things not going perfect in pro wrestling, because in real fights, nothing goes perfect.”

You are now the US title away from being a Grand Slam champion. Sheamus is the Intercontinental Championship away from being his Grand Slam champion. Who becomes Grand Slam champion first?

“Me, definitely. I’ve got no plan to do it, or don’t know when it will happen, but if he keeps talking about it, then they’re just gonna rib him and just give me the US Title.”

It’s funny, though, like you’re both one title away, and you’re right, he mentions it just a little bit more than you.

“It does mean a lot to him. He’s achieved so much and he really would love it, but, yeah, he gets driven and driven. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and it’s going to happen. It’s just, yeah, it’s hilarious how much has been mentioned at this point, and I’ve not mentioned the US title, and it’ll happen. Then I will make it a big deal, and I’ll make it seem like I really cared so much about it. I’ve got four world titles now, That’s what it’s all about. It’s a storytelling aspect of our business. I’ve already achieved everything I wanted to achieve. If we keep those stories going, the fans interested, I’m good. If it happens, cool; if it doesn’t, cool.”

What is Drew McIntyre grateful for?

“My wife, health and the world we live in.”

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Sam Roberts (@notsam) is a broadcaster and radio host signed with WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in New York City to discuss the highlights of the John Cena retirement tour, if Gunther will retire Brock Lesnar, Danhausen making his WWE debut in a crate at Elimination Chamber, a possible Chris Jericho WWE return, the worst name for a WWE PLE, who will be become WWE Champion first: Oba Femi, Bron Breakker or Logan Paul, the most underrated theme song, 3 matches you’d show to a non-wrestling fan and much more!

Subscribe to NotSam on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NotsamWrestling

So Gunther has retired Goldberg, John Cena, and AJ Styles:

“I’m glad you’re here, because there are a lot of things I’ve been wanting to get off my chest, and maybe it’s because I’m mad because you keep putting up that clip of when I say, ‘Mr. Perfect was never a World Champion…’ and everybody in the comments goes, ‘He was AWA World Champion.’ Because they go, ‘Gunther hasn’t retired everybody, because they said it was their retirement match, so it was just their last match, but they’re gonna retire anyway, so Gunther didn’t retire them.’ I go, that’s not a thing. If you beat the guy in his last match, you’ve retired him.”

Does Gunther retire Brock Lesnar?

“Here’s my thing about Gunther. He could. I mean, I think it’d be great. Again, I think there’s more to Gunther than what’s cut and dry. I think he could retire Brock Lesnar. But I think the idea should be that Gunther has the ability to retire people. But number one, he doesn’t retire everybody. And number two, he does more than just retire people, you know, because I think if you go, okay, everybody’s retirement match is against Gunther, it becomes ok, we know what happens here. We’re doing the same thing over and over again. I think that for me, it’s almost like, if he is the guy to retire Brock Lesnar, which he could be, and it would be great. But I also think that that means you tell me a story that makes me believe he’s not going to. That’s what I think is essential, and you can, but I think if he is that guy, make me believe he’s not going to do it. I think we assumed he would beat Goldberg. But there were a lot of people, and you could tell because they were very sad that had this idea that John Cena might win his last match. Up until the very last minute, I think a lot of people also thought that AJ wasn’t necessarily going to get retired just like that at the Rumble and be gone.”

It was just because there was not a ton of buildup to this being AJ Styles’ last match

“He said it’s gonna be my last year, and you’re like, it’s barely February, you got so much more in this year. WrestleMania is just a couple of months away. I like that. I think that’s the magic of Gunther, but that’s what you need. You can’t just announce it and go, Okay, Gunther is going to face Brock Lesnar, and then it starts to feel almost ceremonial, that this is what you do on your way out, you lose to Gunther. Because then it loses that thing that makes it, that makes Gunther a bigger villain, and makes that story.”

I can’t see Oba Femi losing this match.

“No, I can’t either. But also there’s a lot of time, that’s the other thing. I think people are going, Well, why don’t we know the whole card? It’s WrestleMania. It’s like, it’s still another month. So I want to see, because Brock is on a lot of Raws before WrestleMania. So it’s like, is the wind gonna blow in the other direction? Are we gonna see a vulnerability? Or is this the rise of Oba? Because I agree with you that I’m looking at that going like, oh, man, this is it, and I love it. Like the idea that you’re like, No, we’re pushing down the gas pedal. We’re going all the way with Oba right away. And I feel like the last person they did that with was Brock Lesnar in 2002.”

What was your favorite match from John Cena’s retirement tour?

“So the one that made me feel the most, because I think AJ, versus John sticks out. But I think Cody and John at SummerSlam was perfect. I think it was perfect. I think it was this thing that there was an awareness that, like, WrestleMania wasn’t what we wanted it to be, and we know that it wasn’t what you wanted it to be. I think the idea that John just turned babyface the night before, or two nights before, and we’re all like, that was quick. That was strange. Is that for real? Are you allowed to do that? You hear people going well, you can’t just do that. But there’s one way to test it. You get to Met Life Stadium, and everybody cheers him, and it’s like, you can just do that.”

My favorite match from the John Cena retirement tour is John Cena versus AJ Styles. What a beautiful love letter to wrestling. All the TNA moves being done, all the moves. There were so many things in there that just made you go, Yes, this is what I love about wrestling,

“This is the power of branding. I guess it wasn’t dissimilar from what Randy Orton and Edge did at Backlash during the pandemic.”

You mean the greatest match?

“I remember I went on a whole rant going guys, we have to appreciate, we have to get past it and go no. ‘The greatest wrestling match ever,’ I believe, was the [tagline]. You have to take that, not literally, but almost as a stipulation. For me, John Cena versus AJ Styles was a greatest wrestling match ever match, because it becomes a love letter to wrestling, because that’s what Randy Orton and Edge did. Except if you had announced AJ Styles versus John Cena, and it will be the greatest wrestling match ever, then all of a sudden we’d be like, I mean, it was really good, but…”

I thoroughly enjoyed the John Cena farewell tour. I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it ever again.

“I don’t either, and I think that it goes back to what you were saying about, like, build up and this, and that it’s like that. I think almost at the end of last year, there were people who started fantasy booking who’s going to be the next person to get a year? ‘And this person gets a year, and that person gets a year.’ It’s like, you can’t do that. I think he was the perfect guy to do it, and I think that he did it as well as maybe one could. I think it’s very difficult to like plot a year out ahead and go, here are the directions that will go in, because, you know, everything changes all the time. But the idea that, and I think as time passes, you just appreciate it more and more. I mean, the idea that we got as much good stuff as we got out of that tour, it was incredible, and John’s a perfect guy for it.”

Danhausen has been wildly entertaining, and I love that everybody’s able to see the Danhausen that me and you have known and loved for years.

“It’s so funny too, because I think that people are getting Danhausen now, and it’s really great. All it took was one segment where he opened his mouth, all it took was that first Monday Night Raw segment, and everybody’s like, ‘Oh, okay, this is great.’ It was 24 hours of, ‘This sucks, what is this?’ And then it was like, oh, oh, that’s great. And then everybody comes around.

The debut was a throwback to WCW in the 90s:

“But I think it’s true that wrestling fans like it when people debut out of boxes. I was having conversations with people, and they were like, ‘You know what? I bet it’s The Rock in the box.’ I go, ‘You think The Rock has been sitting in a crate for two weeks? It’s The Rock. The Final Boss, who is on the board of directors decided the best thing he can do to show up at a WWE show is to sit in a crate for two weeks?’ I mean, but can you imagine? I mean, yeah, sure, sure, but it’s a crate. It’s silly, it’s crazy, it’s whimsical, even. I think the beauty of Danhausen, and I had said this on my podcast, is that he can’t do anything incorrectly, because the idea that Danhausen came out, and everybody just kind of goes like, what? And he doesn’t get that big response. All that sets up for is two days later for Danhausen to be like, yeah, they love me. There was thunderous applause. And that’s like, Danhausen is delusional. That’s who the character is like. He takes himself very seriously. He has these delusions of grandeur, and so the idea that he didn’t get uproarious applause becomes part of the character who Danhausen is.”

There were a lot of rumors that Chris Jericho might have been in the box.

“I thought he was in the box at first.”

Do you think Jericho is coming back to WWE at some point?

“I would love to see it. I think it should happen. Jericho is just such a unique entity in the world of professional wrestling. He’s one of those early guys that bet on himself, comes out of WCW, out of the Cruiserweight division, and makes a splash in WWE, but then kind of gets pushed, actually, we don’t know. He has to prove himself, prove himself, scratch and claw and like, become that guy. Goes away, reinvents himself, goes away, reinvents himself. If he reinvents himself and that doesn’t quite work, ‘Oh, let me tweak that. Let me turn into this guy then.’ And then it does work. And then goes away and goes like, I can work in New Japan. You’re like, come on, you’re Chris Jericho, you’re a WWE guy. And he kills it in New Japan. He’s awesome. And then it’s like AEW pops up. And he’s like, Yeah, I can be that first face of this company. I think, yeah, one last Jericho run in WWE I think is something that I would love to see.”

He looks like he’s in the best shape he’s been in in a long time.

“I also think it would be refreshing. I think it’s one of those things where, like when Hulk Hogan came back to WWE before WrestleMania 18, and he brought the nWo with him, there was this idea that while he got so hot as Hollywood Hogan, let’s bring in Hollywood Hogan. But the reality is that once Hulk Hogan was back in WWE, people were like, they forgot everything. 94 to 01, I don’t know anything about what happened. Then I want red and yellow. I want Hulk Hogan’s back in the WWE I want Hulk Hogan back. And he goes on that he’s like, the first guy that went on the nostalgia run effectively. And I think Jericho is a similar way. I think Jericho pops back up in a WWE ring, and it’s almost like we’ve totally forgotten.”

There’s been so much talk about Cody Rhodes being Homelander. Cody Rhodes turning heel. Do you think there’s any world, any situation where we could actually see Cody Rhodes turn heel? 

“Sure. I mean, Cody’s really good at wrestling. I think he’d be great at being a heel if that’s what he wanted to do.” 

I agree. I just think it’s so tough because he’s the face of WWE. He’s the face of the company. He’s taking that role that John Cena had for so long. He’s the guy who shows up early, stays late, signs all the autographs, takes the pictures with the kids, does the Make-A-Wish. I think it’s tough to make that guy a bad guy.

“I also have what I think is the benefit of watching a lot of WWE with my kids, so I see the way they look at Cody. I see that it’s like, oh yeah, that’s that. I remember when I was a little kid. I remember the little kids that looked at Cena that way, where it’s like, you know, they’re not on wrestling Twitter, they’re just watching the show and they hate Randy Orton right now, they can’t believe what Randy Orton did. ‘Why would Randy Orton do that? It sucks. Randy Orton sucks.’ It’s that kind of thing. So could Cody do it? Yes. I’ve never been much of a Cody should turn heel guy. I’m not an advocate for it. I think that having great babyfaces, and real babyfaces is rarer and more difficult than people realize. I think Cody is incredible at what he does. You can meme it all you want, the minute WrestleMania rolls around and Cody gets beaten bloody. You’re rooting for Cody, he’s the babyface.”

Who is the biggest What If in wrestling?

“My favorite What if to think about is, every now and then it pops up on the internet. So I’m assuming it’s true because it was on the internet. So there’s this letter that The Ultimate Warrior got to come back to the WWE in like 98 or 96 or so, it was like a five-year deal for him to come back that puts the Ultimate Warrior in the WWE during the Attitude Era. I think about that more often than I think anybody probably should. But what if the Ultimate Warrior had been brought back at the same time that we were seeing Austin and Rock and Foley and all these Attitude Era stars come up, because nothing was going to stop them. But is there a world where it’s a two-pronged thing, but I also feel that way about those photos that popped up not that long ago of like, what Papa Shango could have looked like in the Attitude Era, had he not been the Godfather. Those gimmicks, but specifically like the Ultimate Warrior finding a way [back]. I don’t know if he would be darker. I don’t know if he would be more reality-based. I don’t know how the Warrior would have existed in the Attitude Era, but it’s really fun to think about it, because there are a million ways it could have gone.”

What’s the worst name for a WWE PLE ever?

“Great Balls of Fire. And what really sucks is it’s a really good pay-per-view. It’s actually pretty good. Great Balls of Fire is easily the worst. I don’t think there’s any getting around it. The show was amazing, was so much better than the name that I feel like it may have even helped the show, but you’re right. Nobody remembers the show, unfortunately for Samoa Joe. But if we’re getting past that, it always really bothered me that Vader wasn’t even on In Your House: It’s Time.”

What is Sam Roberts grateful for?

“Professional wrestling, my family’s health, and there are other Nolan movies apart from Interstellar.”

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Marc Mero (@MarcMero) is a retired professional wrestler best known for his time in WCW and WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Atlanta, GA to discuss how Dusty Rhodes created his Johnny B Badd persona, his other gimmicks like Marvelous Marc Mero and Wildman Marc Mero, jumping to WWE and being asked by Vince McMahon if he could do a Tarzan yell, negotiating the first ever guaranteed WWE contract, having his wife Sable as his valet, Steve Austin refusing to work with him, his work today as a motivational speaker, and more!

Get Marc Mero’s book “Badd To Good” here: https://a.co/d/0bzqassE

Congratulations on the book. 

“Thank you. It did really well. Ben Veal, who co-wrote the book with me, is someone that could take your words and make them into life, where people are reading and going, oh my gosh, I feel like I’m there.”

Your story is so amazing, and we’re going to dive into it throughout this episode. But I’m curious, do you think that life after wrestling has been more successful for you than when you were in?

“By far. It’s like finding your calling. Wrestling was entertaining, but what I do now is life-changing, and there’s no greater joy than helping another person. I found that joy through so much heartache and loss and brokenness and stories that people can relate to, and I think that’s why it’s been so successful.”

You’ve had so much loss, you’ve had so much pain, but you show up with a smile on your face, and you live in such a spirit of joy all the time. Where does that come from?

“Well, first and foremost, my faith in Christ. I’m a Christian, and he has changed my life. I grew up Jewish. A lot of people don’t know this, but I grew up Jewish, and my last name used to be Merowitz, and it was shortened to Mero. But when I gave my life to Christ, everything changed. But I went through, you know, I backslid. I went through some hard times, brokenness, divorce and death. My little brother and sister, they both died at 21, my mother died at 58, my dad died from lung cancer, he was looking right at me, and losing, of course, all the guys we wrestled with and against in the business that passed on, so many hit me hard. Eddie Guerrero was just such a light in the world, and having so many great matches with Eddie and so many guys, Brian Pillman and guys that we just traveled with and we’re with all the time, that next thing, they’re gone. It’s just you realize how precious life is.”

A lot of people focus on the things they don’t have. But you just have this light.

“You know what? I realized, because I do so many schools and so many presentations, you feed off the audience, but the audience also feeds off of you, and you got to come out there, and you just got to have a lot of energy and positivity. When they hear my story, they think, maybe my life isn’t so bad, maybe I should start spending more time with my family. Maybe I shouldn’t bully those kids or do this or do that, and it’s really changed a lot. After my presentation, we often see kids hugging each other, which is like, you know you’ve touched their heart in some way.”

Did you have any plan for what life after wrestling was going to look like?

“Oh, man. First of all, life after wrestling was really dark. That’s when I really fell into drugs again, walked away from God, just lived a horrible life. Just didn’t care. I let myself go out of shape, out of money, out of time. It was just where I remember that it came to the point where I just didn’t want to be here anymore, losing so many people in my life, and then, of course, going through the divorce and going through all that again. It’s just the depression got so bad, and I had anger issues also on top of that, you know, because you blame other people, and you live with this bitterness and this resentment, and all these things that come together just weigh on you, and you just feel it. I know someone out there is listening to this right now that’s going, I went through that, or maybe I’m going through that right now, and it came to the point where I just remember that I just wanted to end it. It was Christmas Day, and I drove to Cocoa Beach, Florida on Christmas Day, and I sat under a pier, and I remember the waves just rolling in and out and just thinking, I don’t want to be here anymore. I had no place to go. I mean, Christmas was always so big in my life, many of our friends have passed on through the wrestling and, of course, going through the divorce and all the heartache I went through, I remember just wanting to end it all, and then, if it wasn’t for me getting on my knees and asking Christ back into my life. I remember just begging him for forgiveness and thinking to myself, What am I going to do? I’m basically starting over again. So I get a job. That’s where I got a job at Gold’s Gym as a trainer, and started, and then this thing started getting better and better and next thing you know, when the schools thing opened up. But let me get back to that little office building I’ve bought for 200 grand, because it’s part of the story. So fast forward. Now, all these years later, I have this little building that I recently sold four years ago, but I held the note. I was the bank, okay, and they gave me a huge down payment, and they have to pay X amount of money for 10 years. And there’s a balloon payment. And the way the Lord works this balloon payment is $214,000, exactly what I bought it for all those years ago. So it’s an incredible story, but it’s just how my life has turned out, that those things, you wonder how this happened. I don’t believe in coincidence. I really believe that things are meant to be. So anyone out there that’s maybe going through a hard time, man, hang in there. It’s gonna get better. You got to believe that.”

Christmas Day, 2003 was that your rock bottom moment?

“I believe that rock bottom had a basement, and I went right into that basement, and that was it, that was gonna be the end of Marc Mero.”

Because you didn’t just think about committing suicide. You were ready to do it.

“Yeah. It was going through so much pain that when you don’t have anybody to talk to, we don’t have someone in your life that you could just share with. Not saying that there weren’t people that would have listened to me or whatever, but sometimes you feel like you’re more of a pain to people you know, they don’t hear sob stories and I held so much inside, and I think that’s the worst things because when I deal with a lot of students day too, they hold in these suicidal thoughts or self harm, or whatever it is, this pain. And when you hold things inside, it’s like a volcano, and sooner or later, that volcano erupts, and it often erupts in negative behavior, whether it leads to you hurting other people, horrible relationships, anger issues, bitterness, resentments, self-harm and worst case, those suicidal thoughts.”

So if that was the rock bottom moment, take me into your wrestling career. When did you feel like you were on top of the world?

“It had to be as Johnny B Badd. First of all, I am a boxer from New York. My boxing career was over 10 years of drug addiction, and then the next thing you know, I get off the drugs. I had a bunch of friends over at my apartment, and one of my buddies had the remote control for the television, and he’s flipping through the TV channels, and he lands on professional wrestling. I go, ‘Stop it there. Let me see this.’ I’m looking at the television, and I get this aha moment. Some people call it the aha moment, and I go, ‘Guys, I can do that.’ My buddies, who are still my buddies today, they bust out laughing. They go, ‘Marc, are you crazy? Look at the size of those guys.’ I think the Road Warriors were on TV. They had traps from their ears coming down. They go, ‘Look at the size of those guys. They’re gonna pick you up and just throw you around that ring.’ I said, ‘No, man, I’m telling you, I can do that.’ Because I was always a good athlete. Another friend of mine goes, ‘Marc, you’re 30 years old. You want to start a pro career now?’ I remember, and I use this to this day, and I said two words, I go, ‘I believe,’ and those two words changed my life. It’s always about taking action towards a dream or goal, and the action I had to take back then, I had to find out whether there was a wrestling school. I don’t know how to wrestle! I was living in Venice, Florida, and there was a wrestling school in Tampa, Boris Malenko, Dean and Joe Malenko’s father had a wrestling school, so I drive there after working on weekends. One year later, at 31 years old, is when I signed my first contract. But being at Malenko’s school now, and I gotta tell you, remember, I boxed, played football, hockey, lacrosse, all physical sports. Boris Malenko had me get in the ring, and they kind of have you just cross your arms and just fall backwards. I hit that mat, and I sound like a seal from Sea World. I was like [gasps]. I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t believe it. I thought to myself, how do these guys do this night after night and land on their backs like this? Because I didn’t know how to fall at the time. Of course, he trained me and taught me and got me ready to get a try-out. I was a job guy that would drive nine hours from Venice, Florida to Center Stage here in Atlanta, hope to get picked on television. And that’s when they picked me to be on television. After my match, is when Dusty Rhodes came up to me and said, ‘Hey, kid, anybody ever tell you you look like Little Richard?’ And I thought to myself, I thought he was talking about a wrestler. I go, ‘I never heard of Little Richard.’ He goes, ‘You don’t know Little Richard?!’ I go, ‘Oh, the singer? No one’s ever told me that.’ He goes, ‘Oh, I think I got a gimmick for you.’ That’s how I became Johnny B Badd. From making $23,000 a year digging swimming pools to becoming a multi-millionaire in wrestling was because Dusty Rhodes said, kid, anybody ever tell you look like Little Richard?” 

So that gimmick changed your life?

“It changed my life, man. And not only that, but it also opened the doors to meeting so many people. Oh my gosh. It was like all these celebrities wanted to meet me. They obviously knew who Little Richard was. First of all, they all thought I was black, you know, being so tanned and a Little Richard gimmick. To this day I’ll go to a place and someone goes, ‘What character were you in wrestling?’ I go, ‘I was Johnny B Badd.’ ‘No, he was a black guy.’ ‘No, that was me.'”

So when you became Wild Man Marc Mero, Vince McMahon asked you if you could do a Tarzan yell?

“Yes. Okay, well what happened was, I think they were thinking they would get kind of a knockoff of Johnny B Badd, something similar, like they do with some of the characters. But because the lawsuits were really going back and forth. Now, remember, guys are jumping ship. You’ll see one guy on Raw one week, and next week he’s on Nitro or something. So it wasn’t going to happen. So they had to completely change my character. Of course, I’m trusting them. Whatever they’re going to come up with is going to be great. I mean, they made The Undertaker, they made all these great characters, right? I remember they flew me in to talk about what they’re going to have me do. We sit around a table, and Vince looks at me and goes, ‘Marc, what do you think of Wild Man Marc Mero?’ I go, ‘What’s a wild man?’ He goes, ‘Can you do a Tarzan yell?’ I thought they know what they’re doing. I go, ‘Vince, I don’t have a very strong voice, and I cannot do a Tarzan yell.’ He goes, ‘All right, we’re gonna go with Wild Man Marc Mero.’ And I go, okay, am I from the jungle? What am I? I’m doing this Tutti Frutti character in WCW, coming out now, where am I from? So it was very hard for me to relate to, which the audience doesn’t relate to. So it was very hard. And not only that, they hired my wife, Sable is my valet, and now you got this beautiful woman going to the ring with you and who they’re going to cheer for. So it was very difficult right off the bat, but they really wanted to push me and give me some momentum. So they have me enter this Intercontinental tournament where I had to beat Owen Hart, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ron Simmons. I mean, these are some top guys that you’re they’re putting you over to win the Intercontinental title. So I was thinking now they’re really going to start giving me that push I always dreamed about, why I went to the WWF or WWE. The next thing you know, I’m wrestling the fake Diesel, the fake Razor, TL Hopper, The Goon. Wonderful guys and good workers, but they’re not the guys that is going to take you up the ladder in the WWF.”

What shifted? 

“That’s the thing, maybe it’s a great question for Vince. I don’t know, maybe my confidence wasn’t there. I thought it was very hard for me to work with guys. First of all, this is really kind of hard to talk about in the sense that I wasn’t well-liked. My whole life, I had a lot of friends. I was always popular in sports, Captain on my teams, and then you go into this new organization where you’re not very well liked, and you didn’t really understand why. Well, come to find out, later, I got this guaranteed contract. I have my wife flying everywhere I’m flying, so I’m not hanging out with the guys, not going to the bars. I’m not staying up and doing things with those guys, or hanging out with guys. I’m with my wife all the time. And then I start realizing that no one really wants to work with me, you’re kind of an outcast, and it’s the worst feeling in the world.”

Is it jealousy?

“You know, part of it is. I guess, when you think about Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mick Foley just came in months before me for an opportunity. Next thing you know, I’m the first guy that gets this, not only a guaranteed contract, a big signing bonus, on top of it.”

So how did it come about that you were able to convince him to do this?

“Well, what happened was, three years before this, Vince flew me to New York after my second contract with WCW was up, and we had dinner together at his house and had a great conversation. He said to me, ‘What’s it going to take to bring you to the WWF?’ I said, ‘Vince, I got a three-year guarantee contract waiting for me at WCW, and a signing bonus, and I would need that if I’m going to come to WWF.’ And he says, ‘Marc we’d love to have you, but we don’t give guaranteed contracts. We give opportunities.’ I said, ‘Well, then I can’t come.’ We shook hands. There was no arguing. There’s no animosity. They took me to the airport and I left. Three years go by, and next thing you know, my contract is up again. And Vince says, ‘what’s ‘What’s it going to take to bring you to the WWF?’ I go, ‘Vince, you got to give me a guaranteed contract.’ He goes, ‘I’ve never done that before.’ I go, ‘Well, that’s what I got to have, because I got another three-year guaranteed contract with WCW.’ He goes, okay. I go, ‘Well, I also have a signing bonus there.’ He goes, ‘Okay, is that it?’ ‘Well, Vince, I’d like my wife to fly everywhere I fly. I just got married not too long ago. We just got married two years before this, and I’ve seen so many divorces in the wrestling industry.'” 

Was she in the business at this point? 

“No, she was a stay-at-home mom for her daughter, Mariah. And he said, ‘Wait, you want your wife to fly everywhere you fly?’ Well, yeah, Vince, I see too many divorces, and I just want her to go where I go, but since she’s going with me, why don’t we make her my valet? He goes, ‘No, no, let’s just worry about you.’ So he agrees to all the demands I had, guaranteed contract, signing bonus, and my wife would fly where I flew. So we’re excited about this. And then he sends me the ticket to fly to New York to go over the new character, but he only sends one ticket. So I call him. I have a cell phone. I call him. I go, ‘Vince, I got the ticket, but there’s only one here.’ He goes, ‘How many do you need?’ I go, ‘Well, my wife’s supposed to fly everywhere I fly.’ He goes, ‘To sign a contract?’ I said, Yes. So he sends another ticket. We fly in, and that’s when he said, when we’re walking into his office, he goes, ‘I got to put her on TV!’ And that’s when we came up with that name. That day, we went through a bunch of names, we came up with the name Sable.”

You go out there with her. They want to cheer for her. What does this do for your character?

“Here’s the thing that a lot of people maybe don’t realize, when you’re married and you’re in love, you’re a team. I’m thinking, I’m getting guaranteed money no matter what. If she gets hurt, she starts building her character up, she’s going to make a lot of money in merchandise and so on, right? And sure enough, you know, the more I did to lower my profile, the more her profile raised. Of course, things like have her come out in a potato sack or something. She ripped it off and have a bikini on, we were doing this over and over again, where she was always one step ahead of me. Until we came down to actually having to wrestle against each other, and she Sable bombed me. I was ready to go into a program with Steve Austin too, which that’s top of the top of the food chain, right there. When she Sable bombed me, now she’s a good athlete, but I basically Sable bombed myself. But it took me out of the program with Steve, because Steve thought, if a girl’s going to do that to him, I’m not going to let him get in the ring with me. Which people would be like, Oh, you blew the opportunity. But remember, now I’m raising her profile. We’re living at home. They’re backing up the Brinks truck to our house at this point. So when you’re a team like that, I’m going to make the same amount of money whether I get really popular or not. So I took that move or that opportunity and did that.”

How quickly did you realize she was much more popular than your character?

“Very quickly. But it was fun, because when I became Marvelous Marc Mero, became the heel, it was all perfect. But the Wild Man character, even though I’m going to the ring and they’re basically cheering for her, it’s like, wow, how am I going to get over with this? So we changed it up. It worked out perfectly. And then had to teach her how to wrestle, because now Vince wants to put her into wrestling and bring the women’s title on her.”

You wrote in your book that you think Sable should be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

“Oh, absolutely. The woman’s division, they didn’t really have a woman’s division so much back then at all. But she brought eyes to the channels. The ratings and everything were very high because of her.”

Did she talk to you about the storyline with Vince?

“No, I mean, she just thinks it’s just acting. I’d have to do this if I was in a movie or something like that. So, yeah, but it didn’t sit right with me, you know, didn’t sit right, and just was not good.” 

Was the door open for you to go back to WWE? 

“I had no desire to go back there. I thought I was [done], but then I did do some stints at TNA for a little while. And then, of course, I was friends with Hulk, so they started the XWF, and we tried that for a little while. And then I had my last match in 2006 and then hung up the boots.” 

Do you think you’ve had a Hall of Fame career?

“You know what? If you want to look at my WWF stint, no. But if you want to look at things I’ve done with WCW as Johnny B Badd, they were very entertaining.”

I feel like you’d be the perfect recipient for the Warrior Award:

“Something like that would be wonderful. If I ever did, DDP would be the guy to induct me.”

An interesting fact about you is that you were part of The Rock’s WWE debut match at Survivor Series, 1996

“Yes, I was the captain of the team. The plan was, obviously, Rock was going to win the match and stuff. But it was great. Rock is such an amazing guy. I mean, we got along so well. He’s brand new in the company, and I was there for just a little while longer before he was there. But a lot of people might know this about him, though, but he used to come and grab me and we pray together before a match, which I always remembered was a really cool thing. His faith was really strong, and I hope it continues to be strong. I hope it is. I haven’t talked to him in a long time, but I know he’s obviously doing amazing.”

Do you remember what the original pitch was for Brawl for all?

“I don’t even remember what it was. All I remember was I got a call from, I don’t know if it was Pritchard or Vince. I think it was Vince that called me, and he said, ‘We’re gonna do this thing now where we’re gonna have the guys fight, kind of like a tough man contest.’ And he said every time you do it, I think it was five or $10,000 extra on top of your salary. And I didn’t blink at it. No problem, okay.”

But perfect for you with the boxing?

“Well, you would think so, but remember, I’ve already had five shoulder surgeries, five elbow [surgeries]. I didn’t have the speed or the power I had as a young, 20-year-old boxer. But the thing I did still have was I had an amazing ability to slip punches. No one could really hit me, so the only way I’m really going to lose is if I get taken down. Well, they put me in there with the take-down king, Steve Blackman, and he took me down over and over. I remember that son of a gun, never got hurt or anything like that, but he blew out his knee. So next thing I know, I got my money for the fight, and they call me back. They go, ‘Guess what? You’re back in the Brawl For All.’ I go, great, it’s another 10 grand or whatever, and they told me I’m wrestling Bradshaw, which I’m gonna be really honest, I couldn’t stand Bradshaw back then. I didn’t think a lot of people could, because he was a bully, and when we wrestled each other, he didn’t like me, and he would take liberties on me. He would Power Bomb me so hard where I thought my lungs were to come through my chest, it would hurt so bad. I didn’t like him, so they told me I had to fight Bradshaw. I was like, Yes, I want to fight that guy so bad. Bradshaw calls me and says, ‘Hey, man, if you bow out, I get to fight this guy, you’re kind of out of it anyways.’ I go, ‘No, I want to fight you.’ So he knew I had no fear of him. So obviously, it’s three rounds. We do our three rounds. They call it a draw, he took me down, but I hit a better shot. So they call it a draw. Then, remember, they’re ready to take off the gloves and everything and put the gloves back on. We’re going one more round. So we had to fight one more, we’re the only ones that did four rounds and not three, and they gave him a decision, which was in Cleveland. I remember the place was just booing, thinking that I won the fight. I want to say this to Bradshaw. We couldn’t stand each other back then. I love that guy. I mean it when I say that. What he has done after his wrestling career with building wells in Africa, I believe he’s helped so many people. If I see him now, just give a big hug or something, you know, like there’s no animosity or no bitterness. But back then, and what I love about going to wrestling conventions is like guys you may didn’t like back then or didn’t hang out with, it’s like everybody’s like we did something that not many people in this world could do. So it’s this camaraderie that you have, this unspoken word, that you just see someone, you go, ‘Hey, man, how’s it going?'”

So how long did it take you to get to that point with Bradshaw?

“Yesterday [laughs]. No, years ago. We kept in touch through social media and wrote some nice letters to each other.” 

What is Marc Mero grateful for?

“My relationship with Christ, my wife and my health.”

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Candice Michelle (@DIVACANDICEM) is a professional wrestler best known for her time in WWE and currently signed to TNA Wrestling. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Austin, TX to discuss her journey to WWE via the Diva Search and becoming the first Diva Search contestant to win the Women’s Championship, her match with Beth Phoenix that had a terrifying ending, life after wrestling, what her current role is in TNA, Melina having real heat with her, the story behind her magic wand and more!

I had seen the word online that you were working with TNA.

“Yeah, Tommy Dreamer called me and he offered me a spot as an agent.”

So did that just start this year?

“It did. It started in January, which was my first show, and he was so funny. He’s like, come and shadow me the first weekend, and the next weekend you’ll be an agent. All I can think about is that it’s wrestling, you know, we’re gonna see if you’re going to survive or not, and if you can do it or not and throw them to the wolves. I was like, Okay, let’s go.”

So is this just a backstage role, or are we going to see Candice Michelle making an appearance on TV? 

“I think that this initial call was my hope spot, and I think it’s going to lead into my comeback.”

Are you open to wrestling another match? 

“I was at WrestleCon, and I was doing an appearance, my promoter had Dustin on, and somebody said, ‘Go up to him and tell him how you want to wrestle again.’ I’m just listening to this voice, like, really? Maybe it’s because I’m at WrestleCon, you know, you see all the wrestlers, you kind of get the itch, you’re kind of in it a little bit. I was going to the Hall of Fame that year to watch Michelle be inducted. I go over to him, I was like, ‘Hey, I know you have a school in Texas, and I think I have the itch.’ He’s like, what? I don’t know if she really does. Then to come to December and get this call from Tommy Dreamer, I was like, I just feel it coming. I don’t know when it’s coming, but it’s coming.”

When you left WWE in 2009, did you feel like your career was complete at that point?

“Yes, it was a huge transition, and that was a season and a blessing for me to become a mom, so I thought that season was over, and moving into I thought that season was over, and moving into being a mom was a beautiful season for me. I didn’t know that coming back to wrestling was a possibility for me.”

So let’s back it up to the beginning here. I know you moved to LA when you were 19. So everybody has an LA story. What were you chasing?

“I wanted to be a model. I grew up with the John Robert Powers modelling agency. I won a contract with them, and I was able to go to this convention to see all the top modeling agencies in the world. There was an agency in LA that picked me up if I would pay my own way. So me and these two guy models decided that we were going to pay our own way, and we did, and we moved out there. We created our own little model apartment, and I was chasing the dream of being a model.”

There’s quite a few things we can see you in. You were famous for the GoDaddy commercials. You have a brief role in Dodgeball. Talk to me about being on set of Dodgeball. 

“That was really fun. Actually, I got to take stripper pole classes, and that was a new thing, so it was really funny like, You’re gonna go to stripper pole class. I was like, wow, I’m really making it, I’m learning how to dance on a pole. A lot of that scene was cut off, but there’s a piece of it in there. To be there on a set like that was really fun.”

So then this idea of being part of the Diva Search comes around. What was your reaction when you heard about that?

“It was funny. My agent called me, and it’s a modeling agent, so he’s booking me for covers and modeling. He’s like, ‘I’ve had this really weird audition…’ I’m thinking, Oh, geez. And he’s like, ‘I don’t know if you’ll like it, but it will pay you $100,000.’ I am a starving model actress, right? He’s like, ‘WWE is going to have this Diva Search contest, and you’ll win that money and you’ll get a one-year contract.’ All he was excited about was 10% of the $100,000, but I grew up watching wrestling, and so I’m thinking, this is my dream gig. This is it. I just thought all those days, like every Monday night, I watched Raw with my stepdad, Ken, I remember climbing up on the couch and sitting next to him, and we’re screaming and shouting, and my mom’s in the other room, ‘Turn that stuff off. It’s fake!’ We’re like, What are you talking about?! So getting that audition, I was really excited.”

It’s fair to say that the Diva Search changed your life. You didn’t win it, but you still end up getting a contract. 

“That was really hard. In LA, as you know, when you’re auditioning all the time, you get over it pretty fast, or you need to get over it fast. That one, I think I cried for like a month, and I was like, That was perfect for me. I was athletic, I was into boxing and Krav Maga. I was like, I should have got that. I also know there’s a side of the business where I also knew Christie Hemme was perfect role for that spot. I just didn’t know that they would call me back when that contest ended and offer me three years.” 

Did they tell you why you didn’t win? 

“I think it was just obvious. I just have a different character. I have a different appeal. I need to warm up to an audience. Christy just had that fun, vibrant, bubbly personality. People love her instantly, and I think that’s what the WWE needed at that time.”

At what point did you start feeling like a pro wrestler, and not just someone who was on the Diva Search?

“Feeling like it and trying to be it I think were two different things. So it started for me where I would get there earlier, like when the refs and everybody was setting up the ring, and I would get in the ring. So I was, that was my training. Is who would be there, what ref would be there, what Superstar would be there, that would be willing to give me any knowledge of how to do that.”

So it’s up to that point, you’re just figuring it out as you go?

“Actually, maybe there was one other point. I had this match against Melina on a house show, and she didn’t like to put things together with me, which was frustrating because I didn’t know much, so I really wanted to put together a match. I remember even going to, I think it was Fit, I was like, I don’t know what to do. If somebody doesn’t want to put a match together with me, what am I going to do? And he really said nothing. I was like, Okay, well, what I do know is how to shoot fight, and if we’re going to go out there, I’m not going to give up my opportunity, and we’re going to go out there and we’re gonna have a shoot fight. We went out there in that mindset, and had one of the best matches. It was such a great lesson for me, because we put together matches to try to make it go so move to move, and we had to listen to the crowd. I had to listen to my partner, Melina, leading the match out there. I had to really surrender, and it became a beautiful match and a beautiful lesson.”

I’ve heard you say in other interviews that you and Melina didn’t get along at first.

“No. You know, she came from the independent scene and the wrestling school and paving that way. So for her, she felt like this opportunity was earned and deserved. It looked to many that I’m just coming from Hollywood and just popping on TV, and I get this opportunity, I just paved my way differently in LA.”

For people that don’t know what’s your career look like after wrestling?

“I was a mother. Literally, I got the phone call. I was at the gym, and they released me.”

Were you expecting that?

“When they called, it made sense. I broke my collarbone on the two out of three falls. I shattered it in my first match back. So now I’m in surgery. I’m out eight months, plates and screws, the whole nine yards. Then I’m rushing to come back. I’m in Krav Maga. I land on the bottom of the bag and tear two ligaments in my ankle, surgery select if I want. So it just it was like, putting me out, putting me out. While I was healing from that, I got the call.”

So this is a match with Beth Phoenix. What happens?

“Well, we were overseas, and we were putting together this match, and this is when Arn Anderson and Ricky Steamboat started to really train me. So you see how really towards the end of my wrestling career is when I really felt like I was getting the knowledge. It was the first time I understood that there’s a philosophy to the match. I literally had no idea. I was never taught it or anything. There was something in me and Beth that resonated with Ricky and Arn Anderson, and they really stepped up to the plate, and they said, This is how you got to start working this. The fans were really getting behind us, and overseas, we’re having these great matches, and we had this move where it was supposed to be, you know how you open your legs on the top rope and fall in. I guess I’m not that flexible. I think about it to this day. I just saw somebody on TNA do this move, and I was like, yeah, that’s not for me. So I was like, I’ll do my knees instead. That’s a little less flexible. And overseas, I did it one time, and I came back, and all the boys were worried because I landed on my neck. I didn’t feel it. It didn’t phase me. I was not injured. I wasn’t hurt, and so I didn’t really think much of it. But we’re on like a 7 to 10 day tour over there, not much sleep. We fly back to Nebraska. We’re going to kind of do this match again, and my boot catches that rope, and I wasn’t allocated that little extra space, and I landed on my head.”

Do you get knocked out?

“I was knocked out. I don’t remember it. The first thing I remember is being on the stretcher, and Stephanie McMahon was leaning over me, and they’re going into Gorilla, and she goes, ‘Don’t worry, we’re flying your husband out.’ I was like, they don’t fly your husband out [unless it’s serious]. So instantly, I was worried. I had a concussion and I broke my collarbone. It came at a time where we weren’t really educated with that kind of injury, and so being dragged to the center of the ring after that happened, if that was my neck, it would have paralysed me.”

How long until you came back?

“I think it was about four or five months, and with my husband being a chiropractor, we have an X-ray machine. So I’m like, I’m fine, I’m ready. And he x-rayed me and he’s like, ‘No, actually, it’s still broken.’ He’s like, see? And I’m like, ‘No, not really, looks like a shadow.’ So WWE flies me back out. The doctor looks at the X-rays, and he can even see that it’s a little broken. I’m like, I’m fine, look, and I’m moving my arms like I’m totally fine, Doc. Somehow, I convinced him I was totally fine, and then I went back for my first match, and that’s when I shatter it.”

So when did it shatter in that match? 

“So in the very beginning of the match, I think I do two clotheslines and a drop kick. The drop kick, I land on it and shatter it.”

You and Beth Phoenix had amazing chemistry. Was that instant?

“It was. You know, for her, she was coming back when she debuted. She got smacked in the face and broke her jaw. So for her, in a way, it was like that dream was broken for a season. And for me, I needed that experience. I needed that opponent. People ask me a lot, ‘What were you good at?’ What I’m good at then and now is getting other people over. I’m really good at that, and that’s what I do in my practice, and that’s what I do at TNA now, is I will do anything to get you over. And that gets me over, right? What I learned is that when I won the championship, I remember telling myself, take a moment, because I know it’s going to go fast. But what I learned is that moment lasts for a second and right when you walk through the curtains now you have a whole locker room chasing you. Whereas if I help you win a championship, whether that’s becoming a father or starting over or healing from a trauma, that lasts a lifetime for me. So the ROI the return on my investment is better if I get you over.”

Do you remember being told you were going to win the Women’s Championship?

“I do. It was like hours before the match. We were literally like, down in the ring, I think it was Fit Finlay, and he’s like, ‘You’re going over tonight.’ So casual. I’m like, What do you mean? He’s like, ‘You’re taking the title tonight.’ Okay? That match got cut, I think it was like three minutes. I mean, it got cut so short. And the most powerful part of that match was actually a match before that. It was the match leading up to that where I got the title shot. It was a match against me and Melina, it was about three minutes long, and like I said, to get the story in that time. It’s hard, but we did. I go to the locker room afterwards, it was a good three minutes, and there’s a knock at the locker room door, and I think it was Victoria, ‘Candice, Vince is here.’ I’m thinking, I did something wrong. I mean, Vince does not leave Gorilla for much of anything at in those days, right? I come to the door and he’s like, ‘Good job kid, you did well.’ And I was like, whoa! That was the moment I became a wrestler after. For that to happen is big! Then the next match was when I got to take the title.”

How did Playboy come about? 

“That’s a really great story. Well, you know, Playboy worked with WWE for a while, so they had some cover girls before me, but I had a dream of being in Playboy before WWE. I don’t really know how it came about, but for me, it was like a symbol of the 12 most beautiful women are displayed in this in a year. One centerfold a month. I don’t even know how I saw these or knew about this, but I know I had that dream. When I was in LA doing modeling, I auditioned for Playboy. I got their special editions magazines, which is like college girls, which I really didn’t go to college, and a Wet ‘ n ‘ Wild magazine, and I was sitting in the makeup chair with the makeup artist, and I told her my dream is Playboy. She looked at me and she goes, ‘That will never happen. If you do this special edition you’ll never do the main magazine.’ She crushed my dreams, and she was the one who did the makeup. I had no idea of the rules. So for WWE to get me that gig as the cover girl, which, by the way, at the time, the centerfold made like $5,000 and the cover girl made over six figures.” 

So how did WWE approach you with this opportunity? 

“There are people that kind of come up to you. I don’t know, they came up to me, said, ‘Hey, you want to do it?’ It was just totally a yes, and shocking, I am doing this, and on a level so much higher than my dream. Don’t put an expectation on your dream, because sometimes God’s plan is bigger than your plan, and so when that came into fruition, it was just a big learning lesson for me that reach for the stars.”

What’s the story behind your magic wand? 

“Oh, that’s a good story. I was traveling on the road with Victoria and Torrie [Wilson] and back then, you know, the seamstresses were really for the men. It wasn’t for the women. They weren’t really making gear [for women], maybe here and there, but it was a luxury, if you had any connection to the seamstresses, who are very talented, but we didn’t have that. So we would visit what we called stripper stores for ring gear, because that’s kind of it was similar in the season. So we go into this store on the road that we had heard about, and it was Halloween time. So there’s a lot of costumes, and one of these costumes has this, like, flimsy star wand. So I say to Torrie and Victoria, ‘I’m gonna use this star wand like Triple H uses his sledgehammer, and I’m gonna defeat people with it.’ They’re just like, you are out of your mind. So I show up to Raw, and I remember walking down the entrance to the ring. We’re gonna have a tag match, and we’re meeting in the ring with Fit Finlay. I got my wand, and I am so confident about this wand, and my girls are thinking she’s just out of her mind. I get in there and they’re putting together the match, and I tell Fit. I’m like, ‘So Fit, this is my new weapon…’ He’s just like, What is wrong with this girl? I was like, ‘And I’m gonna use it the way Triple H uses his sledgehammer.’ I think kind of just even ignored me, maybe. I’m sure there’s so many people that laughed about this behind the scenes, but that star wand got over. I was committed to it, and my favorite thing was after I left WWE, I was back for an event, Fit came up to me and said ‘Do you have any star wands left? Eer since then my daughter has been asking for a star wand.'”

How come you haven’t been called back for any of the Women’s Royal Rumbles?

“I don’t know. I have the story that it’s not my time. I don’t take it personally. I don’t have an ego about it. If they called me, I would show up, they just haven’t called me. So I just think that it’s not my time to show up.”

What is Candice Michelle grateful for?

“My faith, my health, and my family.”

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Chris Masters (@ChrisAdonis) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss making his WWE debut at such a young age, having one of the best physiques in pro wrestling history, never winning a championship in WWE, being the first wrestler to be put in the STFU by John Cena, his pec dance to Crazy Train when Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne hosted Raw, fans calling him “Sexy Jesus”, and more!

When you had the beard, people were calling you sexy Jesus. 

“Well, they still do. I just have to trim every once in a while. I like to do the sideburns.”

So tell me about sexy Jesus.

“Okay, so basically, somebody dropped hashtag Sexy Jesus in my Instagram comments. I just got a little chuckle out of it, didn’t think much of it, but it was funny. It was silly. So fast forward to its maybe NWA 77. I’m wrestling Thom Latimer, and I have the thought of I have a pre-tape, so I’m like, maybe I should drop that Sexy Jesus line, but subtly. It doesn’t need to be a big thing or anything, just subtly drop it in the promo. So I did, and then you fast forward to the match, and I’m working with Thom Latimer out there, and we’re in the heat of the match, so to speak, and the crowd starts chanting “Sexy Jesus.” It was just really cool, because I’ve never seen something pay off so quickly in pro wrestling. You say it earlier, just hoping that maybe it’s stupid, maybe it’ll catch on a little bit, and then they’re chanting it later. So I was like, okay, maybe I can run with this a little. I mean, it’s blasphemous, so it’s kind of hard to use it in any of the big companies, but at least it gives me something to play off of now. I told you before we came on that I’ve been working with GCW so that’s a good promotion for something like that. Circle Six, another one out here. I actually was Jesus for their Halloween show. We had a Master Lock challenge with the devil. It was amazing!”

When you started in wrestling, you started out in UPW, which is in Orange County. Were you there at the same time as John Cena?

“Yeah. So I don’t know this for certain, but we might have even started the same day. So yeah, my earliest memories are with Cena and there’s another guy named Bad Boy Basil, UPW, I was only 16 years old.”

So you’re 16, Cena would have been early 20s.

“So I can remember some of our trainings together. I remember one practice specifically where, do you know Andrew Bernardski from The Program? He’s a big dude. But anyways, he was training with us, and he went to give a leg drop off the second rope, and literally landed with all of his ass on John Cena’s head, almost killed the franchise before he ever became the franchise, and it was clunky as hell, man. Some of the stuff I remember, because I remember us working some tags and stuff over there, because it was originally in Huntington Beach, it was maybe three months in that I was doing a leapfrog, and again, with Andrew Bernardski, and I didn’t clear him. So I kind of landed on him, and then landed on my ankle, fractured my ankle. I tried to keep training on it, but I knew something was wrong. Literally, a month had gone by, and I couldn’t extend my foot. So, long story short, I ended up having surgery, and then I took a couple of years off. In that time, Cena obviously got signed, went to OVW, and then I ended up coming back to UPW a couple of years later, by the time I was 18.”

I don’t think it’s talked about enough that you were only 22 when you made your WWE debut, looking as jacked as you did. I think because you had that much muscle, people assumed [you were older]

“I was 21. I know that because I was turning 22 when I worked the Elimination Chamber. That’s how that always stands out to me. So I definitely didn’t look my age. I think most of the guys didn’t even treat me like I was my age because of that. I was a kid. It was me, Muhammad Hassan and Renee Dupree, just a few young guys amongst locker room of men that most of us kind of grew up watching. So yeah, I just think most of them just kind of treated me like I was a grown man, when really, I was a kid. If you think, because when I do seminars or even just indies, I’ll see guys who were right around that age, and they still look like kids. So I’m like well, that was me. I was that age too. I just looked older. It doesn’t mean I was necessarily more mature or had any kind of wisdom or anything like that at point.”

Did you feel the pressure being in the Elimination Chamber at that age, and really early into your WWE career?

“Yes, I did. Also I made a huge mistake. I took a red-eye flight into New York, and that was a mistake. I learned that at that time, because I was so kind of off for the day, it’s hard to get back on track if you take a red eye. You got to get a really good nap. But yeah, it was a lot of pressure too, because it’s such a different match. You don’t know how it’s gonna feel, necessarily. I mean, when you have a one-on-one match, you kind of know the flow of it, and you have a better grasp of it. With a match like that though, there’s so much going on and stuff that can go wrong. Like in the first one, Hunter getting his throat squashed, but I just remember it was a lot of fun, though. Things that stand out to me. I always see the clip of Kurt Angle entering, and I always remember being in the pod and watching him and just being like, my God, he’s one of the best ever. I already knew that. But I’m just saying, watching him and that intensity that he brought, it was just like he’s my top five in-ring work. He could do everything, obviously. But it was at that intensity that he brought, I was like, oh man. Because I have to come out after him. I did pretty good in my entrance in there. But you’re seeing something like that, it’s like you got to try to match [him]. You’re not gonna outmatch that intensity, but you got to definitely bring it. I don’t know, it was always cool. I just had this realization, Kurt is just freaking amazing. Obviously Shawn was in it, which was really cool. Kane, Carlito. The story of it was real cool, too, how Carli and me tried to band together, and then he screws me. Honestly, none of us knew about Edge coming out after, none of us knew. I mean, Shawn probably knew, I guess. But I just remember that day Carlito just thinking the finish was odd, because it would have just been a roll up, Cena rolls up Carlito, that’s it. So it just kept saying, Something’s not right, something’s not right. Then we’re out there, and then Vince comes out, and then Edge, I didn’t suspect anything. I don’t even know if I thought about but Carli knew something was involved.”

But they didn’t even tell you?

“No. I get it now, though, because it’s just one of those things, just like nowadays, sometimes the less that know the better. It’s not really about being disrespectful or trying to be secretive. It’s more just like, the less that know the better, because everything gets reported, stooged, especially now even more maybe with the social media and stuff. So I didn’t at the time, I was kind of like, why’d you have to keep us in the dark about it? But again, you just get it with time. It’s just better less people know. When they talk about the screwjob and some of the guys they didn’t tell on that, you kind of get it. It’s like, okay, well certain people needed to know. But you didn’t necessarily have to tell everybody. The more they know, the more hands are dirty, right?” 

Where do you think you fall in terms of best physiques in wrestling?

“Well that 20- 22 range would definitely be, probably, I don’t know, maybe top 10, top 15. It’s hard to compare yourself against guys you kind of grew up watching, and you kind of looked up to and all that. I just know the guys that stood out to me always were like Ultimate Warrior, Lex Luger, Rick Rude, Buff, Scott Steiner. I mean, there’s guys that weren’t necessarily known for their bodies that obviously had good builds too, but I mean, those were the guys that were really known for it. Then I think more in this era, I guess it was Bobby Lashley.”

If you had to give me a Mount Rushmore of your best body guys in wrestling, who are they?

“Okay, Mount Rushmore. This is gonna be tough, but I’m gonna probably lean Scott Steiner, Lex Luger, I guess we could say that version of Hunter, Madison Square Garden, that one, and Ultimate Warrior.”

How hard was it to stay that conditioned?

“It was hard, but it was more about just making it a habit. You did everything you could to not miss the gym and get your five workouts in a week, get whatever cardio it is you intend. It got harder on the road. But initially, I would pack enough food so that I’d have food to get me through till Saturday and stuff like that. So little stuff like that. I won’t do that anymore. Brian Cage will walk around with a big thing of food, you know, he’s got it all for the day.”

Do you feel like you were ever close at any point in time in WWE to winning a championship? It’s crazy to think you didn’t win one.

“There was a point. I mean, Carlito and me were supposed to win them at that WrestleMania, but it literally got switched like the day before. We were penciled in to win it. But then Carlito, they wanted him to turn baby and The Spirit Squad, they kind of wanted to get the belts on them somehow, to give them some steam, so that was that. Then the Intercontinental title. I was actually supposed to win that, but it was the same point where they had given me intervention for my prescription painkiller abuse at the time. They even told me, I remember having the meeting with Johnny [Ace], and because there was a four way match that night, it was in Vegas for the Intercontinental title that I was slated to win. But then they caught wind of the issues I had, and I had an intervention, and basically told me you’re going to rehab. I screwed that. So tag belts, I had no control over that, just happened. IC, I f’d up. There was a point there, because you can even watch back to those old Raws where Vince was playing with the idea of making me the youngest champion. But, you know, he was feeling out a lot of guys at that point. I’m pretty sure Cena gave me probably the thumbs down at some point.” 

Was there an issue there?

“Oh yeah, we never mixed too well for whatever reason. I don’t know, Massachusetts guy, California guy, I don’t know, just kind of oil and water. But I don’t take away anything from the fact that he’s this generation’s Hogan, and he definitely worked harder than anybody probably would have in that spot, especially for that long.”

You were there during a time when a lot of your colleagues, a lot of your friends were passing away like that. Was that a really rough period?

“I don’t even think it was just pro wrestling. If you look at the grand scheme of the country, the US had an opiate problem. Obviously the pro wrestlers had it. You know, out here in Hollywood, there was an issue, just a lot of people. I think there’s a better awareness of the fact that these things can be addictive now, and they control that stuff much better. Yeah, I lost a lot of guys, Lance Cade, Test. I always think about and, you know, the list goes on and on. But I just, you know, it would be sad to lose your life over that. It really sucks, because I think back to it and being in it sucked. But like, I could see, you know, looking down from heaven and just being like, Oh my god, why did I jeopardize everything to do that?”

Didn’t Cena give you the very first STFU?

“Yes, and it was a shoot STFU. I mean, again, I’m not saying that Cena was purposely doing it to shoot on me. I used to think sometimes with Cena, he got so fired up in the moment that he wouldn’t even know his own strength type of thing. So, yeah, he did it to me for a shoot. You’ll see my face starts turning red, I start trying to get it a little bit looser. I’m pretty sure that I heard later on that he was working with Kurt, and Kurt had to tell him to loosen it up a little bit. But Kurt with his neck issues and stuff. But my Master Lock could be kind of brutal sometimes with guys, because I didn’t really know how to work it either. So sometimes when I look back at those videos and I look at me putting on Kurt, I’m kind of like, oh man, I was probably rougher with him than I needed to be. Because when you’re that green, you don’t know how to shake spirit as much. You do do stuff a little more real than you have to. I can remember, actually, there was a time with Shane Helms, we were working at a live event, and I Master Locked him, I guess, way too hard. So I released the Master Lock, and they ring the bell, the match is over, and he gets up, and I think he tells me to f off, and just walks off. I’m not even saying it to heel on him, I was too stiff, I didn’t know how to work it, and it became a big drama with everybody, because then it was like, you know, he no sold the hold, I’m obviously doing it too rough, and I know that too. Because with Shelton, one time, he was telling me, I was about to pass out. I mean, if it’s too tight, some of the guys were so broad here that it’d be so tight that it would be tough, because you start twerking their neck from the start. [It’s a legit hold]. You’ll pass out, cuts off the blood flow, and you’ll go out.”

Who is it the hardest to put the Master Lock on? 

“Probably, Bobby. Just look at his build. I mean, I say that just because I remember just holding that thing for a long time on anybody can be kind of tough. I’m saying not for 20 seconds, but like with Bobby. I mean, it was hard, you know, because by the time I got it around his neck, it was probably not even fully locked in, just because he was so kind of broad up here.”

I thought for sure it was gonna be Big Show. 

“Well, I don’t even think it was possible with Big Show. Honestly, we went through this one time at a TV where we were trying, we tried to get it on, everybody was so excited when I got there to try it. They got me to the ring, or they want to see it, and then we had this idea of maybe using a chain. But I guess it didn’t make sense. You rap a chain, you do it there, but it’s like, well I guess it didn’t make sense, so we didn’t do that. Then it’s funny, because I feel like there was a point where I could have put it on him, and maybe he just was a little heavier when he was heavier. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I was just was never able to get it on.”

Give me the pitch for when they told you to pop your pecs to Crazy Train. 

“Oh, boy. I don’t know whose idea that was, but I didn’t like it right from the start, because I didn’t want to be doing comedic stuff really. But I also knew that there was a point where I was like, All right, well, if I’m going to do this, let me just try to do it the best I can. So then I did it, and the crowd really responded to it like crazy. And unfortunately, it’s one of those situations where I look back and I’m like, maybe I did it too good, because then they kept wanting me to do it, and then I was just like this is stupid. This is funny once or twice, but to do it [every week], if I was a fan, by the third time of it I’m like enough. So when I always think about that, it was funny, but I always hate the fact that it’s like okay, now let’s do this every week in some fashion. As a fan, I don’t think I’d like this. So we lost Ozzy not that long ago, so a lot of the clips came up of that segment. One thing I will say that I love about that is the genuine enthusiasm. When you see Ozzy’s face, he just loves it. To me, I thought that was really cool. After his passing, I thought about this, and I watched it, man, it’s really cool that I entertained Ozzy to that extent. He just thought it was hilarious. Yeah, it’s cool. And, you know, Sharon was very flirtatious. It was pretty funny. Honestly, the funny thing about it is, they wanted me to win, right? But I don’t think that’s the way it was worked. The whole thing. There was some gimmick finish. But honestly, I actually won the freaking thing. But I don’t remember what the finish was. It was some whatever, some angle or something.”

What is Chris Masters grateful for?

“My cats, my biceps are still here, and the sexy Jesus hair.”

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Cody Rhodes (@CodyRhodes) is a professional wrestler with WWE and the reigning WWE Undisputed Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss winning the WWE Championship for a third time, welcoming his new daughter Leilani Ella, reacting to hearing boos from fans, his WrestleMania 42 match against Randy Orton, not being the fan favorite at WrestleMania 41 in his match with John Cena, the Codyvator spot in their SummerSlam rematch, being slapped by Travis Scott, how the infamous Cody Splash came to be, that tables match with The Big Show, and more!

I’m looking at the belt right now. It still has Drew McIntyre side plates. When do you get the American Nightmare side plates?

“I should have got them on Friday. I was just moving too quickly. I grabbed the title. I stayed a little bit after and I grabbed the title. You know how the West Coast shows, wrestlers love a West Coast show because they can get the red eye. I didn’t make my red eye, which is why I’m wondering why I was racing out of there, but I was. But as much as oil and water we might be, and fighting behind the scenes, fighting in the ring, all these things. You fight a guy long enough, I think you start to have a respect for him. I saw that with a lot of my dad’s opponents, with Tully, with Ric, and I’ve really come to, I don’t know what it is, respect his skill set and his body of work, for sure, but I almost want to take these off myself and give them to him. I don’t know if he’s ready for that right now, but I also don’t want it to feel petty or condescending. I just sincerely, a lot of times this stuff we collect, we forget to collect it, and then 10 years from now, somebody’s got your boots, or you want something for your kids and you don’t have it, but that might be a moment. I don’t mind having them for right now, still feels good.”

With everything you’ve done since coming back to WWE, has it occurred to you that your accomplishments have outdone your father’s accomplishments in WWE? Three-time WWE Champion, two-time Royal Rumble, winner, King of the Ring.

“I don’t think he’d mind me sharing this. Mr. Heyman told me that, and I thought he might be the one guy I believe it, because even when I’m by myself and doing one of these, I still don’t believe that, because I think Dusty’s legacy had such a final chapter that it still goes on today. I mean, they’re still doing things of his today, and there’s a whole fandom that will never even know they were his brainchild. This is a silly one, but for example, the cage lowering with the [music], that’s a Dusty thing. These production things are still in play. I appreciate you saying it. I think I have a lot more to do. But yeah, that’s really nice. I don’t know if I was ready for you to be so kind, not that you’re not kind, but that’s very nice.”

What more do you have to do? 

“I’ll tell you something about King of the Ring. That’s one as a fan, I wanted that crown, and I don’t ride on the WWE charters anymore coming back from Saudi. Because after the King of the Ring, was probably the most partying I’ve ever done on a flight. Today, it’s pretty nebulous. You see Damian Priest running around in an Aquaman outfit and stuff like that, but I got photos with people I don’t even know. I’m arm wrestling Santos in one photo. My shirt is unbuttoned to like my navel. But all I remembered was that this would have been way cooler had I had the crown, because I emerged from the front of the plane with a crown on. But yeah, I had a good time.”

When you were Stardust, you were so deep into that character. How do we know you’re not in character now?

“I think the reason it haunted me is that I didn’t know the answer. It should be easy. Am I in character now? No. It should be easy. But is that a lie? Maybe. Because what is the character? Is the character who you were? Cody Runnells and Cody Rhodes, is there any real difference? Here’s the only thing I’ve kind of know, because the question still haunts me, and I still don’t have an answer. Here’s the only thing I’ve noticed, where I know when I’m not in character. I know I am not in character when I’m around my children. That I know for sure, I have nothing, I am not there to do anything other than be a father. That’s it. So that’s why I’m perplexed by the question. Maybe there’s other times.”

So if the story leading into WrestleMania 40 is doing what your dad never did, finishing the story. What was the story? Then the year after and the story now?

“Well, the biggest thing the year after that I wanted to do was it was more of I had talked a lot about what a WWE Championship reign with me looks like. Hey, we’re gonna bring back the Winged Eagle. That took a lot, and thanks to Triple H for saying sure.”

That came back for a night. Was there talk of making that the belt? 

“I don’t think there was ever talk of making it the belt, but it was definitely only supposed to be there for one single night. Then the next thing you know, it’s hanging above the ring at the Royal Rumble, and there’s figures with it, which you know you’ve done something good there. Kevin Owens was carrying it into HQ, so I was really glad we got that. Also, this wasn’t a knock on the previous run, but it was hey, there’s going to be a lot of bell-to-bell wrestling here. I want to be defending this more frequently, and I want the matches to be a little bit less entertainment, a little bit more sports. Definitely both sports entertainment, but skew to the left. So here we go to France. We’ve got AJ Styles out of the gate. That’s a prime example of what I wanted it to look like, in terms of what that first reign would be. Somebody has asked me a question recently, ‘What is this one? What is number three for you?’ I wish I had an answer, but I think every wrestler, and it’s fun if you watch people who come on your podcast, who talk to you so frequently, do they find their identity? Do they change? Are you talking to different characters? I think for me, at this point, the prime of my career, I’d like it to really define who I am. I’m not so much worried about defining what the belt is to me. I’d like myself to be fully formed and fully defined. I think I’m there as far as the American Nightmare, what that is, and how I feel, but I’ll tell you an area that’s changing is I was never a polarizing wrestler. Now I’m a polarizing wrestler.”

How does that make you feel?

“That’s the thing. I’m honored by it. I’m honored by the passion of both sides of the coin. What I would like to do and to honor those who are so excited and those who are so not, however you’d put it, is I want to make sure that I’m not gotten to by it. I think with everything I’ve been through and everything in the business, you hear people say you got thick skin. I can definitely say I have thick skin now, because I used to not have thick skin.”

Are you trying to win that section of the audience over who maybe isn’t a fan of you being a champion right now, or who’s booing you at a show?

“I don’t want to say no, but there’s a really great line, you watch Rick and Morty? What does he say? He says something about, ‘I don’t care that you boo me, because I’ve seen what you cheer,’ and that is very much my approach often. I spoke about this recently with the big dude from Barstool, Brandon [Walker]. I spoke about that Leslie Knope Parks and Rec episode about bowling, where she spent so much time on the guy who was never going to vote for it in the first place. Unfortunately, you do that to discount your own, the people who are already there for you, but I don’t want to be against them either, if that makes any sense. I think John had it perfect, and watching John, having my own skin really, really beat up and thickened up over the course of my career has made it so that I think I’ve got the lane I can run in and make something very entertaining for both sides of the coin.”

At what point in that WrestleMania match with John Cena did you start to hear, oh my gosh, they’re booing me. They’re cheering him. It was almost like Rock vs. Hogan

“I remember every now and then you see fans say, ‘Turn the sound off when you watch it.’ I might have already said this on a podcast with you previously, and I’m always thinking, what? The sound is fans are in the ring with us. We are a live performance that interacts with our audience and plays off of what they are giving us. There is no sound off. Sorry, I feel strongly about that match. Bobby Roode is probably one of WWE’s absolute best assets. […] Bobby Roode has a couple of times come up to me and said, ‘Hey, it’s going to be an away game.’ That was because they show us now [arriving], we love doing these arrivals. I actually don’t mind it, because I could sit right there and go, Okay, great. It’s going to be one thing in Louisville, Kentucky, it might be a different thing in Las Vegas. Somebody said something to me recently, because you talk about, I don’t know if villain is the term, some people might think that’s who I already am. That might be that for them, I might not need to do any more. They might think, no, he’s a bad guy, I’m booing him, or he’s a good guy, I’m cheering him. But somebody said something, and they said it to me in a condescending fashion. They said it as an insult, but I didn’t take it as such, they called me golden boy. I loved it. Here’s why I loved it. If you’re new to the game and you’re watching now, I think you can get away with saying that. If you have followed this for more than 5 years, or more than 10, you know that’s not how it started. So I’m not mad at that little statement. You know that I wasn’t even able to walk down the ramp at my first WrestleMania, we went side ramp for the battle royal. That’s a denotation and little nickname that I did not take in a negative fashion, even though it was delivered as such.”

At what point during that WrestleMania 41 match did you start to hear the crowd was not on your side?

“It’s the difference with hearing them. Stadiums are always tough to hear because that noise does go up. It’s the difference between hearing them and the best way to put it is feeling them. I started feeling them in my rib cage, really, on the old school intros. I love that they’re there for a fight. You get the classic when Michael Cole or Joe Tess or Stu or Corey, or when any of these guys can say a big fight feel, and it actually is a big fight feel that’s amazing. You’ll get that with both WrestleMania main events.”

John Cena talked about how the match that you guys did at SummerSlam had to be different, had to deliver, because the WrestleMania match he felt didn’t. How did you put that match together at SummerSlam?

“Well, I never was one to get mad or get in my feelings over WrestleMania 41 because it was part of a larger story. That is a hard sell, though, for a WrestleMania, especially when the year before you had the completion of over several decades of a journey, and at a 10-year Mania, you’re involving luminaries and legends. It’s a feeling that’s good, a good feeling, as Shawn Michaels will say, the good stuff. So when you go into 41 and you’re doing 1/4 of your story, and you know your story goes all the way to SummerSlam, I never was not committed, and I never doubted John. I hope he knows that, because I know he talks about this match, so I feel comfortable talking about it, but I never doubted, hey, well, this is what we’re doing now, and this is what we’re going to do, then this is what we’re going to do when we get to SummerSlam. You asked, though, how we put it together. I have a really great photo of how we put it together in the most old-school fashion ever. He wanted to have a cigar where he was staying in New York, and this was the night before. I figured I like cigars, it is one of my favorite things, maybe the most Cuban thing about me. I went there, and I realized after dinner and stuff, maybe an hour in, that we were talking about tomorrow. But we were just talking about it differently than you talk about it at the ringside area. We were talking about it, then we would talk about something else, and then we’d slip back into it, and it was the most I think I’ve ever focused in my mind. Because once we go past something, I don’t want to forget it. Remember that idea, I don’t want to forget it. So I ended up going to my hotel that night, and I had it all. I had everything, and I kept making sure. I think I was telling Brandi, and I was making sure I had it. I had what we had talked about. Because with an old school guy like him, you may actually go out there the next night without seeing each other, which is wild in 2025-26. But with John, that was a possibility. He could have just yelled his whole version of it, or I could have yelled my whole version. But that was a really special moment, because I got a lot of pictures from it, and I didn’t share any except maybe one of us signing at the tables. But I got to be with my friend at the end, and I got to not just be with my friend, but I got to have the responsibility that I think anyone in the business would want. I got the responsibility of being booed in Vegas. I got that responsibility of being the one who can survive. Hey, yeah, you may not be the hot thing right now, but if you’re going to be QB 1, you have to be able to survive, and I got to be able to be in there with the guy who survived more encounters than anybody in our business with split crowds, for him crowds and hostile crowds.”

How did you guys come up with the Codyvator with John Cena coming up? 

“I don’t want to tell you whose idea it was, but I can say this, there’s a guy backstage who runs Gorilla. Shout out to him, Temarrio. He does not like the Codyvator. I like that he calls it the Codyvator, because we could easily just call it a lift like it’s denoted in a production budget. But he doesn’t like the Codyvator, because the Codyvator is pretty expensive, and if we’re only going to use it for me to come up and I prefer it’s only me. But I joked with him a lot that, hey, look, dude, we’re getting bang for your buck here, two uses of the Codyvator, and it made him feel better about the use of it that night. So yeah, I’ll go ahead and credit Triple H for that one, easiest one to credit for it, but that was fun. Also, you can tell how strong a man really is when you’re going at a tiny, incremental pace and the floor is lifting you, and still had me, and I think wanted to carry me 70 yards, but didn’t need to. I can fall off your shoulders at a certain point. He’s still got it. John, certainly, all the functional strength, and you’ve seen all the hard knocks videos and all that, that’s never gonna go away.”

This WrestleMania with Randy Orton, does this one feel so much different than all the other WrestleManias you’ve main evented?

“I would say it’s very champagne problems. This is a conversation that’s been brought up a lot as far as what would I have done had I not won the championship back from Drew? I don’t know, and I think it’s a bit scary to me. Because ok, WrestleMania 39 main event, SoFi, sets a record. WrestleMania 40, 2 main events, right where my Eagles played, sets records. Then last year, Allegiant Stadium. I don’t know. I wish I had a plan B. I would have come up with one, and I would have been motivated, and this place certainly gets all of me so I would have been able to dig in. But I think looking at WrestleMania this year, and I said it incorrectly. I said sleeper Mania, which would imply that people are sleeping on it, and that’s not what I meant. What I think you’re going to get from this year’s WrestleMania is you have two main events with Roman and Punk for the World Heavyweight Championship and myself and Randy, and the show that’s filling out with Stephanie and Liv and the show that you’re seeing kind of come together, because these matches are starting to become obvious what they are. I think bell to bell, you’re going to get one of the better Manias ever, and I really, really like being part of that WrestleMania.”

So, what’s the story behind the Cody splash?

“Well, a couple of things. People love to watch the table get broken. There’s only so many ways you can break a table. I don’t like setting the table up in the corner. I think that’s lame. You got to break the table. You got to break the actual table. Legs need to be down. We were scrambling for something to do in a contract signing at some point in my career, and I thought, hey, why don’t I just splash you off the top rope and keep the pen and the contract in my hand? There’s something fun about that. Plus, people love a table breaking. They’re chanting, ‘We want tables.’ By God, give them the tables. Then what would come of it is on the live events, which are no longer intimate and just for that crowd, because people will film something they saw that night and it’s out there. My splash from the live event started to make it out, and that is just a prime example of you don’t always see your age, and then maybe you see your age. So I think I’m at the prime of my career. I think I’m psychologically the best I’ve ever been. As an athlete, believe it or not, even with that splash, I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever been. However, I have committed to the idea of the Splash is a non-jump splash, it’s a fall splash. I like to get straight as a board. I like to really get out like a tree frog being flung from a tree. The one overseas, in Germany, was so high up, the idea that I would jump is insane. So now we just call it at TV lovingly, the New Jack splash, where I just fall. So there’s no splash involved. It’s just going to be a fall. But yeah, it started as the idea people love a table, let’s do this at this contract signing. What could we do? Oh, we could do this, and then we could grab your hand, and it would be a thing, but it’s developed into the New Jack splash, and I have no shame with it at all, because people do seem to enjoy it. They do. That is not a showcase of my athleticism. That’s not the one I would put my hat on athleticism over, this is just my splash and how I do it, and it’s become part of my repertoire now. So you know, if I go up there, don’t expect me to jump. I’ll be falling.”

How badly were you hurt after Elimination Chamber last year in Toronto? How badly did Travis Scott hurt you?

“Travis Scott did not hurt me. It looks like he hurt me. I took a photo with Travis Scott at the OBB studio event, and I never saw that photo. I like Travis Scott. I think it’s safe to say at this point, I like Travis Scott. I like that he lended us his time and that we had moments with him. I mean, he took a Cross Rhodes. Most people just remember the slap, and I’m going to be on this side of history with it. I know it wasn’t everyone’s favorite thing. That is not the hardest I’ve ever been slapped. That’s number three. That’s number three. I’ll give you the list of slaps. Number two, Bob Holly in London. He says, ‘Fire up out there, kid.’ I don’t want to say something nefarious that gets anyone in trouble. I think someone told him to try and knock me out, because the way he slapped me was trying to knock a man out, it didn’t. I have a decent little jaw. So I took said slap. The number one might shock you, but I felt it in both of my heels. I felt it in my feet. I had to plant my feet. It was so hard. Nattie Neidhart hit me. It felt like an MLB batter swinging the bat, and I walked into it. She leveled me. So Nattie is one, Hardcore Holly two, Travis Scott, I’d say maybe three.”

But was that a legit black eye from Travis Scott?

“I’m gonna say that John Cena and The Rock gave me the black eye, and Travis Scott was there as well. So the three of them gave me the black eye and the perforated eardrum. Also, it runs. If you get anything up here, right? So if I like, dot you up here, it’s gonna run. Some people are quick healers too. I’m like, a real yellowy, gross healer, where it just takes forever. So, yeah, it was not the worst slap I ever got, and he took a great Cross Rhodes.” 

How long have you been waiting to use that Raheem line in a promo?

“It came up randomly. I was never, ever going to touch it, as I probably shouldn’t. I was never going to touch it. I think I’ve kind of expressed this. I felt like there was this natural, sometimes people watch the show and they’re watching and they’re just entertained, and they don’t tweet about it and they don’t post about it. Other times, there’s people watching more from the they’re deeply invested, and they’re invested in the behind-the-scenes nature of it, and we have Unreal. This is all our own design, right? I think there was some more on the latter side, who thought he’s got to reply to what CM Punk and Roman had said about the WWE Championship or about the A show. He’s got to reply to that. I wanted to make it very clear I was not going to be replying to that. I’m not going to spend my time heading towards WrestleMania in Allegiant Stadium, talking seriously about that, so that was my way around it. Hey, if we’re going to make this measuring contest, well, I didn’t get this nickname for no reason, and I stand by it. I stand by what I said. I stand by it. I am actually glad, though, because we could have kept going as far as the next thing you know, Punk could be out there. That’s not what we needed. I needed a one-and-done on this little bit, and here’s something funny about it, though, I chose to say that on the night that I debuted a youth kids t-shirt. I am wearing the kids t-shirt when I said it, so my hypocrisy was on full display. The first time ever WWE said, this is the youth only line, because we had a lot of kids who wanted the Nightmare stuff and not the skulls, so I needed to wear it. But that also was the night I said that. So again, my hypocrisy on full display. I’m a complicated man.”

How much longer do you think you want to do this?

“I don’t have a number on it anymore. I know that the next deal I do will be my last as far as a full-time wrestler. Sometimes, when you take things, and I think I’m doing this right now, and you use them to your advantage where you’re like, I need to do this for this, but really it might be for you. We talked about Liberty earlier. She’s known nothing but WrestleMania main events. She literally thinks what I do for a living is WrestleMania. That’s what I do for a living. Leilani is only six months old, so in my mind, I owe her a few more of these. That’s silly. That’s me doing it for me, or maybe it is a little bit of both. I’ll know, and you know who else will know? The audience. They’ll know. I don’t even know if the kids say this anymore, washed. I’ll know, because your mind is your greatest asset as a pro wrestler. I was a big Hogan fan through every era, but if you look back at Hogan in black and white, Hollywood Hogan, a master just up here in terms of the psychology of a live audience and what they came to play with and my dad said something on commentary once that absolutely pulled my heart into my stomach. It just hit me so hard. But he was talking about Hogan, and this is the middle of deep kayfabe. He’s talking about Hogan, he said, ‘No man has captured the imagination of the audience like that guy.’ I thought that’s what I want to do. They came here for something, and if they’re booing, they came here to boo. If they’re cheering, they came here. I want to capture their imagination the best I can, and you can when you have the experience I have. And again, got to wrestle my angel on my shoulder last year, and John Cena gets to wrestle the devil on my shoulder this year in Randy Orton. If I can’t do anything with that, well then I’m a real dick. You know what I’m saying? I’m sorry, if I can’t do anything with that, then I’m selfish, then I’m not here to give back to the industry, so I need to do that as well. But you’ll know, you’ll know.”

The Tables match with Big Show where he steps through the table on the outside. What was supposed to happen in that match? 

“That.”

That was it? Because the look on his face sells it perfectly. 

“Yeah, that’s what was supposed to happen. It almost didn’t happen because I did a disaster kick off the table in the corner, and it did a slight like that, and I realized, oh, this was so dumb. I could have reversed the finish because I tried to do the same thing he’s doing in a second that 100% is the thing that’s supposed to happen. I don’t mind if people don’t believe that, and I don’t mind if people are still caught up in the suspension of disbelief. But that is it, and his face is accurate, because that happened to him frequently with chairs. I was in The Big Texan with him in Amarillo when he sat in a chair at the end of the table, and it exploded. Now you have to get off the ground. Now they have to get you another chair. It’s a whole thing. That was something that was happening in his life. He is a legit giant, one of the people I learned the absolute most from. But that is what was supposed to happen. There was someone who said, ‘This is not going to work,’ and then he was so happy to tell them when he came to the back, ‘Oh, it worked!’ Then he beat me up pretty bad after, though. I remember, we went from a funny haha moment to the I do kind of a whirly bird into a table on the outside that was rough. When I get up, you can tell that was a rough bump.”

What is Cody Rhodes grateful for?

“My family, WWE giving me this platform, and the algorithm.”

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John Morrison (@TheRealMorrison) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss losing a hair vs. hair match at CMLL and now being bald, his wife Taya’s reaction to the new look, replacing Chris Benoit at Vengeance and winning the ECW World Championship in 2007, his dive from the top of the Elimination Chamber, his parkour Royal Rumble save, having more than 34 names throughout his pro wrestling career, and more!

Are you getting used to seeing yourself with no hair?

“No. Imagine your whole life, every time you see your reflection there’s a guy there with hair. I never shaved my head. But more than that, for the last 24 years, 25 years, I’ve had long hair. When I got my WWE contract in 2003 that was the day I stopped getting haircuts. Basically, I just grew it out from then till now.” 

I want to read you some comments I saw on Twitter: “John Hennigan makes me sick. The guy loses a hair match and somehow looks even better than he did.”

“[Laughs] Is that from Taya?”

“I was baffled. He should have celebrated like he was the winner.”

“I gotta admit, the match did feel fantastic. That hair match, I feel like, was one of the best matches I’ve had in years. Was the first time in a while that I felt like me again. Kind of feeling unfulfilled, basically. Not just me, a lot of people in wrestling. But for me right now, in AEW, I feel underutilized. Can’t blame anyone, that’s just how wrestling promotions work. There’s only enough TV time for a certain amount of people. Those people at AEW, we’ve coined the term the island. Those people are on the island, so to speak. I don’t feel like I’m on the island with Tony or AEW right now. So because of that, I feel like I’m doing like 10-20% of what I’m capable of, storytelling-wise, wrestling-wise, in the ring. With CMLL, I’m on their island, and so I got to do everything that I could, and it was cool.”

Had you been thinking for a while about shaving your head?

“A little bit. Honestly, my acting coach [Hank] has been on me for years about shaving my head. I had a bunch of missed calls when I got back from Mexico. It’s all him going, ‘Hey, you got to take some photos. You could go out for cop roles, soldier rules, all kinds of stuff. The world is your oyster now, come on.’ Thanks, Hank. He doesn’t have social so one of those comments wasn’t his, but he’s excited.”

So what’s interesting is, you get your head shaved. Everybody sees it first. You don’t. So when did you finally look in the mirror and see what it looked like?

“So as soon as I come back from the match, honestly, Mexico City is like a mile and a half above sea level. My hands are on my knees, looking down for like 30 seconds before I find a mirror and Whoa! A couple of things, a few days prior, actually, three days prior to this match, I came back to LA and I had to shoot a bunch of projects because I was shaving my head, continuity-wise, I had to finish up a bunch of stuff that had just kind of been on the to-do list. So two days before the match, I was doing a Bat in the Sun superpower beat down video playing Casey Jones and fighting foot soldiers. There’s this one part where I kept choking this guy with a pay phone cord, ‘You got a collect call from pain 101!’ But the pay phone was a prop, and it kept falling and gashing me in the head. There was one time I got gashed there and I started bleeding a little bit, which doesn’t really matter, because if you have hair, you can’t see it. But I was thinking about that before the hair vs. hair match, I was like, I wonder if I have those marks from the pay phone fight scene on my head, and then I wonder if all those times Sabu hit me in the head with chairs, or a kendo stick to the head from Sheamus, or something, I just never noticed they have a gnarly scar. When you look in the mirror, I was like yep, I guess I was right about the pay phone marks, because I am kind of cut up. Either that or the barber character in CMLL. She shaved me pretty quickly without a guard on the razor.”

What does Taya think of this?

“She was one of the first people to say I think John looks amazing, which, I mean, probably the most important perspective to me of anyone in the world. Wife, she’s cool with it. All right, I’m fine with it.” 

Who was the first person in your WWE career to say, hey, you kind of look like Jim Morrison?

“I can’t remember, but it wasn’t a thing that had happened like super frequently. Was more so that, and we’ve talked about this, I think. When I won the ECW championship, I was Johnny Nitro. Prior to that, Vince had mentioned a few times that Johnny Nitro is not a champion’s name, or not a good name, ‘You got to change it.’ [I responded]’Why do you think that, Vince? Is it because it reminds you of WCW Monday Nitro?’ [Vince said] ‘Yes.’ The day after I won the championship. Actually the week after, because the day after, everyone on the roster got some very bad news. But we can talk about that if you want later. The week after, Vince walked up to me in catering, which is rare, and said, ‘You got to change your name.’ Put a paper down on the table and a pen and said, ‘Just make a list of names.’ So I was really on the spot, and I just started writing down what could be an M and M name that fits? Then I was like, maybe Johnny Brando, John Morrissey, John Morrison, couldn’t think of very many Ms, so I made a list of kind of like celebrity, Brando, Morrison, Johnny Brando, stuff like that. The first one that I’d written down was John Morrison, and a couple of hours later, I handed this list to Vince, and he just went like this and read the top was like, ‘John Morrison, I like it. That’s it.’ So then after that, I kind of went from this Johnny Nitro wet hair look to getting the makeup department to flat iron my hair. I used to say I wanted it to look like Farrah Fawcett’s hair. But once I started doing that and wearing aviators, I got a ton of people saying, You look just like Jim Morrison, even to the point where I started getting fans asking me if I was Jim Morrison’s brother sometimes, and I would sometimes make a smart ass comment, like, I mean, he died in 79 if I’m his brother, am I a vampire? Now I’d be like, 80 years old. I don’t know how to do the math. The math doesn’t math on that.”

You mentioned winning the ECW championship. So that was at Vengeance, Night of Champions 2007. It was supposed to be Chris Benoit versus CM Punk for the vacant ECW championship. At what point do you realize throughout the day, Chris Benoit is not showing up, and I’m his replacement?

“So we’re at Vengeance 2007, not everyone’s there. It’s a pay-per-view, but I happen to be there. The ECW roster didn’t have a lot of representation at that particular event. Say call time, I think it was maybe 2 pm.” 

Were you booked to do anything? 

“No, I was like a standby. I was booked to be there, maybe have a dark match, I don’t know. So, say call time is 1 pm, everything’s fine. I’m just in catering. Around 3 pm, I hear Chris Benoit hasn’t showed up, and if he doesn’t show up, I might need to fill in or something. Okay, sure he’ll be there though, it’s Chris. 4:30, 5 pm, me and Mordecai, Kevin Thorne, get called into talent relations, the two of us, and we’re told, ‘Hey, can’t get hold of Chris Benoit. He’s not here, and if he’s not here in another hour or two, it’s going to be one of you two guys versus CM Punk. We don’t want to let the crowd down by having the replacement lose. So whoever it is between you two is gonna win.’ So kind of like both looked at each other like, I hope it’s me.”

How do they determine who was gonna be that?

“I don’t know who made that decision with that call, but I’d had a lot more TV time consistently than he had up to that point. Whoever made that decision? Thank you. I agree. Good call. So we have that talk, and then I spend the next two hours pacing, hoping that Chris Benoit does not show up. Walked out to the parking garage a couple of times, just to see if I saw a car coming. I didn’t. Then the pay-per-view started, put my tights on. The whole time I’m like, Oh my God, Chris Benoit is gonna show up, and this is gonna get squashed, and I’ll just be back to business as normal. He doesn’t show up, though, and we have the match. I wrestle CM Punk. It was a great match, Punk and I had several after that, leading to eventually the two of us having great chemistry. The first couple were a little clunky, but still fun. So I win the ECW Championship, and it was one of those. This morning, I thought I was just coming to this pay-per-view to eat catering and hang out, didn’t really have anything going on TV storyline-wise. To tonight, now ECW World Champion, the writers are all asking me questions. They’re going to start writing the show around me and, holy crap, this is the best night ever. Then the next day, we get the news about Benoit and what happened. I felt like crap. I felt so guilty just for being happy with something that came to be because of the tragedy we’ve heard about and talked about ad nauseum. It’s still tough for me to be happy about how everything came about. I’m happy that I got that match and my career took a huge turn upwards because of everything. It’s just a very confusing thing to benefit from a tragedy, even if you really had nothing to do with it. Because up to that point, as far as I knew, I thought Chris and his family were just very nice people, you know, and Chris I thought was nice to a point. He always liked me, I think, and respected me, because he could tell that I liked wrestling and that’s what I was there for, but he was one of the guys that was kind of going to weed you out if he didn’t like you, or if anyone thought you had an attitude problem, you’re gonna have to deal with him. I kind of felt like it was cool that he saw me in regard to the fact that I did like wrestling then, I like wrestling now, more than that, I loved it, and I still love it. And as mentioned, confusing, like talking in circles about it.” 

Does it feel like your world title victory is a little tainted, because now you’re the footnote of this tragedy?

“I’ve never thought about it in those terms. The only thing that I think about is I feel guilty about being so happy and excited because I didn’t know what had happened. I don’t care if it’s a footnote or not. What happened after it is more meaningful to me anyway.”

Where do you feel like that could have taken you because you’re World Champion. One of the words that’s always attached to you is underrated. Do you feel like there was a chance later on, to become a world champion?

“I mean, you can say what you want about this, but to this day, I still feel like I could be world champion of WWE one day, maybe AEW. I feel like I just need another opportunity. The way wrestling works, in my mind is things come in waves. Might have mentioned that to you before, but you ride a wave for a while, and then it passes and you’re kind of waiting for the next wave. Sometimes you’re waiting longer than other times, but when waves come and you catch them, they take you places, and like the ECW Heavyweight Championship win for me was like the first huge wave that I caught, and it led me to some really amazing places, and it could have ended up leading me to become a world champion on Raw or SmackDown, or it could have just completely backfired and like, something else weird happened and then led to nothing. So I’m kind of happy with how things turned out, and don’t what if? Anyone watching this, don’t What if?”

Who’s on the list of people you haven’t worked with yet in AEW that you can’t wait to get in there with? 

“A ton of people, and so some of these people maybe have worked with in like a trios or a scramble or a battle royal, but I mean, Mike Bailey, Kevin Knight, Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley.”

I think it’s fair to say that you were the most successful Tough Enough winner of all time. Miz, I think is the most successful tough enough contestant.

“He came in second, though.”

He didn’t win. But what a career:

“The irony, I have thought about this too, if I didn’t win Tough Enough, I feel like my career is totally different if I had won, if Miz did win Tough Enough, same, I don’t know if he makes it as the Tough Enough winner, especially because his year, I think, was it a $250,000 Tough Enough? So I remember at OVW, when I got there with my Tough Enough contracts, which is $50,000 a year, basically a grand a week showing up to OVW, and there are people like Rob Conway and the Bashams and Nick Dinsmore who had been there for years, and they were on $500 a week, or $250 a week. Conway had been there for years, and most of it, he worked part-time as a furniture mover and installer, in addition to the training. So there’s people there making that much money. There’s people there with years of experience that are just there on their own dime. I walked in with this contract and TV and got beat up, and I deserved it. That’s kind of what I feel like shopping to everyone who wants to get into pro wrestling. There’s a part of it where you pay your dues. But [Daniel] Puder had just won $250,000 and he drove up the first day to OVW in a brand new Mercedes, designer sunglasses, kind of locked his car and just walked in with a little bit of swagger. I thought to myself, Oh no, he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it at all. And it didn’t work out for him for a lot of reasons. But Miz has this natural thing about him to rub people the wrong way or be annoying or unlikable, that, if he had won Tough Enough. I mean, even coming in second, he went to Deep South, fought and worked his way up and got bullied and bullied and bullied and bullied and kicked out of the locker room. We’ve all heard that story. What if he’d won? How much worse would it have been for him? I don’t think that The Miz would ever have quit wrestling. I truly believe that from the time he was a kid, there was something in his heart and soul that told him I’m going to be a professional wrestler. So even when he was on the Real World, we saw what he kept saying on all his shows back then, was he wanted to be in the WWE but the difference is just him having to overcome, not winning, and work his way up, I think, was more palatable to the rest of the locker room than if he had won and been given, a good position, like he already rub people the wrong way. It might have rubbed people too far.”

You were the first one to have a real crazy Elimination Chamber spot. How did you dream this up?

“I wouldn’t say growing up, but high school, college, I was watching the Chambers, always thought they were cool. When I got signed, and I was in OVW, Louisville, I started watching more closely. Then I saw that parkour movie, District 13, and started doing parkour a bunch, and I hadn’t been in a Chamber match. Then I started watching parkour and Chamber matches, and in my head, booking all these crazy things that I could potentially do in the Chamber and this is like two years before I had my first Chamber match. So when I knew that I was going to be in the Chamber match, I had like 10 ideas of different kinds of crazy things that I wanted to do, ready to go.”

That’s high when you’re up there!

“It’s so high! The one where I crawled up to the top and then dropped down on Sheamus. It’s funny. When you’re up there and you’re dropping, it feels like you’re three stories up. It doesn’t look like that on TV. It’s not that high, but it feels that high. It’s also when you’re falling backward, you just have to have a lot of trust in what’s behind you. I know Sheamus. I trust the hell out of that guy. He would always be there to catch you, pick you up, and then just hit you in the face with his fist.”

You were in the Elimination Chamber match where the Undertaker got burned on the way to the ring.

“Yes. Everyone’s heard this story now, about Taker’s pyro being let off a little bit too soon, and his jacket being engulfed, and he had to take his jacket off. So I was in the pod, and I was watching everyone’s entrances. I was in my pod, it’s locked, my coat off, and I was like, trying to look cool. Taker’s entrance hits, and it’s the stoic, you know, here he comes, slowly walking. I see the flames go off on the ramp, he’s standing right in the middle of them. I thought that’s so cool until I was like, Ooh, he’s on fire. Then I see him take his jacket off, throw it down, and then take a few steps quickly, and look around, then back to character. I don’t know if it’s really true or not, but I feel like I saw his face change from just The Undertaker walk to just being seethingly angry, and rightfully so, he just got burned in front of a room full of people with pyro that was botched by the guy who had the fire.

After the pyro went off and Taker got on fire, the pyro guy took his headset off and just ran and never came back. After the match, Taker ran back to look for him, and he’d been gone for like a half hour. He never came back to work. But back to the other part of the story. So now seethingly angry Undertaker, who was just set on fire and put his jacket out and threw it down, never seen the man break character, is walking to the chamber, and he’s getting into his pod. I’m thinking I got 5 or 10 minutes in there with that man, and he looks so angry. Are we gonna wrestle, or what’s gonna happen? I was kind of like looking at Rey, who was in one of the pods too, and looking around, and everyone in the pods was all kind of looking at Taker and then looking at each other. I looked at Taker, and he was looking around, still mad, but he started doing this sort of licking his lips really weirdly. Then I start going, What the hell is going on? I stopped and I said, I bet he burnt his mouth and his mustache and his face, and he’s trying to wet his lips, because they’re dry. The match is going and I think when my pod opened he might have been in there already. I was terrified when I got in there with him. Nothing but the most professional, solid guy was there in the ring performing. That’s him, and kind of a nervous, younger dude, that was me, but fantastic. I was gonna talk to him after match and thank him, but I couldn’t find him because he was running around the parking lot looking for the pyro guy. I don’t know what he would have done if he found him.”

I read that you are on your 34th name right now. Does that sound accurate? 

“It sounds accurate, if not underrated. I feel like there’s a handful of names that I’ve [used once]. Johnny Zero, when I wrestled for Below Zero Wrestling in North Dakota for one show. There’s a ton of those one-show names that I’ve had.”

They didn’t do enough with Johnny Drip Drip:

“First of all, Taya hates Johnny Drip Drip. She just does not like the word moist. Most of Johnny Drip Drip’s sayings are based on the fact that Taya hates hearing moist. So America’s Moist Wanted, the Most Moist-See Superstar, I made the choice to be moist. Got the moist voice. Then at some point I realized maybe I went too far. She’s not like Haha Funny. She’s like, No, seriously, don’t say that.”

What is John Morrison grateful for?

“Season 2 of Johnny Loves Taya, for Taya and everyone in the wrestling business.”

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Mustafa Ali (@MustafaAli_X) is a professional wrestler signed to TNA Wrestling. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at INSIGHT Live in Chicago to discuss his guitar coffin match with Elijah on TNA Impact, a terrifying moment that took place when he was dragged to the back by a horse, Brock Lesnar telling him to “Get a life, kid”, a hilarious Undertaker story, returning to WWE NXT to challenge for the North American Championship, getting advice from AJ Styles at TNA’s AMC premiere, and more!

I thought you weren’t gonna be able to walk after that guitar casket match. 

“I would say single-handedly, one of the roughest nights I had. That thing that was constructed, I think it was 500 pounds. So when we think about casket matches, my hope is to use the damn thing at some point. But it was very weirdly shaped. Obviously, it’s shaped like a guitar. So I’m looking at it and I’m like there’s no safe way for me to actually get tossed into this, so there goes half of my ideas. When we got there, I was like we’re just gonna have to kill each other. So, yeah, I appreciate it. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it, it’s on YouTube. Watch it, please. I have scars all over my body.”

I feel like you don’t do a lot of 450s anymore. You save them for special occasions, and in that match, you did one off the top rope to the outside, through a table.

“Yeah. So the problem with that one too, this damn casket is so big. It’s no one’s fault, but when he [Elijah] had positioned the table, it was kind of off. So we move on to the spot, I looked, I go, oh sh*t. The way he’s laying on it, and the way I have to come off the ropes, because the casket is right there, his knees are where I need to land. I’m supposed to land on this torso. I go either I’m about to break my ribs or he’s about to break his knees. Good luck to you, Elijah. Little did I know at the last second he decided to put his knees up. So it’s my ribs. Everyone’s fine. I’m indestructible. But it all hurt.”

What’s been the scariest moment you’ve ever had in a match?

“For some reason, it’s always tied to Elijah. Technically, it was part of a match. So back in December, we were in El Paso, an incident that is now named the Lasso in El Paso. It was The Rascalz, shout out to The Rascalz. Hope they’re doing well. We’re doing this thing where I’ve had enough with the match, I’m out of here, I’m taking the high road, and the lights go off and on, and then Elijah appears behind on a horse, and the idea is that he attacks me, ties me up, he lassos me and he pulls me out of the arena on a horse. That’s not the scary part, right? Little context, so I’ll give you twofold. There’s a story behind the story. Earlier in the day, we’re rehearsing this stunt, and this is just when TNA announced its partnership with AMC. So there’s AMC execs there and all this stuff like that. There’s a director named George who’s been with TNA for a long time, and we’re kind of walking through this rehearsal, and it is not happening. So the horse is getting scared, the lasso is becoming undone. Elijah’s not tying it right. The cameraman’s out of position. Everyone’s messing up, except for me. The director, George, says ‘Hey, I’m gonna pull the plug on this. We’re not doing the stunt. We got to come up with something.’ I’m like, ‘George, I’m telling you, we can pull this off.’ He goes, ‘You don’t understand. AMC is here, this is a bad impression. We’re not doing it.’ I don’t know what overcame me. I said, ‘George, let me do this stunt. I put my job on it. If it goes wrong, you can fire me on the spot.’ Without any hesitation, he goes, ‘Remember what you said.’ Sh*t, what did I get myself into? I went up to him [Elijah] and go, ‘Dude, we have to do it this way. There’s a guy that handles horses. Let him tie the damn lasso. No one’s looking at him. They’re looking at you. He’s 300 pounds of muscle. They’re looking at you dude, relax.’ So we had the handler do the lasso off-screen. You just don’t see it, and then it looks like Elijah did it. So the stunt goes according to plan. I don’t get fired, but I almost die. This is why. What you guys don’t see is when the horse pulls me away, you see me screaming and all that stuff when we go down this hallway, the thing about this hallway is there’s another horse. No one told me there were two horses. The handler, because of me, was on stage doing the tying. No one is manning the horse. You guys ever see when one horse runs what another horse does? First it gets scared and starts kicking. So the hallway, it’s slim, and there’s a horse right there. So as I’m kind of going yay, I’ve done it, I turn around, there’s a horse, and the horse is kicking and screaming and jumping. I was like, All right, this is it. This is how stupid wrestlers are. My first thought is, and there’s not a cameraman to get it. So I just cover up. I say, thank you God for the good life. I just crawled up and the horse just missed me like, right here, I felt its tail almost, and I’m yelling, stop. So luckily, security came and stopped the horse. I’m a very pleasant person, despite what people hear. I got some students in the Chicago wrestling center over there. I’m very pleasant, I don’t get mad. I was on one that day, ‘Who put this horse over here?!’ There’s a whole other horse. So yeah, I’ve never had a scary experience as bad as that in the ring. It was definitely the horse. But I’m alive.”

You had this moment in a match with Cedric Alexander where you did the suicide dive to the outside, you don’t get caught and you face plant to the ground. 

“Once again, not my fault. I kind of felt bad about what happened. I’m at the stage in my career now, man, where I tried protecting and really going out of my way to make sure no negativity comes towards people. But now I’m at that stage in my life where, like, if something happened and you messed up or you f*cked up, it’s on you. What originally happened was I gave very clear instructions to the people that were accompanying me to the ring that night. TNA have, like, this big secret service entrance, and I have this political character. I gave them instructions I go, ‘When you guys advance on Cedric, stay here.’ I don’t want Cedric close to the ring because this dive, I’m sensing it’s this big show we’re at UBS Arena. We’re trying to sell this thing out. And I just had that vibe, and like no one had talked about AMC or the network. I had this intuition, I go, I think something big is going to happen for TNA, and I want to be one of the reasons why it happens. So I just had this mindset, they’re not giving me the ball, but I’m going to take it, type of thing. So very clear instructions, see where that tripod is. I go stand there. Well, I start running, and all of a sudden the guys that were supposed to stand by the tripod have advanced way closer. At the end of the day, could I have put on the brakes? Sure. So I go all the way I clip Cedric barely and, yeah, I just, I remember the ramp was like grated. So I just remember the, like, the greats just peeling like the skin, and I roll up, and you would think I’d stay down, but I had to get up and like, I’m indestructible. Everyone thought that was the death of me. But no, here I am standing once again. Chicago motherf*ckers are tough.”

You recently returned to NXT:

“So he [Shawn Michaels] had called me when I got released, and he was, it’s one of those things where you can kind of tell when someone’s being fake. With mine, it was not. He was like, ‘What? What do you mean? What happened?’ He literally found out as I found out, because that weekend, yeah, I got let go on a Tuesday, and I was supposed to wrestle Dominik Mysterio for the North American Championship on a Saturday. So we had talked then, and then we stayed in touch. He was very proud of the PWI cover, he just sent me that. He goes, ‘I just want to let you know I’m always watching.’ That was Shawn Michaels. It’s one of those things, like when Matt, Jeff, Shawn, these guys that you grew up watching, emulating to some degree when they compliment you, there’s a lot of weight to it. So, yeah, that was the first time I saw Shawn. It was the week prior. It was for the promo to challenge. So I get there and this writer gives me this promo. I’m reading it, I go ‘I get it, but I kind of disagree. Let me go talk to Shawn.’ That’s how I’ve been my whole career. Like, no, no, no, pardon you, but like, you’re not going to change it. So I go and plead my case to Shawn. I go, ‘Hey, listen, I understand that you want me to talk about what’s happened. I was promised this championship. I don’t want to come off whiny. In TNA I’m this really presidential political weasel, politics is way and stuff.’ I think it’d be more fun, we want to have fun. We watch wrestling, everything doesn’t need to be dramatic sometimes. I go, ‘So what if I just like politic my way into this match?’ He goes, okay, yeah, I kind of see and I kind of told him what I want to say. He’s like, alright, yeah, we can do it that way. That’s fine. All right, cool, awesome. Oh my god, I don’t work here and I’m causing drama. I sh*t you not, five minutes before we go out. So Ethan’s been updated. Ali’s gonna change his variable. Dive minutes before we go out. Shawn’s like, ‘No, I think you’re wrong. I want you to do the promo the way I wrote. I’m telling you. Ali, people resonate with you, because when you put up this facade sometimes. But when you’re real, you’re real. You just got to tell people what happened.’ I was like, I can’t believe I said that. I go, ‘Shawn, I gotta tell you, I think you’re wrong, but you asked me to do something. I’ll do it.'”

You told Shawn Michaels you think he’s wrong?

“Shawn Michaels was not wrong. I go out and yeah, as I’m saying the words, it’s just like, man, you could tell this isn’t a problem. I’m telling you I busted my ass, and right when I was gonna get a reward, you pulled the you know. I thought about this, this, this, and I come back and just the reception, especially online, I don’t try to pay too much attention, but it’s feedback, it’s an opinion. I will digest it. And sometimes some people have some sh*tty takes. But for the most part, it was like, Yo, no, that was real. There is a real, ‘Is this dude cursed?’ Elimination Chambers, KofiMania, this stuff, this all comes at the expense of me. So hopefully this is a nice little redemption starting part of Oh man, is WWE going to do something they haven’t done before and put a championship on someone that doesn’t work here. Who knows, right? So Shawn was totally right with that.”

I hear you have a great Undertaker story:

“It was the 25th anniversary [of Raw]. It was when Raw was doing the Barclay Center and the Manhattan Center at the same time. There’s a bunch of people that have paid a lot of money to attend this event. But here’s the problem that they didn’t plan, there was no actual matches there. It was just legends coming out and cutting a promo. So about almost an hour into it, the fans start realizing, hey, we got jibbed. There’s no matches, and they start booing recklessly. So Triple H is at the Manhattan Center. He gets on the phone, and he calls over Barclays, and he goes, I need matches, and I need them now. So Mark Carrano goes, ‘I know, the cruiserweights!’ So he stuffs a bunch of cruiserweights into a van, and just sends us blindly to Manhattan Center. Hideo Itami is driving, I don’t know [what’s going on]. So we’re running upstairs and everyone’s panicking, go, go, go, upstairs. Go upstairs. We’re running with our gear, because we’re all coming from Barclays. And Triple H goes, ‘Situation, there’s no matches during the commercial break. I just need you guys to go out there and do the craziest sh*t for two or three minutes.’ All right, cool. So I was wrestling Lince Dorado, and we run upstairs, we have our bags, so we just open this door and we throw our bags down, we close the door, we start talking. The referee comes up and goes, ‘Hey guys, where are you changing?’ Right here. And then we look up, private locker room for The Undertaker. Open the door sheepishly, me and Lince, ‘Hello, sir. I’m Ali, This is Lince. Huge mistake. We’re just gonna grab our bags and leave.’ We go to reach for our bags, and he goes, ‘Hey, you guys don’t want to hang out with the motherf*cking Undertaker?’ Before I could say anything Lince goes ‘Hell yeah!’ We’re changing. He’s asking us about, you know, I told him I was a former police officer. He was like, oh sh*t, we’re talking about this and that. Lince was a former teacher. So he’s like, Isn’t that crazy? We’re talking to The Undertaker about life, and then we kind of forgot that we had to go. We just ran out and did our match up. And then, yeah, it was just one of those wild experiences with the Undertaker.”

“Get a life, kid.” Brock Lesnar said this to you, what’s the story behind it?

“So it’s a little twofold, right? So I get that it was really funny, but if I tell you guys a real story and feel really, really sad, so I’ll share what I can. I would tell you guys, but I don’t want people to get in trouble. That was a shot at me from someone very high up, and not directly. The back story of this, and I’ll keep it to this. So I hope you guys can understand. I was sent to go do media, public relations for an upcoming event in Saudi Arabia called Night of Champions. So I go there. I’m not on the show. I’m going there. I’m making everyone happy. Just because it’s, you know, you’re always going to relate to someone that looks like you. I do these little events. Obviously, very appreciative of the turnout here. But the turnout there was insane. They’re expecting 500 people. There was like 3,000 people. So the guy’s like oh, this Mustafa, maybe he does the show. I was like, ‘It’s the Night of Champions. You have to be a champion to be on the show. I’m not a champion.’ I didn’t realize I was talking to like the president of the GEA, which is a general entertainment authority that basically runs the shows in Saudi Arabia. He goes, ‘You leave it to me, I talk to Vince.’ I go No, no. He goes ‘I’m going to request that you’re on the show.’ I think what happened was someone told Vince what to do, and he’s like, ‘Oh, okay.’ So the whole day, I kind of could sense the nervous tension about something was going to happen. I had this promo, but I’m reading it, and it was like, and then what happens? They go, ‘Well, Brock’s just gonna walk by.’ And I go, yeah? And last second, you know, let me ask you guys this question. When someone’s doing a backstage interview, where does it happen? Backstage. Not by Gorilla. So they go at the last second, I’m getting ready. ‘Oh, we’re moving the shot to gorilla now.’ And I go, right, okay, here it comes. So I didn’t know he was gonna say that. So when he said that and he walked off, there was this dead silence, because everyone that worked there, they knew what happened. They’re like, Oh, they’re trying to send a message, but it’s like, why does it have to be in my expense? So it’s just one of those things, I think, because of the frustration and because of what had happened, I think that’s why Shawn had reached out to Hunter about NXT, because right after that is when I made my NXT appearance. But again, not to cry over it like that. It is what it is, the way the cookie crumbles. I know when I look at WWE, I know that I knocked on every door, I presented every idea, I never said no for the most part, and I did good work, man. I’m never gonna look in the mirror and be like, Oh man, I failed. I talked to a lot of my peers that have unfortunately got let go. I go, are you doing okay? And they all said the same thing. They go, man, I just wish I tried a little harder. I wish I wasn’t mad. I go, when I got let go, I just go, well, there’s nothing else I could have done. I tried everything. Comedy, serious, being the little guy, this guy, whatever the hell. So I walked away with that. And then, you know, when Brock said, Go get a life kid, I quite literally did that. I’m the f*cking man now!”

What was the idea of coming up with the light-up mask?

“So it’s long gone now, but everyone thought it was Sub Zero. I think some people thought it was Iron Man. The idea that I sat down and kind of presented to Vince at the time was that I want to be the light. And what I mean by that is everyone was just such a badass. No one was like genuine babyface. The idea behind it was I wanted to be the light. He said, Well, how do we convey that you’re the light? Why are you just walking around saying that you’re the light? So the idea about the light was Oh, I’ll be the physical embodiment of the light. So it’s like, you know, when you’re going through dark times, my hope was to motivate you through a promo. That’s why all the 205 Live matches, I got my ass kicked on design so that you can see that this guy will not stay down. He has something that he’s fighting for. So just that idea of, like, light being a symbol, you know, the whole idea, there’s light at the end of tunnel, there is hope. That was the idea behind it. The quick little Daniel Bryan story, I was never supposed to be on SmackDown. I was on 205 Live, doing my thing, and one day I’d like to reenact this, but there’s not enough room. A writer told me this story. They’re all sitting in the writers room, and Daniel Bryan comes in. He kicks the door and he goes, ‘Hey, we don’t have any hot young babyfaces for me to work. I want a hot young babyface! Give me a good-looking baby face for me to beat the sh*t out of.’ The next week, they’re like, ‘Hey, you’re wrestling Daniel Bryan.'”

What are 3 things you are grateful for?

“My wife, time, and the chance to dream.”

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Kris Statlander (@callmekrisstat) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss winning the AEW Women’s Championship and if she felt she was ready, her nickname “The Galaxy’s Greatest Alien”, her violent match with Willow Nightingale at All Out, landing on a bed of nails in Blood and Guts, her WWE appearance and why it didn’t lead to more, bringing Jade Cargill’s TBS Title reign to an end, and more!

A lot of fans would say that this was a long time coming. About six years in AEW, you became the Women’s Champ. 

“I guess I kind of agree. I feel like you shouldn’t always necessarily need to brand yourself as a champion in order to be worthy of having this memorable career, so to speak. I feel like actually winning the championship kind of came at a really weird time for me. It almost didn’t feel like it was the right time, because the way Toni Storm went about making the match was like, You, you, you, let’s go do it, and we’re like, okay, so it’s kind of like taking advantage of an opportunity. Meanwhile, I was still getting harassed by the Deathriders and trying to sneak my way out of dealing with them. And then the up and down situation with Willow, and then me and Harley were kind of a thing. It was like a really, really weird time where I was very unsure of what I wanted to do and what path I wanted to take. Now I’m in this opportunity to win this belt. I’ve never gotten a chance to win, and I haven’t wrestled four in years at this point, so it’s like, I’m not gonna not take the opportunity, just because in my mind, things are all over the place. But at the same time, it felt really weird. It was just kind of like, well, I guess we’re here, so okay, and now it’s just kind of been an uphill battle trying to cement myself and find myself, while also putting myself and showing everyone who I am as the World Champion. So it’s been a really odd time.”

Did you feel you weren’t ready to win the championship?

“No, I felt I was ready. It’s really more just like a mental [feeling of] I don’t know if everyone is ready to see me in this position, if that makes sense. Because I feel like fans were always there hesitant to like me a little bit still, because of the fact that I turned on my one of my best friends and I and I punched Orange Cassidy in the face, and I murdered Willow for a good couple of months, so it’s hard to kind of and then I was like, No, guys, I messed up, and now I’m going to try and be better. And everyone’s like, Okay, but why? And I’m like, trust me. I know what I’m doing. I feel bad, and I never really did anything to gain everyone’s trust back. So it’s more I feel like people are happy for me. They think that I deserve it, but people can be like, Oh, I’m happy for this person, they deserve it, blah, blah, blah… and then don’t really care what happens after they get to the top. So now I’m trying to rebuild my friendships and prove to everyone that I’m worthy of being a champion, and also keep telling myself like, No, you deserve to be here. You’re ready for this. It’s fine. You don’t have to worry about it. But I have a lot of emotions in my head about this, so it’s been a little bit of an internal battle, even though I feel very confident in my abilities.”

So how did wrestling find you?

“I met friends who were wrestlers, and when I was doing my stunt double training at the time, when I was 18, they were like, ‘That’s similar, come valet us.’ I was like, Sure, I don’t know what that is, but, ok. So I would go, and they would just kind of give me a quick rundown of how to be a manager. And I was like, okay, and then I would just leave, and I’d be like, I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

So what’s the moment when you fell in love with wrestling?

“I kind of fell in love with it when I realized I could do a lot of what the in-ring stuff was when I was still kind of valeting. I think that’s kind of when I was like, oh, I want to try that. I want to give it a go. And then I started my in-ring training, and it definitely wasn’t like a one moment hit, and I was like, This is what I want to. It was a very gradual, a slow fall, if you will, in love with it. I started my in-ring training, and then three months into training, I broke my heel, split my heel bone right in half, and then I sat and watched training every day for the two months that I was out. And then when I got back in the ring right after, and I was able to pick things up a lot quicker, I feel like that’s kind of when one people really started taking me under their wing, because they saw how much that I cared about it. When I when people started helping me a little bit more, is when I realized I was like, Oh, this is actually something I can actually do and pursue, especially now that people want to see me succeed at it. And then it just became something that I kind of just never really knew where it would take me. I just sort of was like, let’s just see where it goes. And now here we are.”

Your name is Kris Statlander and your character’s name is also Kris Statlander. How were they different, and how are they similar?

“Well, Kris Stadtlander, the non-wrestler, it’s spelt s, t, a, d, t, l, a, n, d, e, r, so that’s really a big difference. I also feel like I’m very shy, and when I’m meeting new people, I really don’t speak a lot because I don’t ever want to like interfere with the vibes of other people in a group, and I worry sometimes people might not think I’m friendly for that, but I always try to be friendly. I like to keep to myself. I like to be kind of alone a lot of my time. But then at work, big, powerful, strong person, and I try to be more out there. I try to be bold and daring and scary and stuff like that. But I’m not a scary person. I’m not an intimidating person. I’m such a weird, weird, weird, weird, dork person, and I don’t have any shame in that. I’m not afraid to admit that, and I think it’s taken me a long time to be like I don’t care if you think I’m weird. I don’t think care if you think I’m cringey in my personal time, because that’s who I am, and I’m not gonna apologize for acting weird on my own time. So I think that’s the biggest thing, is that I tried to kind of be everybody, be both of them at once. When I was alien Kris early on, trying to be like, No, I’m just a weird person, and I’m gonna do embarrassing things, but I’m an alien, so it’s fine. You understand that it’s different, but now trying to be a more serious, more badass character. People don’t like it when you do weird things, they’re like, that doesn’t make any sense. And I’m like, Well, I’m sorry. It’s just me. I can’t help it, sometimes.”

You were The Galaxy’s Greatest Alien. Are you still an alien?

“Well, I’ve never said I wasn’t, and I think that says enough as it is. When I went from Galaxy’s Greatest Alien to more than a woman, I did that purposefully, because I like the undertone of being more than a woman. So it’s like a little bit different, or more than just the ordinary sort of. Now doing cosmic killer is kind of like cosmic is just, it means large and of great proportions and stuff like that. It doesn’t necessarily mean space, so it’s still kind of like underlying tones of everything, without having to be like alien, oh, my god, out of this world.” 

We have to talk about this wild match at All Out with Willow. What was the most painful thing in this match?

“I know what you’re expecting me to say, and you know what? This wasn’t a physical pain thing. This is an emotional pain thing. At one point in the match, we took out the chains where we tied ourselves to each other, and I tied hers to her, and I was having trouble tying mine to me, and I just head-butted her to kind of keep her down. And I was like, I’m so sorry, because that wasn’t an initial idea of something that might happen. So that was probably the worst thing that I did. I was like, Oh, I had to just keep you down. That wasn’t my favorite thing I’ve ever done, but you gotta eat up the time somehow, while I was struggling with my wrist. So that one probably hurt me the most emotionally.”

What was the overall idea you guys had going into that match? Because it was violent.

“Yeah, I think we really wanted to just push the boundary of what we’ve been allowed to do. We got really lucky that we were able to do a light tube spot, because that’s not something with fans around and the glass. It’s very dangerous. But doing it on the stage and kind of away from the fans, that was a good way to kind of cover our bases. Also probably won’t be able to do that anytime in the future, just because it’s shatter risk, and we don’t want to put any fans in harm’s way at all.” 

Was that your first time taking light tubes? 

“Yes, actually, yeah. And it was not as bad as I thought. It did kind of burn a little bit. There’s a lot of things in wrestling that don’t look very fun. Obviously, I’m sure the other spot you’re thinking of is the splits on the thumbtacks. I will say I was thinking about that for months. I had that spot in my head for months. I wanted to do it so bad, and it really wasn’t that bad, because it was mostly my thigh. So we’re good.”

Tacks don’t look fun:

“Yeah, it’s not fun. It’s not as bad as you would think. I think the worst tack thing I actually did it to Marina, where I barefoot dropped her onto the tacks. That’s probably the most painful tack thing you could probably take. And I didn’t even do that one. So kudos to her.”

In Blood and Guts you fell onto a bed of nails!

“Again, not as bad as I thought it was gonna be.”

The photo you posted later looked bad.

“Yeah, I think I still have some scars on my lower back from it, but I like scars. So I was like, yes! I think they’re cool. I’ve been dying to get a face scar. Have something happen. Get a nice, cool face scar. That’s my wish. That’s my dream.”

This match with Jade Cargill. She goes into it, she’s 60-0. She has the streak. She’s undefeated. You end up beating her. It’s a huge moment. You become the TBS champion. Talk me through this match.

“Well, it was my first match after my second knee surgery, getting thrown into that, a title match and trying to defeat the undefeated, big task ahead of me. My goal was really to do the unimaginable and pin her. And I did that. I think a lot more things in my head was like, don’t trip on your entrance, and blah, blah, blah. I did kind of lose my balance on my entrance and I was like, great, this is off to a great this is off to a great start. But it all happened so fast that by the time I was holding the belt, I was like, where am I? What just happened? Similar feeling to when I won this one, too. Both of my title reigns were very much like, well, I guess we’re here. I did it. So yeah, my goal was just to do the impossible, I think.”

In 2019, the same year when you made your AEW debut, you also made your WWE debut on SmackDown. You just went by Kristin on that episode of SmackDown. Why were you just Kristin?

“Well, originally the team name was supposed to be the Brooklyn Pizza Connection, and we were supposed to be named Saucy and Cheesy.” 

Were are you gonna be Saucy or Cheesy? 

“I don’t know, we never got that far, but those were the options. Then it was the Brooklyn Belles, and then just used our first names. But I was like, that would have been iconic to have been either saucy or cheesy, and my only match there was a tag title match. So what a way to go, to go in and go out right away. Yeah. But then now I have tag titles at AEW to go for, and maybe I’ll be Saucy or Cheesy or Garlic or Oregano, something like that.”

So then how did the opportunity with AEW come about?

“I got an email, and I was like, Okay, I’ll go. Sounds great. Then I was very fortunate when I showed up to AEW, just as an extra work, they brought me in. I got the dark match, and we had done training before in the ring, and before I even did my dark match, I remember people being like, did anyone talk to you about your contract? And I was like, I don’t even do anything. Are you sure? And then we had gotten into the talks of turning it into me being a part of the roster. But I just remember showing up, and I was like, Why do you want me here? I didn’t even do anything yet. So, yeah, that’s kind of how it worked out, just getting the emails and just working hard. I remember that day, whatever, the day that I got my first opportunity with AEW, I was doing like six shows a week at the time on the Indies, I was tired. Three weeks in a row, I did like six shows.” 

What is Kris Statlander grateful for?

“My animals, my family and my job.”

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