Sharmell (@realsharmell) is a WWE Hall of Famer. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at Reality Of Wrestling In Texas City, TX to discuss her careers in WCW, WWE and TNA, how she met her husband Booker T, the controversial storyline with Kurt Angle, being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, her infamous TNA match against Jenna Morasca, working with James Brown and more.

Quote I’m thinking about: Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you! – Dr. Suess

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On Reality of Wrestling:

“Well, we really wanted to give our students the chance to feel like they’re in the big leagues. And so this is practice for them to get to that level. That’s why we wanted to pull out all the stops, make it as big and you know, all the smoke and mirrors as we possibly could have that. So that was the goal and we’re well on our way, we still have a few more things we want to do. But yeah, shaping up pretty well.”

On having stars from NXT appear:

“Absolutely. So it’s great for the fans, obviously, because they get to see the superstars that they watch on television, they get to see them up close and personal. Then it’s great for our students because they get to work somebody who’s there at the next level. So it’s a good rub for them.”

On previously working with James Brown:

“Oh, goodness. Yeah. So I toured with James Brown for three and a half years. Amazing experience, I wouldn’t trade that for the world. But we were on the tour bus one day heading probably from New York to LA something like that. But the guys on the tour bus were watching wrestling. They were watching Monday night Nitro. And all of a sudden, I saw these dancers on the screen, the Nitro girls, and I was like, wait a minute, who are they? I want to be one. So that’s how I transitioned from James Brown to the Nitro girls. I found out about them and auditioned and got a spot.” 

On what James Brown was like behind the scenes:

“So he treated all of the dancers like we were his grandchildren, because he had grandchildren our age, and it really was a family environment. I appreciate that more than he will ever know. Professionalism I already had, but I learned it to the nth degree from him. He was very serious about his craft. We always joked and said we did two shows a night because Soundcheck was a full-blown show. And then we had the show and he was always on top of it. He could hear every little thing. So if you were, you know, not on the right note, or if the dancers missed a step, he saw everything it seemed like from behind his head. But then offstage, treated us like family cared about us. So it was just such an amazing experience.”

On becoming a Nitro girl:

“Well, again, I heard the Nitro girls were looking for one more dancer. The dance world again was small, they had a closed audition, you had to be invited to audition. I simply said, I’m going to get this job, I claimed it before I even stepped in there. And I just gave it my all and it is funny because I was getting ready to go on tour with James again for another two or three months stretch. The day before we were getting ready to leave, I had already auditioned for the Nitro Girls, but it had been about a month. And so I called Kimberly Paige who was the head nitro girl at the time. And I said listen, I am still very, very interested in this job. But I have to go on tour tomorrow with James Brown because that’s, you know, my job right now. She said Hang on, let me call you right back. In about five minutes she called me back and said, If you could just please stay at home, we’re gonna go ahead and hire you.” 

On possibly thinking about becoming  a wrestler:

“I did [think about it], but of course, dance was still my first love. So it wasn’t until, and as you know, WCW kind of kept changing leadership for a while right towards the end. So I don’t remember who was in charge at the time that they decided dance has no place in wrestling and if you want to keep your job, you have to go to the Power Plant and learn how to wrestle. Well of course, at that point, I was hooked. And what they say is true, this is not ballet. So wrestling was not dance. But you know, I gave it my all I just enjoy being a valet much more.”

On the end of WCW:

I never thought it would go under. I mean, yes, we all heard the whispers. And maybe it’s just because I didn’t want it to go under, because that was home, that was family. But really right up until the very, very end. Like I said, we heard those rumours it was going under but then we kept changing management. So I kind of just thought it would keep going like that until something stuck.

On Queen Sharmell:

“Booker was doing the King of the Ring at that point We were married when he was doing King Booker, and he just wasn’t wanting to be away from home so much. I don’t know he talked to powers that being was he was like, Well, what about bringing on Sharmell Queen Sharmell and all of that. I mean, I was already there. They brought me back before the Queen gimmick, but just when he was going to do the king, he just said, What about the queen?” 

On that Kurt Angle storyline:

“Kurt was stalking me. Because I was so new at that time. I don’t even know. It’s just like, you know, they were like, Okay, here’s what you’re doing. Okay. I don’t know who came up with any of that. But I thought it was brilliant. Everybody’s real touchy right now in this day and age. But it didn’t bother me. I thought it was great. It was interesting, but I don’t know if you could get away with that. In this day and age. Everybody’s like, no, we can’t do that. It wouldn’t fly, but because I knew it was acting, you know what I mean? Now, there are some serious situations out there that are like that and I don’t condone that at all, but when it was acting it was okay for me, that’s just me.” 

On her pro wrestling legacy:

“I’m really proud of my legacy and pro wrestling because I think prior to me, you didn’t really see someone who looked like me being a queen. And even though I was crazy, and you know, hitting people with chairs and shoes and that sort of thing. But at least I carried myself in a regal fashion. [why the shoes?] You know, that’s pretty much all I had at the time. So you use what you have. But just to have somebody who looks like me be in that position. I hope that I’m looked at as a trailblazer.” 

On backlash from the Hall of Fame induction:

“I felt like I deserved it but you know, I made the mistake of looking at the internet trolls. Some people were saying some not so kind things and I eventually turned it off. But I know that starting out as a Nitro Girl and then being a valet for several people in a backstage interviewer and then, little bit of wrestling and then Queen Sharmell and then doing this to train the next generation of sports entertainers. I mean, I know I’ve put my time in.”

On the infamous match against Jenna Morasca:

“Well, it was a match that in my opinion just really shouldn’t have happened because neither of us, especially Jenna, she had never had a match before. [She trained] for like, a couple of days, not even a week, and that’s not on her. But you can’t train for a couple days and be a wrestler. It just doesn’t happen like that. So just, you know, kind of was unfortunate, because I was by no means a ring general and then she had only been in the ring a couple of times. I’m not sure what it was all about but we did our best.”

On her scariest in-ring moment:

“The scariest moment I ever had in the ring was my first match. Because again, like I said, it almost was like, one day we were Nitro Girls and the next day, we were at the power plant. My first match happened very quickly and it was against Tammy. Tammy, I believe was just again, was so many years ago, she may have just been coming from WWF over to WCW. Her and Chris came over to WCW. So I didn’t really know her, because she was just getting there. And so I’m already green as green can be and I’m wrestling somebody I don’t know. I didn’t know what to expect and that was my scariest moment in the ring because I felt like I was a deer in headlights. I don’t think I’ve even watched that match. But just the unknown was really scary for me.”

On her favourite Booker T moment:

“I know he’s my husband, but I really am a fan and I’m equally a fan of his entertainment. So the grocery store with Steve Austin, all that stuff was Steve Austin, you know, the bingo game, the nuns, like, Oh, my goodness. And then the stuff with Goldust. It’s just hilarious. Right? So yeah, I’m equally a fan of his entertainment as well as his wrestling.”

What is Sharmell grateful for?

“That God loves me, that Booker chose me and this wonderful life.”

Goldberg (@Goldberg) is a professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in San Antonio, TX to discuss his legendary in-ring career which saw him find success in WCW and WWE, how things could have been different if he did not get injured in the NFL, if one more match will happen and if it could happen in WWE, getting concussed in his match against The Undertaker, Bray Wyatt (The Fiend) and Roman Reigns, how close he got to making an appearance in AEW, having a “Big meaty men slapping meat” match with Big E, who took the best spear ever and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

Sponsors:
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PLUNGE: Get $150 off your Plunge with the coupon code CVV150 at http://plunge.com

On being retired:

“When you have been a wrestler at some point in your life, I don’t think you’re retired until you’re dead. But I mean, I don’t know, I was kind of forced into retirement a little bit. I don’t like to think that I’m retired in any respect, whether it’s from working or wrestling or anything else. I’ve kind of been hiding out here on the ranch for the past four or five years, investing 100% of my time, effort and emotion into our son Gage and trying to prepare him for his journey off to college because it’s such a transitional time in a kid’s life. And yeah, I’ve kind of been on the shelf, like, the example I can give people is when Wanda cooks dinner and it’s steak night, we have six steaks to eat, she gets one, I get one and Gage gets whatever’s left, which is like four of them, right? So and then, while I’m eating my one, and if he’s eaten those four, and he looks hungry, then I’ll cut mine in half and give it to him. So I’ve lost probably 30 pounds in five years. I haven’t been able to come in the gym too much because he’s always up here with his buddies and they’re doing their thing, but that’s what this is for. [They don’t want to work out with Bill Goldberg?] Hell no. I’m way in their rearview mirror man, my kid is so much stronger to me. Now the day I knew I was going to be emasculated by my son. Forever forthcoming is the day that he got on my neck machine and could actually do more weight than I could. And he’s 18.” 

On Gage having the Goldberg name:

“It’s a blessing and it’s a curse. It gives you opportunity, but the added pressure sometimes is insurmountable.”

On what would have happened if he didn’t get injured in the NFL:

“It would look the same, because I probably would have done the same thing, I probably would have gotten cut, because I wasn’t good enough to stay there. I mean, it is what it is. Who knows? I famously, I hearken back onto my speech at the WWE Hall of Fame and people asked me what I wanted to be, what I wanted my life to stand for. I always wanted to be somebody that the kids could look up to. And I always thought that the best way to accomplish that was being in the NFL and being in the NFL Hall of Fame. Well, as I was being inducted in the WWE Hall of Fame, I realized that that was not true. That by being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame that was probably bigger than any NFL induction ever could have been, because I think I reached more people.” 

On what made him try wrestling:

“My accountant called me and he said you might want to get off your ass because you didn’t make millions in the NFL and you need a job. And you look at your potential list of things that immediately you can do and I didn’t want to do any of them. I just didn’t. And I wasn’t finished with my physical prowess, not my prowess but my physical way of earning a living through physicality, whatever it may be, and I wanted to be able to apply what I had worked so hard for my entire life, which was playing football. And if there was something I could apply it to then great and oh, let’s try to find something that will that will satiate your violent tendencies and keep you out of jail at the same time. So I mean, it served a lot of purposes it put money in my pocket, it gave me a job and it was therapy in a way.”

On possibly not being ready when he debuted:

“I mean, 100% I wasn’t ready, but I was put in, I was a piece of a puzzle. In a world where you can dictate what people see, why not roll the dice when you can control the narrative to a point? So I get it, I completely understand it and I probably should have performed a little bit better. I don’t know, I think I did pretty good. I don’t know. I mean, let me let me look on the past 20 years where people comment on stuff, I guess I haven’t done sh*t. But truly looking back on it, I did pretty damn good for the situation that I was in because I wasn’t a lifer. I wasn’t a guy who aspired to be a professional wrestler, so I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know anything about the business. I learned quite quickly how cutthroat it can be. But I didn’t really know and I tried to consume as much knowledge as humanly possible, in a short period of time and try to put forth the best package.” 

On the Bret Hart animosity:

“I really don’t care anymore about Bret, I could care less. You know Louis, right? All I can tell you is this. Louis and I know and [Brian] Knobbs knows, through Legends of Wrestling that shortly thereafter all that sh*t that happened. I talked Louis into giving Bret Hart a job at Legends of Wrestling. He must forget about stuff like that. He must forget about the conversations we had back then.” 

On talking to Bret Hart since the accident:

“We’ve talked a couple of times. As of late because of the things coming out of his mouth, I don’t really know that I would be talking to him if I saw him. But hey, man, I’m 57 years old. I don’t need to prove anything to Bret Hart or to any other human being. The fact is, it was a mistake. I was extremely green in the business and anybody who knows me knows that if I didn’t intend to hurt him, then it was an accident. If I intended to hurt him, then I’d be the first one to tell him and you and everyone else. But man, I was green dude. I mean, it was a screw-up in the match and it’s live on national television. There’s two people that have to dance and you can only do so much and I mean, things went awry. It is what it is.” 

On If the promise of one more match in WWE will happen:

“Well no, not from Vince. No, if that match was still on the table, it would have been done, I would have thought. But hey, man, I was thinking about it this morning in the shower, right? And I thought, Man, I had one of the best wrestling careers ever and don’t think for one second that I don’t understand that and I don’t appreciate it. And so to sit here and cry over a person not keeping his word in a business, that’s as cutthroat as humanly possible and he gets cast out. What do I think’s gonna happen? So come on, man. I mean, I’m a big boy, it is what it is. If I really wanted that to happen, I could go do it myself. I could go to India and do it. I could go to Israel and do it. I could go to Japan and do it. I could do it here in the States. The fact is though, the past six years, I’ve poured every ounce of my soul into my son, and I haven’t even used this weight room barely. But now he’s out the door. I got to fill my time with a bunch of stuff. So I’m working on my cars and I’m training again, I’m going to get stem cells, bio accelerator down in Columbia. I’ve got this new TV show going I’m going to roadkill nights in Detroit August the 10th. I’m actually living again.”

On his relationship with Triple H:

I haven’t talked to Triple H in a long time. It was extremely rocky in the beginning. But I think I think we’re at a good place. Man. I have nothing but respect for him, man. He’s turned an interesting situation into a very successful situation and very profitable and I’m proud of it man. Good job.”

On if he is happy with the Roman Reigns match being his last one:

“No, it sucks. I had f*cking COVID three weeks before I was asked to do it. It was horrible. No, it was a favor. You know, it was my job. I’m not gonna say no, I’ve never said no, really. And I was asked to wrestle twice a year. They were caught between a rock and a hard place and I was their answer. I feel like I did him a favor and that’s why I thought that the favor would be reciprocated. But it is what it is. I’ll never forget the phone call I got when I was in bed. I couldn’t even breathe and I felt like ass. I couldn’t even get up. [Vince says] You can make Saudi in three weeks? Sure I’ll be there You promise me a match after that. [Vince said] Sure. I should have done better. That’s my fault.”

On The Undertaker match in Saudi Arabia:

“I knocked myself out before walking to the frickin ring. You know, when I came back, intensity is something very hard to replicate and I had forgotten my sequence to the ring. I’d forgotten my preparation. It had been so long, and I had put it away, I had put it in a dark place in my mind. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to get ready for matches anymore. I was just detached. And well, I remember then that I gotta headbutt the door. And I headbutted the door right when they played my music to wrestle Taker, which was the most unbelievable opportunity ever. And I knocked myself out. I was walking to the ring man I was on. I was on that street.”

Do you remember anything from that match?

“I remember the referee asking me if I could go on and me saying yes. And then him turning away and then me saying no. And then me saying yes and then me saying no, I remember that. Then he [Undertaker] shot me to the turnbuckle and I like to make it if I’m going to be hurt, I like to make it look as real as possible. Sometimes actually making it real. And I unintentionally headbutted the frickin post. And yeah, it knocked me for another one. So I had two concussions leading up to me dropping him on his head. And then the nice little payback was the tombstone straight up and down on my head. And thank God for that neck machine right there or I wouldn’t be talking to you. But I deserved it, 100%.” 

On why talks with Tony Khan never went any further:

“I just think we have a different perspective on it. I don’t know. I mean, it’s hard for me to really pass judgment on their production because I don’t watch it. I see clips of it and it’s hard to give a rational breakdown of how they are if I don’t really watch it, so I don’t really know. He reminds me a Dixie Carter, but a male version. I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing. But he reminds me of that scenario. And it’s just a different feel, it’s just different.”

Were you ever close on making a deal?

“I don’t think I was ever close to making a deal with him. I think it was much more a realistic transition when Sting was involved. I reached out to Sting because I wanted to be a part. I thought he and I could do a farewell thing at some point together. But it wasn’t about me. It was about Sting and I could never overshadow anything that he does. But I don’t want to convolute the waters. It would have been a nice crescendo but it wasn’t about me.”

On what happened when WCW closed down:

“I didn’t know except for the fact that I knew I wasn’t going to work for 50 cents on the dollar. So I’m gonna sit at home and let it play out. I had no idea. I really didn’t. I knew that I had always wanted to go to Japan. Always. And that gave me the opportunity. That was a dream come true.”

On interrupting The Rock in his WWE debut:

“It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun and big kudos to him for having you know, the foresight that it would be something that would go over like that, he’s very unselfish. And at the end of the day, it’s a dance man. We all need to we all need everyone involved to be a part of it because it’s a well-oiled machine. You can’t I always tell people that I couldn’t have had the streak if it wasn’t for 176 guys to make me look good. Right? I mean, the match in Colorado Springs with the flock. And they threw themselves around like it was nobody’s business. They made me look like Godzilla and it was awesome. But that’s their job, that’s what they do.”

On a possible match with Big E:

“I’ll give it to him tomorrow. We can leave that part out [big meaty men slapping meat] of it. Right when he says it to me Goldberg’s gonna have to drop him. But yeah, I don’t do comedy. Like, I never really meshed well with that. It’s like, you know, the Indiana Jones and the guy coming in and flashing his sword and you just pull a gun out and shoot him. It’s just that’s me. Less is more.” 

What is Goldberg grateful for:

“My wife, my son and my health.”

Scorpio Sky (@ScorpioSky) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood to talk about his absence from TV and how he is ready to return to the ring, being a 2-time TNT Champion, his custom LA Lakers title, being a part of Sting’s first live match in AEW, handing Chris Jericho his first loss in AEW, throwing Darby Allin down a flight of stairs, his time in WWE as part of the anger management segments with Daniel Bryan and Kane as “Harold”, whether there were ever any plans to do more in WWE and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Who you are becoming is more important than you who have you been” – Hal Elrod

Sponsors:
PURE PLANK: The future of core fitness! Use the code CVV to save 10% on Pure Plank which was designed by Adam Copeland & Christian: https://gopureplank.com/

PRIZEPICKS: Download the app today and use code INSIGHT for a first deposit match up to $100!

TIMELINE NUTRITION: Save 10% off your first order of Mitopure at http://timeline.com/INSIGHT

BONCHARGE: Use the code CVV to save 15% off your infrared sauna blanket at https://boncharge.com/cvv

BLUECHEW: Use the code CVV to get your first month of BlueChew for FREE at http://bluechew.com

ROCKET MONEY: Join Rocket Money today and experience financial freedom: https://rocketmoney.com/cvv

PLUNGE: Get $150 off your Plunge with the coupon code CVV150 at http://plunge.com

On his lengthy absence:

“That’s been the question. I guess I’ve been in and out over the last couple of years. Some of it has been due to injury, some of it due to bad luck. One thing I will say is there’s a narrative out that I’m just this injury-prone guy, like he’s gone for a long time and he comes back and he gets hurt again. That’s actually not the case. So I’m actually glad I want to be able to address that. I did get hurt about two years ago but I was okay, and within like a couple of weeks. But the problem is when you fall out of the rotation, we have so much talent, that it’s hard to get back in the rotation. I always compare it to a Ferris Wheel. Right? You’re up at the top at one point. But you’re gonna go down and you’d kind of have to wait your turn to get back up there and that’s a little bit of what happens. So I have had a couple of injuries over the last few years but for the most part, I’ve been healthy for 80%.”

On what has been going on during his time away:

“I think it’s just like I was saying, it’s really tough to get back into the rotation. Because we have so much talent, there’s always talent coming in that it’s almost out of sight, out of mind, in a way, best way I can describe it. I’m eager to get back into the ring though and flex my muscles a little bit, I’m in really good shape I’m working out with Cesar and I’m excited. And not only in AEW, I want to get back on the indy scene, because I haven’t done the indies in a number of years. And so that would be a really fun thing for me to kind of go back to my roots and see who’s out there, see who are the hot names, and go and have some bangers with them.”

On the injury:

“I hurt my knee two years ago when I had the TNT title, somewhere along that I don’t even remember what match it was. But somewhere in there, I think was one of our multi-man matches when we were working against Sammy [Guevara]. I just, I don’t even remember what the exact diagnosis was, but it was It wasn’t anything too crazy. All I needed was about five or six weeks, I got some PRP and I was good to go after that. But it was just right after that happened is when Brawl Out happened. Everything kind of turned upside down after that. So I kind of moved to the back burner and there was a lot of things that needed to get worked out not involving me and I understood that.”

On being ready to return:

“I’m ready. I think we’re just waiting for the right opportunity, for the right situation. Again, there are a lot of guys in the company and people coming in all the time. And obviously our relationship with other companies like New Japan, that provides us extra talent. And so it’s just a little tough sometimes to work your way back into the rotation. It’s not unlike, say basketball or something, right? Like you get injured, you might lose your spot as a starter and maybe somebody else comes in and they kill it in that spot. So you come back and it’s like, hey, like, we’re winning without you. So you got to figure out a way to get yourself back on the floor.”

On career progression:

“I’ve come so far since then, when we had that first conversation, we were just getting started. I was learning, I knew how to be a television wrestler but I’ve learned so much more since, and I’m still learning and I think I’m very far from hitting my ceiling. I’m getting so much better at this even without being in the ring, just by watching, just by observing, just by thinking back to things I’ve done and how I could have done this better and that sort of thing. I’m improving mentally, even without being in the ring physically. So I think I can do this for a number of more years, 5-10 more years if I want to. The sky’s the limit, for lack of a better term. I’d like to get in there with the top guys, and there’s a lot of guys really all over the world that I would like to wrestle. I see guys on our show. I see guys on WWE, and I’m like, dang, that guy would be a really fun guy to wrestle. Some of these matches, obviously, will never happen, most likely, I’m probably never gonna wrestle John Cena. That was just the name [I’m] throwing out there. But there’s a lot of talent and I get motivated when I see these guys, and I want to hang with them. You can kind of see like, I’m really good, I think at bringing the best out of guys. So I’ll see some guys and I’m just like, let me get my hands on him. I can really just, you know, bring this thing out of him, and that would be so much fun to do. So again, we’re reaching back to, I gotta get back in the ring. That’s the ultimate goal is getting back in the ring first, and then everything else will take care of itself.”

On winning the TNT Championship a second time:

“I think that we didn’t capitalize on that the way we should have. That was kind of the thing with Sammy and I, he was the babyface, I was the heel and then they started turning during and we didn’t lean right into that. At the time I was thinking like, I need to probably go babyface here, listen to the audience. But that wasn’t really the plan. So it was a little bit of a push and pull type of situation where we probably should have just listened to the audience and said, okay, this is where we’re gonna go. That’s how we could have capitalized on that moment. But yeah, that was absolutely a moment. The funny thing about that too, is it ended up making it better, but there was a mess up because Sammy got a little bit rocked in that match. So when we watched the match, he falls off the ladder onto the barbed wire ladders. That was supposed to be the finish. But like a spot or two to before that he was going to do a springboard up on the ladder. And I was gonna knock him off. But we skipped it because he was kind of rocked. So we’re like, okay, let’s get home or whatever. So I knock him off the ladder. He hits the barbed wire. I start climbing. I look and I see him getting up. I’m like, is he getting up? What’s he doing? He’s supposed to stay down. He springboards jumped on the ladder. He’s like, what’s next? You’re supposed to stay down. He goes, Oh, sorry. I was like, It’s okay. Just go back down! But it made it better, because the crowd after I knocked him down the second time. They were like, Oh, we know he’s winning this time. So you feel them build build, build and then I finally grabbed the belt. That’s when you had that big explosion. So I’m glad he did it. I got I’m not happy you got rocked. But I’m glad that mistake took place.”

On being in Sting’s first live match in AEW:

“That’s one of my favorite matches ever. I have two matches that are my favorite matches I’ve ever had and that’s one of them. The cool thing about that was, in the beginning, Sting told us ‘When I signed here it was only to do cinematic matches. I was never supposed to do an in-ring match.’ He’s like, but I trust you guys. And so that was like, Okay, we can’t mess this up. So we, we just did the best we could to obviously protect him. But he’s a maniac and wants to do crazy things as well. he’s like diving off the stage, he’s like suplex me on the stage. It was just like are you sure? okay. He’s a nut. He was in great shape. We had to talk him into not wearing a shirt. He wanted to wear his shirt. We’re like bro you’re in great shape.”

On putting together the match:

“We actually went to his house probably a week prior because we just wanted him to be very comfortable. So Ethan and I on our day off, we were like, we’ll go to your house, and we’ll talk about it. So we went and he has a ring and everything. We went and we just kind of went over a few things, just to get the feel of it. We came up with the finish and the come back and it all came together so easily, honestly. Because it’s like, again, you have a guy who’s over and Darby, too. I mean, I don’t want to sell him short, Darby is incredibly over as well. So whatever they do is going to work and the story was there. So we could go in there and even if the match itself wasn’t incredible, the story was there. That’s what I liked so much about it was a very clean, laid out story that was simple and easy for fans to follow. They followed it and they bought in. And so going out and doing the match was just easy at that point.”

On throwing Darby Allin down a flight of stairs:

“The thing that people always bring up though, and I did this on purpose, just because I like to just throw a little comedy into everything. So he attacked us and we’re like fighting, at one point, there’s this clip and I’m just running holding a trash can. And I run like what feels like 20 feet. And I’m just like ah! Because it’s so goofy, like, I’m just reading and holding this trash can, people always brought that up to me. They’re just like, that was so ridiculous. Like, I know I had to do something. But yeah, we throw them down those stairs and Darby talk about another maniac, man, he just took it. And that was, he could have got seriously hurt doing that.”

On being Chris Jericho’s first AEW loss:

“Sure did, back in 2019 on the early Dynamite days yeah, he was like undefeated at the time. He’s a world champion and then I pandemic and then we did the whole face-to-face interview thing and then I wrestled him for the title. He ended up going off with Moxley after that, which was a good little transition.”

On Chris Jericho:

“I always tell people like Chris Jericho legitimized AEW in the early days. Because people looked at us and they knew there was talent and they’re like, Okay, Young Bucks, FCU, Kenny Omega yada, yada. But when Chris Jericho signs on, that’s when like, the television networks are like, Oh, okay, they’ve got a guy. I always think it’s similar to when Hulk Hogan went to WCW in the mid-90s. It’s just like, it puts that stamp, okay, we’re we’ve arrived. For him to come in, and take young talent like myself, like Jungle Boy, Darby, I just described myself as a younger talent [lauhgs]. But also, he’s worked with so many guys, and made us all good in some way, shape, or form, whether he won the match or not. He put us up there with him and he doesn’t have to do that. But that just shows he’s a giving guy and that helped me a lot in the very early stages of AEW.”

On any talks of returning to WWE in 2012:

“So there was there was the situation I talked to you about last time, but then there was also another situation where I’d worked in 2012. I’d worked a couple of shows for TNA and then I was called to go do a tryout. They did like this LA tryout and I think it’s the one that Adam Pearce and Bayley got signed at. I was there and a few other guys but I had done TNA right before that, and at the time, there was like a lawsuit or something going on between two companies. So the moment I showed up, there was one of the producers that pulls me aside and he said, Hey, you just did TNA. I don’t know how this slipped through the cracks, but we can’t have you here. They had canceled LA Knight I think two days prior, he was also supposed to be at that tryout. So they told him not to come too, because of that same thing. So after that I didn’t even really try to be honest with you, I just kind of went my own route of like, alright, well, let’s see what I can do it on the Indies and that sort of thing. So I just kind of worked my way towards an opposite direction. I kind of had the thinking of like, well, if nothing’s going to happen there, I’m just gonna make my myself a star without them and I just kind of went the hard route.” 

On the anger management segments with Kane and Daniel Bryan:

“I’ve never watched those, I’ve still never seen it. Yeah, it was funny, that was a lot of fun to do, though. At the time, I had no idea it was going to be a thing. I didn’t know people would still talk about it now. I was like, okay. I didn’t even want to be Harold actually, like I showed up and they had like these name tags. My thinking was just I’m not gonna get hired off of this. So let me just eat some catering and sit in the corner and collect my check. So I grabbed a nametag and I wrote Kobi on it. I was like, I’ll be Kobi and I just sat in the corner. Then they’re like, no, no, no, you’re Harold. Oh, shoot. Okay, I have lines, but a lot of it was improv too. I think there was a line where I put my hand on Kane’s thigh. And that one, I just did it, it wasn’t planned. I think the line was something like, Thank you for sharing Kane, it was just one of those things I had fun with and I didn’t expect anything of it. I didn’t even watch it. I was just hanging out at home one day and I noticed my twitter at the time had blown up. I was like, Oh, I guess they aired that tonight. So it’s funny. That was the same weekend of the tryout that I just told you about. so I went to the tryout like two days later, and I was like, hey, you know, I just filmed some stuff, a few days ago. [They said] I don’t know, that has nothing to do with me.”

On any talks of having a match:

“No but there was talk of bringing me back though at one point. They called me maybe a month or so later and they said, Hey, we’re interested in bringing you to Stamford to shoot some more anger management stuff. And I was like, Oh, cool. Yeah, I’m available. And they said, okay, but first, we have to know what is your relationship with TNA? And I was like, I have no relationship. I didn’t have a contract. I just did a couple of dates for them and that’s it. And they were like, okay, and I never heard anything else.”

What is Scorpio Sky grateful for?

“Resilience, health and to be a part of the wrestling business.”

Donovan Dijak (@dijakfye) is a professional wrestler previously signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Toronto, Ontario to talk about his WWE departure and the letter he posted to social media, being backstage at AEW Forbidden Door, RETRIBUTION and the original pitch for the group, returning to NXT and his relationship with Shawn Michaels, being on the receiving end of a brutal Cody Rhodes chair shot, what next for him and more!

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On how he is feeling after the release:

“Excited. Yeah, it took a little bit of time to get over the initial waves of emotions, mostly disappointment, frustration and fear. But now I’m in a really good spot because I’ve had a good solid week of let’s call it return on investment, right? Because there was there was a window of time there where I didn’t know what was in my future. I had a general idea of what might happen and people were telling me and my agents that I work with were telling me, and that’s Paragon talent group, Steve K and Mojo Rawley, who have been outstanding throughout this process. I’ve said this a number of times and I hand to God, I genuinely do not know where I would be right now without them. Just confused and a 1000-yard stare. Them, my wife and my family. Because that’s the group of people who knew, right? And my close close friends who I told just because I needed somewhere to vent and like coping mechanisms and stuff. But this past week has been outstanding for me because it’s validating in a lot of ways to receive such a response. Not just a response online, because that’s one level of the pie, but really more of a tangible response. Like you’re booked here, you’re booked here, you’re booked here, you have seminars here, you’re a trainer here now. There’s just this outpouring of like, Hey, you still have a lot of value in this business at a point where, by definition, I didn’t feel like I had a lot of value, because I was told by the company that I loved and to a certain extent trusted, and wanted to be with that we don’t value you at all. It was heartbreaking, it was scary. Because I’ve been in this business for 12 years now and seven of it has been with WWE. So the majority of my pro wrestling career has been with WWE. A lot of people don’t know that, because there’s been years where I just kind of sat in developmental at the Performance Center, there were years where I was on Main Event as T-BAR, and just sections of my WWE career that people weren’t watching, right, because you either couldn’t or there just wasn’t a lot of access to it, or whatever the reasons be. Or just people who only watch the main roster, right? If you only watch the main roster, which is a huge section of the WWE audience, then you only know me as T-BAR, and that’s not even me. So there’s a section of fans out there that don’t even know I exist in this form, other than the guy who looks like this but was named T-BAR and lost twice on Raw to Omos in a battle royale. And that’s if you watch religiously, right? So you might have missed those episodes.”

On not having a non-compete:

“It’s a double-edged sword. So on the one hand the 90 days is like you mentioned a cool-off period, but it’s also a good time to get your ducks in a row while you’re getting paid. So that’s obviously a key factor. Three months out is about how most booking on the indie and meet and greet scene kind of works. So you can fill your schedule relatively easy. My November and December are looking pretty good right now, my July is not. There’s some favors in there, there’s some guys who I’m very close with, there are companies that had to rearrange their schedule entirely just to try to sneak me in because they think it’ll be a worthwhile investment. So it’s good that I’m fortunate in that capacity. But there’s some vacant spots in there because it’s just difficult to rearrange your booking and your whole show and they have budgets two weeks out, right. It’s like, we can’t afford this, we need to shift that, are you free in August? And then it’s like, no, I’m not free in August, my whole August got booked out in like, three minutes. So it’s kind of this double-edged sword. But the good part of it is the buzz, obviously, I timed the tweet with the letter very specifically to be at a time where I was hoping it would kind of be the only pro wrestling story of that day.” 

On the letter posted to social media:

“So I wanted just in terms of my mental approach to it, I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to do and how I wanted to approach this. Because I was in a very unique situation, I can’t think of anyone else who was in a situation like that, because it’s only recently that they really started letting contracts expire. From what I can tell everyone who had that situation was notified decently well in advance, like maybe a month or two out. So I don’t know that there’s a lot of situations where it was such a short window of time before the notification happened.”

How short notice?

“Well, I mean, I was on WWE Speed and that aired I think 10 days after we taped it. By the time that aired, I had already been notified. So I was on WWE programming knowing that I was not going to be with this company anymore, or at least having been told that. It wasn’t set in stone, there was the possibility that it was a negotiation tactic, there was a lot of things on the table. But that tweet, because I assume they have some sort of deal with Twitter in some capacity, or some sort of payment and Hunter tweets about it every week and mentions it. So he’s tweeting about me, the tweet is on there, it’s posted to the top of @WWE on Twitter, and it stays there until the next week. So I was the pinned tweet on Twitter under WWE one day before I posted that. It’s Speed, but at the same time, I think 2.5 million people saw that post, so that’s a relevant match in the WWE umbrella. Then almost immediately you’re getting this information from me that’s like, they’re not interested in me anymore. They didn’t even make an offer. So I knew that I had those options and frankly, lots of people were telling me to take a different approach mentally. It was suggested to me that I take a more classical approach, people have done this before and who knows what situation is. But the standard approach is thank you for everything I had a great time at WWE. I’m appreciative of everyone we just couldn’t agree on a new deal and I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna make a name for myself and I’m excited for what’s next. You keep it vague, you say we couldn’t come to terms, it makes you seem like they offered you, but you feel like you’re worth more, and you’re gonna go prove yourself, whatever. So I had that option on the table, and that maybe there’s a chance that another company sees that and they go, oh he’s worth X amount of dollars or whatever, it becomes a negotiating thing. My opinion was there was more value, maybe not monetary value, but there was more intrinsic value with the fans and with trust and just how I felt personally about everything in telling the complete and entire truth. Because I don’t feel like the people who support me support me just for no reason. I feel like there’s a large group of my fan base that loves how blunt and honest I am, and maybe that’s what gets me in trouble. Maybe the blunt honesty is what rubbed the right people the wrong way. I’ve talked before about the conversation that I had with CM Punk and it was influential to me. I could see my support trending in a better direction after that, once people started to see the real me and started to feel my honesty and feel my upfrontness and things like that. Maybe my career suffered? I don’t know, it’s hard to say, because I don’t have an explanation. I was not told what happened in any capacity. So I can’t say, oh, I should have done that, I shouldn’t have done that. Because I just don’t know.”

On being backstage at AEW Forbidden Door:

“I did not talk to Tony [Khan]. So what happened was I was having these conversations about what’s going to happen with this letter, how’s it going to be received? I feel strongly about it, I’m gonna present it this way. I feel like this is genuinely authentically me, this is how I would do this, I want it to look like this, etc. And once we came to that conclusion, it’s like okay, well, pardon the pun, but let’s go all in on this. So some phone calls were made, we saw where we could go and Steve [from Paragon] has enough connections at AEW where it was, I don’t know who’s in charge of green lighting who goes backstage, but in some capacity, I was approved to be backstage. I was welcomed with open arms. Tons of my old friends were there, I got to have a great long conversation with Swerve. Just all sorts of guys, Tommy End. Because what happens in WWE is you don’t see these guys. The way they leave is a slow, slow process, right? It’s just like one guy has gone one week and one guy’s got another week. And then two guys are gone the next week. I’m not saying it’s week by week, but we’re talking about releases now. Most of these guys were released, unfortunately, because they didn’t start the real process of letting contracts expire. And quite frankly, most of the people whose contracts they let expire don’t pop up on AEW, because it’s just those wrestlers [who have been released] tend to be more in demand in that style. So these are guys that I haven’t seen in a long time. But on the other end of the coin, I’m now realizing that the last time I was at Raw was the last time I’m ever going to be in a WWE locker room. And that hits in a personal aspect because a lot of those guys are my friends. There’s there’s a ton of crossover now from NXT. All the guys I was with for the past two years, there’s a bunch of them now in that locker room. There’s guys that I was in the locker room with as T-BAR in Retribution and afterwards for a long time. So I’m familiar with all these guys. And lots of them are my friends. So I’m dealing with that aspect of it as well, because it becomes this thing and I was talking about this with Ricochet. Because he knew he wasn’t coming back at that point. Bron destroyed him on the car. So we all said our goodbyes, he assumed that that was his last Raw. So we’re saying goodbye to each other and he and I have had conversations about our contracts and what they look like and the days and stuff like that. So I said goodbye to him not knowing whether I’ll see him in five years or two weeks. We had a laugh about that. I’m like, Hey, man, I’ll see you maybe in five years, maybe next month and we laughed about it. And it’s good that I’m sure I’ll run into him shortly. But on the other end of the coin, I said goodbye that day to a bunch of guys and in the back of my head, I thought this might be the last time I see these guys. But once it happened, now I know it’s the last time I’m going to see those guys in a professional capacity. Maybe I’ll see them in the street right now or something. But in terms of a locker room, sharing a locker room with them, it’s gonna be a while, if I ever share a locker room with these guys ever again, that’s disappointing. So going to AEW was the other side of that, which is I get to see all of these guys all at once and it’s amazing. Not only do I get to see the wrestlers, but I get to learn. Because I’ve never been backstage, I get to learn about all the production staff at AEW, which is a ton of old Ring of Honor guys where I used to work. So I’m seeing these guys for the first time in seven years. And I’m like this is this is amazing. I’m seeing so many faces, so many friendly faces. And I get to meet a bunch of new people as well that I’ve never met before. So it was a really positive experience for me on a personal level.”

On why he didn’t go back to NXT again after his second main roster call-up:

“I can give you my hypothesis. I don’t know this to be fact. It’s a complete guess and no one has told me otherwise. I don’t know when this decision was made. But at some point, there was likely a decision made that Dijak or T-BAR is on a main roster contract and under that main roster contract, it concludes on June 28 2024. So I’m in NXT on a main roster contract. So at some point, whether it was before I went to NXT, or during NXT, or whether it’s right before the draft, I think at some point a decision was made that he’s on a main roster contract on NXT and that doesn’t work in whatever capacity. I’m not sure, but my guess would be they don’t want to renew a contract for someone who’s on NXT. My guess would also be, not my guess, but I know that they didn’t have a creative plan for me on Raw. So at that point, what do you do? You can leave me on NXT. But if you leave me on NXT, and the plan is to just let my contract expire, then that doesn’t look good. Right? Because if the plan was, I wasn’t directly told, but it was alluded to me that the plan was for me to, or there was at least a pitch for me to feud with Trick Williams for the NXT Championship. So if that happens and it plays out at Battleground and we have a match, my contract is up maybe a week later or something like that,  I don’t know the exact timing of it. But so if you’re WWE, do you want someone having a feud for the main championship and then not being employed the next week? That’s probably not a great scenario. So I think, my guess is they looked at all the possible scenarios and said, Okay, best case scenario right now for us and what we want to do with his contract is just kind of quietly bring him up to Raw and just kind of hope he fades away.” 

On if writing that letter may have burned a bridge with WWE:

“That’s not up to me. I’ll put it this way. If that letter burned a bridge with WWE, then they need to take a long hard look at themselves because everything in that letter is true and it’s what they did. So if me telling the truth about their actions, burns a bridge, then maybe they should consider changing their actions because that doesn’t reflect well on them. All I did was say what you did to me. I didn’t scorn anyone, I didn’t throw anyone under the bus. I didn’t call anyone names or throw out thoughts or allegations or anything like that. All I said was these are the facts of exactly what happened to me. A little bit of opinion mixed in there with I exceeded everybody’s [expectations] but honestly, in a sense, it’s not. Because I was told from people, I was told from Shawn Michaels, from Triple H that you’re knocking it out of the park, you’re doing a great job. You did it again, another match, these are the things that they would communicate to me. So it’s not like I’m making these things up in my own head. And I have this grandiose picture of myself. No, I was told these things by the people in charge. So ultimately, at the end of the day, I have no idea who sat in the room and made these decisions. It used to be a lot easier because he could just say it’s probably Vince. Because he owned the company. He did all the booking he had the final say on literally everything. So if you got released or if you got something else, you pretty much knew who made the call back then. Now Endeavor owns the company, they got their own set of rules. There’s different levels of creative and how it relates to the board of directors and whatever. I don’t know how any of that works. Somebody had to sit down at some point and say this contract isn’t worth it. I’d love to have been given that explanation and I requested that explanation and it was not given to me and that’s disappointing. I don’t think they had a contractual obligation or a legal obligation to give me that explanation. That’s probably the rules and the parameters that they live by, which is fine. On a business sense, I kind of respect that, because it’s like, your business and the bottom line is all that matters and that’s great. At the same time, there’s there’s a lot of talk about family and community in WWE, and we’re all on the same team. I’d like to see a little bit more of that practice because that’s how I felt like I was part of the family. I felt like I was part of the team and I wanted to, to work towards that. I still feel that way but now I feel it about my coworkers, the wrestlers in the locker room. Those guys will always be my family. They’ll always be my team. But, you know, now I understand that this is a business, so we got to treat it like a business.” 

On being destroyed by a Cody Rhodes chair shot on the indies:

“So we knew we had the angle and I think I proposed most of it to him. Because as a wrestler, you never want to be like, Yeah, man and then I’ll do this and I’ll drill you in the head with the chair. That’s not something that you pitch, it’s something that the guy taking it usually wants to offer. So I knew we had to do some sort of angle because it was leading to maybe the main event of that show was him and an eight man tag or something like that. So we started with the singles match, and then he needed to get rid of me somehow to get there, whatever. So I was like, why don’t we do a chair shot? He was like, okay, and then I came up with this plan, or one of us came up with a plan to sit the chair in the ring and put me in the chair. Then I told him and this is a direct quote and I’ll remember it because he said it a lot of times after. I told him ‘I want you to be Barry Bonds just swing away.’ And he was like, Okay, if that’s what you want. The angle that we got was really good, because you can’t really see my hand sneak up into the frame last second. Because what ended up happening is I took 100% of it right on my wrist. So my wrist got destroyed, not broken. But it just hurt a lot. It was like a bad bone bruise for a couple of weeks, but didn’t touch my head, didn’t touch my face. I was completely fine, no [damage], nothing. It did look really good. When it happened. I didn’t know how good it looked. And then I watched the video back I’m like, Oh, brother that looked like it ripped my head clean off. But especially because the most viral video of it was like a, like a fan holding a grainy cell phone camera. This was back in 2016 and the fan is like screaming like so it just looked like death. But yeah, it wasn’t it wasn’t that bad.”

On the original pitch for Retribution:

“The original pitch that I got for Retribution was no pitch. Yeah, there was no pitch given to me. I made the pitch. Because Retribution existed before the members of it were selected in any capacity. The original group of Retribution that you saw on Monday Night Raw was a bunch of writers and extras all wearing those head-to-toe blacks and throwing Molotov cocktails at a generator. That’s the first time you saw Retribution. And when that happened. I was in this weird middle ground of sort of called up sort and sort of in NXT just kind of floating around the PC because it’s in the middle of COVID. Right. So sometime along that storyline as it begins to progress, I say, All right, I’m gonna go make my pitch to Vince because I have some names in mind. I have a concept in mind. Because right now on TV, this is kind of getting laughed at right? The whole general feeling of it, and the only feedback that we have at this point is Twitter, right? That’s the only that’s our only source of feedback because there’s literally no fans. We don’t even have video screens at this point. It’s just wrestlers standing around being told to cheer now, you know, so who knows what the reception of this is other than Twitter, which is destroying it right there. It looks like a bunch of school kids jumping around, playing at recess. That’s that’s the general thought process. So I’m like, okay, but they’re clearly invested in this project. It’s a mainstay of Raw and SmackDown they’re destroying the ring on SmackDown. There’s sawing the thing, the commentators are running away. They’re running angles where Randy Orton’s punt kicking Ric Flair, and the lights turn out because of Retribution. So I’m saying, okay, they’re invested in this angle, let me give them more of a reason to invest in this angle. I have the perfect set of people to execute this. I have a good vision as to why I can tie it all in, I can keep continuity. Let me pitch all this directly to Vince, he’s easily accessible because he’s at the Performance Center where we are every day. So as I was telling you earlier, I like to film vignettes in my basement and stuff. So I filmed this little vignette in my basement. I bring it on an iPad, I type up a thing with a list of names, a lot of the names that ended up being in Retribution, some that were some that weren’t, a whole synopsis of why we’re doing what we’re doing, what we look like what our motivation is, and I gave it to him and I showed him the video. We had not a conversation, but I presented all of it to him straight there. He watched all of it, he absorbed all of it. And then he gave me a five-minute talk about professionalism. Which is an interesting conversation in hindsight. But it’s a conversation that happened. I think that’s based on the fact that the first time I ever met him, so this is the second time I’ve ever met him. The first time I ever met him was about a month earlier and I was told through the grapevine that I made a very bad first impression. I don’t necessarily know why. But I think it was because I was a fan in the PC, not even the Thunderdome yet, but the PC, because they had NXT wrestlers and I was sort of called up. But they told us to dress like fans basically. So I walked in to just introduce myself because I had been told I had been called up to Raw and I’m kind of dressed like a fan basically at that point. I just introduced myself and maybe he didn’t like all that, maybe he thought that I should be more professional about how I should have been in a suit and tie in something. Because that was basically the talk he gave me after I made the pitch about Retribution. He was like you need he’s like you need to have more respect you know for these board members, these CEOs, then he goes not me, like he’s one of the boys. And it’s just a very confusing message and I’m like yes sir. Sounds good. Yeah, I’ll be more professional next time. And then I left and nothing happened for another two or three weeks and I’m like whatever it did, I shot my shot and it missed is what it is.”

On Fox not liking Retribution:

“I never heard that in an official capacity. I never saw a report that said that. But yes, that is the rumor I heard that Fox did not like Retribution, which for the record they had every right. At that time, it was okay, it was trending in a better direction, right, we did the whole angle, we’re standing at the edge of the apron to close Monday Night Raw, it felt cool, it looked cool. Then the day came for the big reveal. And the big reveal was these masks, which was part of what I pitched, I pitched masks, but I had pitched entrance masks where we rip them off, and we reveal who we are. And this is why we’re angry and all these other things. We were not going that route. We were going a different route. And we were told that our names were T-Bar, Slapjack and Mace and Reckoning and Retaliation and we were like uh oh.”

On how the angle would have been received if there was an audience there:

“That’s a great question. I think better, because there would have been more production, there would have been more interaction, it would have been clearer that we were bad guys trying to make people angry, rather than just what you saw, which was crazy people just kind of screaming at nothing, right? It’s like what? We’re going to take over these screens? It doesn’t translate very well. I know that they broke off me and Mace and put us in a tag team and had us take our masks off. And that seemingly was well received by the audience even though I was still named T-Bar and he was still named Mace, which by the way, we pitched to not have those names anymore because we didn’t want the stink attached to us. But it was still there, we still the same music and everything. But even still, we’re getting good reactions from the crowd. It just apparently wasn’t Vince’s cup of tea the tag team so that got split apart too.”

On Shawn Michaels:

“In terms of WWE, my overall tenure at WWE, Shawn Michaels is probably the most important figurehead for me simply because it felt like that was the first time where I was really, really heard. When I was moved down to NXT, I came into a meeting with Shawn and Johnny Russo, who I mentioned earlier and Matt Bloom. We sat in a room and I very hesitantly pitched to them my idea because this was not my first pitch in WWE, I told you about the Retribution pitch I’ve made. Probably throughout my course of T-Bar, I probably pitched directly to Vince, probably five or six things and just in general to like my writers, or to Bruce, or to whoever else in the creative process, probably upwards of like 20 things. That sounds like a lot and it sounds like I’m bombarding them. They were well-spaced out. I was on the main roster for a long time doing nothing, or doing Main Event, two years is a long time, especially when there’s clearly no creative plan for you and you’re just trying to go can I do this on Raw? Can I try this? Oh, this just happened I’d fit in here. And the more you pitch, the more they’re like shut up. They didn’t say shut up but it’s like, hey, we’ll use you when we need you. So just stay out on the bench a little bit.”

What is Dijak grateful for?

“My family, my wife, my support system around me and the ability to get to do what I love.”

Raj Dhesi (@rajthemaharaja) is a professional wrestler formerly known as Jinder Mahal in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood to talk about his recent WWE release and how it is different from the last time, working with Indus Sher as their manager, whether or not Brock Lesnar actually refused to work with him, fighting for the 24/7 Championship on a golf course and on a long haul flight, working with Drew McIntyre, being a part of the final WWE Punjabi Prison match, a promo he regrets, being paired with The Great Khali and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Elliot

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On no longer being with WWE:

“It feels great. I always have a positive outlook on things, on life. I know the future’s bright, I get to explore other avenues, business ideas that I have, other stuff outside of wrestling we can touch on later. But yeah, I’m excited. And obviously wrestling, the independent scene is amazing right now. I got some bookings coming out. My calendar is getting full. So yeah, it’s awesome. I had a great time in WWE, had a great run. And I was always smart with my money. I always invested it. So now I have the luxury of doing whatever I want.”

On the release:

“So actually, during WrestleMania week, myself and Indus Sher, we talked to TR [talent relations], They were wanting to go back to India, a few months prior Veer had a religious event that he holds, it was a one year anniversary of his father’s death. He got told that, no, we were needed for Raw, he can’t go back home. Sangha is also from India. He wants to go back home and we were told no, we were needed on Raw. And sure enough we weren’t booked, we were just sitting at home. So they were quite frustrated. And also myself, started off the year with The Rock and had the WWE championship match. Then one week later, I’m not in the Royal Rumble. Which was I thought it was very weird. So we talked to TR, we just said, Hey, listen, like, if there’s nothing for us, we can go our separate ways. And sure enough, a few months later, we went our separate ways.” 

On it being time for the next generation in WWE:

“It was frustrating, but that’s okay. Because that’s what WWE is, it’s time for the next generation. It’s time for the Bron Breakker’s and the Carmelo’s, it’s their time, I had my time. And maybe my time will come back. But it’s time right now to step away and do other things. And if works out in the future we come back, if not, it’s all good. There’s plenty of other things to do. Starting off the year strong with The Rock, then the title match, thank you Tony [laughs]. Then WrestleMania week, I’m in a match two segment match with Tozawa on Main Event. So obviously, there’s frustrations and but it’s all good. Right? I had many years there. I’ve done everything that I wanted to do. And yeah, it’s a young man’s game.”

On comparing the 2024 release to the first one:

“This one is much different. I am a grown man now. I’ll be turning 38 the day after this interview airs. So yeah, it’s just I’m at a different point in my life. I’m at peace with it. I’ve had a great career because at that time when I got released, the best thing I had done at that point was being in 3MB. Now I’ve been a WWE Champion. I’ve been in WrestleMania, headlined PVVs. I’ve done everything. I have travelled the world, and I’m in a different place financially. So yeah, a lot has changed.” 

On there being a lot of love from the fans when the release was announced:

“Yeah, definitely. I generally get a lot of hate online. But it was one of those rare instances where I got to show my real personality, actually, this happens to me all the time. I meet people and they’re like, wow, like you’re not what we expect. [They say] you’re nice, maybe it’s the Canadian in me. Always respectful, polite, and the Jinder Mahal character was the complete opposite of me. Like some guys are the wrestling characters with their personality turned up. Mine not so much. It was something completely different.” 

On Drew McIntyre:

“I became WWE Champion before Drew McIntyre, don’t you forget that [laughs]. Drew’s the man. What Drew is doing right now is incredible. This is the best version of Drew. Drew’s the man. He’s like a brother to me and to see him in this position. He just signed a new contract so he’ll be there for a few more years. Something about a man like he is incredible. He’s having fun. I just don’t think he cares anymore and that’s usually when the best comes out. Like CM Punk, he doesn’t care about anything and that’s why he’s the best.”

On being told he was no longer a wrestler:

“I always stay ring ready. Actually, while I was managing Indus Sher, when we got drafted to Raw, I was told that I’m no longer a wrestler. I’m just a manager. But I still stayed in shape. [They told you that?] Yeah, becasue I was pitching. Well, the writer told me. I was pitching all kinds of storylines, like six man tags or matches for myself where Indus Sher is managing me and nothing was happening. I asked the writer, I said, What’s the deal am I [wrestling]? I also know this because I saw the roster sheet. Male heels, Raw, SmackDown male heels, tag teams, I wasn’t listed under male heels. There was the male heel tag teams Indus Sher and I was in brackets. So as a manager role. So I wasn’t even listed as active talent. And I asked the writer I said, Hey, was it discussed that I’m not wrestling anymore? He said, Yeah, it was brought up that you just gonna manage Indus Sher. But then I had the match with Seth Rollins. Luckily, I was in shape already, and stayed in shape. Because that could have went that could have went the opposite way where I started eating desserts in catering every week. But I’m always being ready, motivation comes and goes, right? It’s very hard to stay super dialed in year round. Generally, if I know something big is coming up, it’s a little bit easier. But now that I know that I get to spread my wings. Yeah, it’s motivation.”

On being in the Royal Rumble:

“No, there wasn’t [any plans]. I was asking, again, this was two weeks after the Seth Rollins match. So like a week out, I asked one of the producers who I’m friends with who was doing the Royal Rumble. I said, Hey, am I in the Royal Rumble? He’s like, I’m trying to get you in your name has been brought up but as of right now you’re not in it. And I actually jokingly said, Hey, diversity. And he’s like, actually, someone did get in because of that I was like I don’t count? Yeah, I and the day of the Rumble. I brought my gear. I was ready to be in the Rumble. And the list came out and it wasn’t in it.”  

On WWE not capitalising on the Indian market:

“Yes, especially with Indus Sher. So both of those guys didn’t come from pro wrestling. Rinku was a baseball player and Saurav actor and kickboxer. So they’re brand new to this, they went to the NXT system, then they go to main roster, which has its own learning curve. From day one, they came back from the first match and I told Triple H put us on the live events, put us on the live events, put us on the live events. Because what they need is experience. They just don’t have enough experience or the experience that maybe they were looking for, the experience with long matches, they mainly had shorter squash matches, where everything was kind of laid out. I really wanted for them to experience a live event match where you don’t call as much and you just listen to the crowd and you feel it. And I even suggested like, there’s two live events, one on Saturday, one on Sunday. I’ll tag with one on one night, the other night, I’ll tag with the other one, I’ll wrestle both nights. But we just never put on live events. I was put on Live Events alone right after that Seth Rollins match for like two weeks. And then that was it. They just never got the experience and you get that from live events. There’s no other way you don’t really learn much from TV matches, especially a squash match, you do, but not a squash match. If you have a 90-second match, or you’re planning everything like A,B,C,D, you don’t really get to feed off the crowd or change a match based off of the crowd reaction. You do that on live events. So I think it was a missed opportunity, not putting those guys on live events, because that would have got them to the next level. Right? Like if they want to have a 15-20 minute match with DIY with all these intricate, false finishes and saves and the timing needs to be worked on, time is super important. You get that from live events and if you mess up, it’s okay. It’s not a live television. Several million people around the world don’t see it, so that would have been the place to do it. But all good.”

On the 24/7 Championship segment on a golf course:

“We were on live events that week, and I got a text from Adam Pearce. He was the agent on the live event. He texted me, Hey, we gotta go film this thing. So I could have just showed up in regular clothes but I was like, Nah, I gotta do it in gear, It’ll be better. gotta commit. Right? I just didn’t have any baby oil, though. You look, I don’t have any baby oil, or I don’t have a pump. So we go to this golf course and luckily, WWE had gotten permission already from this golf course so it wasn’t that awkward. It still was but yeah, showed up in trunks. We did the thing and actually, I didn’t warm up or anything and I threw out my back, like really bad. Later that night, we have to live event. But luckily, a few hours later, Adam Pearce actually texted me and I think he was kind of giving me the heads up like hey, sorry, it’s written on the show is going to be ding ding ding and Alistair Black just gonna give you his kick. And I just texted God bless. I just said God bless. And then when I got to the building, I came like limping in and he said, Oh my God, what happened? [I said] I threw out my back on the golf course. I’m like Yes, please, this is a great finish is a great match. Walked to the ring, barely just got kicked. 123. So yeah, it worked out.”

On the Punjabi Prison match:

“So first off, the Punjabi prison match sucks. It’s terrible. [In what way?] It’s so hard. The inside cage is the blue old school cage. You can hit it as hard as possible and it won’t even make a noise. It was terrible. And then just the crowd reaction they couldn’t really see the people in the arena, there’s two cages so when we’re on the inside, there’s two cages they couldn’t really see. And it was just painful. Kendo sticks, chair shots, everything. But then The Great Khali. So actually funny story. So I knew Khali was going to come. Singh Bros knew, Randy knew, nobody else knew supposed to be a big secret supposed to be a big secret. They have the Punjabi Prison tarped off and all the way from the roof. Kick everybody out of the bowl, no security guard like no one’s in there. But they gotta get Khali ringside to rehearse. So they like wheel them in on basically like a buggy between crash pads, what are you guys doing? They tried their best to hide him. But everybody saw him. Khali saved my championship I won, at the end he raised the championship like he won it. So it was good yeah, it was amazing and actually Khali’s hand is so big like he’s patting me on the back but it feels like someone’s slapping me, he’s like yeah good job, good job, slapping my back. I’m gonna block it with my elbow. Last thing I want right now.”

On a scrapped Punjabi Prison match:

“Actually, I was supposed to possibly have one with Roman Reigns at Extreme Rules. I think we just had a regular straight-up match and it was in Chicago, too. There was talk of the Punjabi Prison match coming back. Me and Roman in the Punjabi prison. [And then did he just say I don’t think so?] Yeah, just like Brock [laughs].”

On the scrapped match against Brock Lesnar:

“This is just my opinion, and, obviously there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet. The headline came out, ‘Brock Lesnar refused to work with Jinder.’ I don’t think he refused. I just think it was he probably pitched for a match with AJ because stylistically, it is a much better match. Me and Brock are both heels. Who’s gonna put heat on who? It was gonna be a flat match. It would have just been him suplexing me a bunch of times, maybe Singh Bros get involved. But the match he had with AJ was phenomenal, no pun intended. So yeah, I don’t think it was that he refused to work with me. I just think Brock has some pull and him and Paul Heyman probably said, Hey, we should talk to Vince and said book the match with AJ Styles. Which is okay, I have to lose a championship at some point anyway, I had it for six months and I didn’t know that I was losing the championship until the day of. We were in Manchester and we have the title match. We get to the building. Michael Hayes tells me and AJ go talk to Vince, and send us to Vince’s office, Vince tells me you’re dropping the championship, now you’re going to chase it. AJ, you’re winning it tonight, you’ll work with Brock at Survivor Series, then me and AJ at Night of Champions, one more championship match. And that was it. Yeah, I found out on the same day I’m winning it, lost it the same way found out the same day.”

On the offensive Shinsuke Nakamura promo:

“There was one promo in particular. Recently, I actually just saw Shelton Benjamin tweet that if he could take back one thing in his career, it was a promo with Yoshi Tatsu. Same thing, kind of like a racial promo. So that day, I had the promo, I got the script from the writer ‘This is from Vince, he wants you to say this.’ I was like, Oh man, I don’t want to say [this], is there anything else we can do? He said, No, it’s come from Vince. So I even asked Vince, this is gonna get negative backlash. He said no, no, no, no, don’t worry. Who cares? It’s not you. It’s a character, just entertainment. So did the promo, was not happy with it and not proud of myself for doing it. I really wish that I could take that moment back but unfortunately, I can’t. And right when we came back and got a lot of negative backlash, like I remember coming back from Gorilla. I was still hanging out by Gorilla and one of the social media managers came up to me and said, Hey, this is getting a lot of bad PR and Vince wants you to tweet something, like a statement. I said, okay, cool. He came up with something, maybe the PR team wrote it, someone came up with a statement. And as we were about to tweet it, he said, Actually, Vince changed his mind he said No. So it was just one of those things where it is what it is, not proud of doing it. But on the plus side I don’t think something like that, a promo like that will ever happen again in WWE. Things changed, the regime changed, everything is much much different now. That was a different era, different time. Under Vince his style was different. Sometimes he was stuck in his ways.”

On the lines being blurred

“You separate the performer from the on-screen character, but for some reason in wrestling, and WWE, it doesn’t happen. That was the explanation that was given to me, I was like fine we’ll do it. I had asked can we do something else? Is there anything else we can do? I was told no, this is what Vince wrote and you can either do it or you take your ball and go home.”

What is Jinder Mahal grateful for?

“The future, the past for all the lessons and family.”

Cody Rhodes (@CodyRhodes) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE and is reigning as the Undisputed Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Toronto to discuss the night he won the WWE Championship at WrestleMania and what happened next, the twists and turns that led to the eventual victory, whether turning heel turn will ever happen, comparisons to Homelander, his thoughts on The Rock and the mystery item that was given to him on the Raw after WrestleMania, whether anyone crossed the line with their promos leading up to WrestleMania, making every night special for the fans and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “The key to success is to start before you’re ready.” – Marie Forleo

Sponsors: PURE PLANK: The future of core fitness! Use the code CVV to save 10% on Pure Plank which was designed by Adam Copeland & Christian: https://gopureplank.com/

PRIZEPICKS: Download the app today and use code INSIGHT for a first deposit match up to $100!

TIMELINE NUTRITION: Save 10% off your first order of Mitopure at http://timeline.com/INSIGHT

BONCHARGE: Use the code CVV to save 15% off your infrared sauna blanket at https://boncharge.com/cvv

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PLUNGE: Get $150 off your Plunge with the coupon code CVV150 at http://plunge.com

On WWE breaking kayfabe with the WrestleMania documentary:

“Well with the behind the scenes documentary, that’s really as far as I think you should ever go. Not because I don’t want people to know, but the legend is supposed to be cooler than the fact. So watching the documentary the other night, I feel like people have all these questions and there’s kind of these different outlooks and takes and I like that more than someone definitively saying no, here’s actually what happened. Plus, I like that Rock, Roman, me, Seth and Triple H all look like we were involved with a bank heist, but have different stories when we got caught by the cops. Like everybody in the interrogation [says] it was him, it was him, it was me… I do like that.”

On what happened the night he won the Undisputed Championship:

“I didn’t sleep. I went right to The Today Show, I laid in a bunk and I texted a bunch of people, including The Undertaker. And now Undertaker has a podcast and a stage show. So things you might say could become public knowledge, these legends, that’s what they do. I left him what I would say as a rambling, perhaps intoxicated little rant just thanking him for being there. It’s the frickin sheriff. But yeah, immediately after, here was sincerely, I said it in the behind-the-scenes documentary, but it’s really how I felt. I was almost worried there’d be a sense of completion, this sense of fullness. I was genuinely concerned like, well, stories over. But as soon as it was done, it felt like literally [I was] 10 feet tall, felt bulletproof, felt younger, felt faster, like just didn’t feel grizzled at all, to the point where I thought, Oh, this is going to be a lot of fun. But what do we do next?”

On people not liking his character:

“Have you ever watched the show Parks and Rec? Okay, so there’s a really great episode, she is running for city council and there’s a guy who hates her, and for no reason. He just has a thing and hates her. She throws his bowling night and ultimately at the bowling night. She’s not supposed to be putting time in on him. But she clearly is trying to turn him and the message is that that’s never going to happen. With me, that’s where I feel very comfortable these days, I’d rather rock and party with the people who were part of all this and in the fans versus it’s nice to prove fans. It’s also nice to prove critics wrong, but it’s not my main focus. Feel like for a long time chip on the shoulder, you wanted to turn them, change them and you can to some degree, but I feel like when you do that you discard the ones who are right. They’re like, hey, we got your back. Why are you so focused on this?”

On making memories at live events:

“You want to know something funny about grabbing kids out of the crowd? Sometimes you see a body and you think wow, that cosplay is great. That’s perfect. I’m gonna have he or she do the Whoa with me. And then you don’t realize because maybe they’re not standing on their chair, you don’t realize that you just picked up a 15-year-old, like over 100 pounds, you know what I mean? Like, it’s kind of funny, you’ll see my hands go under, I’m always assuming it’s like an eight-year-old. And then it’s just sometimes you get, it’s like getting a real big fish. It’s like you’re proud of it, but also have man, I gotta get you back over the rail. It’s so funny. I don’t have the best eye for it. [Do you pick them out ahead of time?] No, Nia Jax is pretty good about when she’s on the live events and she’s been skipping some live events lately, which I don’t like, at all. And Road Dogg needs to put her on the live events. Now, she’s good about saying Bayley is also good about this as well saying, hey, there’s a kid out there, they’re in x row, and that’s, that’s super helpful, not ribbing actually, they’d find a good spot. But usually on the way out, I got a good head on a swivel, because now we’re wrestling so much the wrestling is never secondary. Oh my gosh. But you might have that down to the point where you’re able to free yourself up to look around, WWE has more signs now, it’s coming back, and to see them and just have a moment with each person to thank them for being there for me.” 

On being hyper aware of how he acts around fans:

“So there’s like a lot of discussion on the stuff I do at the end of the night at the shows. Internally, I think people thought WWE has been really great about hey, yes, it takes longer and we have to break the ring down 45 minutes to an hour later but we like this. It was kind of new to WWE it’s almost this thing that I took from the independent scene, just everywhere I go stay until the very end. If you kick me out, no problem if there’s a curfew no problem like that’s fine. Drag me out. But I don’t think of it that way. I love that, I hope it is a core memory. I hope people do have something that they remember and selfishly probably I’m hoping that I’m their guy. But I sincerely just really enjoy it. One of the things I think Roman Reigns called me political and I thought it didn’t shake me at all, he didn’t hurt because I thought, no, it seems political. And maybe it looks political, but it’s not. I just like this. You don’t know how long you’re going to have. You don’t know how many spins around the earth you get and don’t know how many times you’re going to be the kind of the North Star of the wrestling business. So I just really enjoy it.”

On if he remains fully in character:

“That’s a great question. I would hope, and again, I don’t know if all wrestlers are as aware as we’d like to be about how we are in a group setting, in the world, not revolving around us. I think once I left WWE the first time and went out and did my own thing, I think I kind of ceased to be a character and just accepted the fact that present the self that you want to be, that’s where the suits and stuff came from present yourself. But, be yourself. Actually so no, I don’t feel I’m in character now. But it’s something that I’ve kind of lived and dreamed out loud with my career and what I want stating here’s the goals at the end. As shocking as it is to say, sometimes I wish there was a little bit more of a character that I could hide into, because it feels like again, you have questions. You don’t have to have questions because you know me. So scary thing like that doc that just came out in my own documentary. Part of that’s a little intimidating. In the world they know you, they have a sense of you, and they can wrap an opinion around it. And it’s just again being vulnerable and being out there. It’s the wrestlers. I grew up loving the big, bombastic, loud talkers and bright colors, and you didn’t know who they were. With me the individual that caught on was me. And it can be a burden in addition to being amazing, but it can be a burden as well.”

On having Brandi Rhodes be a part of his WrestleMania 40 entrance:

“Everything wrapped around that. You got to kind of relate back to or credit back to Triple H and Nick Khan and Bruce Prichard. They understood there’s a difference between, hey, I want to get my buddy on this show or hey, this is a friend but it’s really a niche market that might understand it. They understood what I was just telling you earlier that this has been lived out loud in front of them. She’s a huge part of that. A massive part of that. She’s not a stand behind you type, she’s a stand next to you type. So it was very nice that they wanted that to happen. It was even more special. I was touched how great the wrestling fans were to her. Because I think if you’re around the business long enough, you look at your social and stuff. You look at things in a vacuum, you have peaks, you have valleys, I don’t think she remembered how cool they can be as an audience. And that was really nice to hear the reaction they had for [Brandi]. To me, it will be my favorite entrance ever. And it’s very simple. You know, there was the prelude, Brian Fadem at WWE helped get all that together. It was this Prelude music that they let me pick and then to rise up and Jason Baker, who developed a lot of the stuff for The Fiend, had come up with making the tattoo an actual mask and he did mind blowing job, that’s my favorite entrance ever. And it’s very simple, minus the pyro, it’s relatively cost-effective.” 

On if The Rock has ever crossed the line with some of his promos:

“Depends on what line. When you’re the director of the board, you can do whatever you want. The show is not going off the air and no one’s getting fired if you do something that’s a little outrageous. That gave him free rein to develop and enter into The Final Boss. [you turned the Rock heel]. Well what happened with The Rock at WrestleMania 40 is the first time I ever believed in my own hype. So first time I ever thought, oh, maybe someone from this generation did get over. Because to me, I tell my students I tell people all the time nobody today is over. Because you hear over all the time and to me over is you can’t step a foot out your house without cameras, without a moment. I just have a loftier opinion of over, John Cena is over. This is the first time I thought oh, maybe maybe that’s happening. Line wise, the only line I think he crossed was he made my sister Teil non-canon because he had mentioned that I had two other siblings and that being Dustin and Kristen who are from my dad’s first marriage, which is you know, you’re not wrong that I do have them, and he was explaining [that] when he called me a mistake. But he made Teil non-canon and Teil was like the closest I have this is my original best friend. You know, so that was a little I felt bad. I felt bad for her. I feel Mama Rhodes is a person who never wanted to be ever on camera. And now you got a security guard in Heathrow terminal airport [who recognises her]. If he thought that was a line that he was crossed, I feel maybe it actually backfired because she’s now a part of it all.”

On if Cody ever felt like he crossed the line:

“I feel maybe I crossed the line. I did a promo where I said he had LDS. Actually I feel like a lot of people liked the interview and got a nice round of applause when I came back through the curtain but it felt so off-brand for me. Because we have so many young kids that I felt like this one guy is the guy that I’m gonna go to these lenghts for. And maybe that’s what makes this all click this genuine animosity and smile at each other but probably deeply dislike one another. If he’s the one who’s gonna bring it out to me. It’s probably good TV, but it did feel a little, I guess icky in the moment.”

On The Rock and the mystery item:

“It’s very important that whenever I talk about The Rock and I feel like I’ve talked about him a lot, people have a lot of questions about him and things of that nature. Very important, he is my boss, which he’s not on the ground as much so you don’t remember, but he’s my boss. He is one of the biggest if not the biggest name that ever came from pro wrestling. I mean, there’s an argument. Some people don’t even make the argument, if you’re looking at your Hulk Hogan’s, your Austin’s, Rock’s, he’s a Mount Rushmore wrestler. He then went on to be the biggest star in the world in terms of film and Hollywood and a modern action hero when we needed one. If Rock decided today he’s going to run for President of the United States my gosh, he would win in a landslide. He’s just one of the most recognizable people on the planet. I’m sure he’ll explain down the road what it was and I’m sure his kind of, what would you call Brian Gewirtz to him? Extremely talented individual Brian Gewirtz who kept Raw on track for years and years and years, but he’s kind of a Starscream to Rock’s Megatron. I’m sure Brian will do some media where he puts something out there or skews the timeline. Again, utmost respect for both of them.”

On calling out The Rock at Elimination Chamber:

“Offer still stands. And again, if he never comes back, he’s done it all. He really has. And as much as I insulted him previously, it was an honor to be part of his last outing. But what I learned physically in the ring with him, it shouldn’t be his last outing. There’s more. There’s not just gas left in the tank, there might be multiple tanks. There’s more and I would like the WWE Universe or pro wrestling fans. I’d like them to see that. I think there’s a world where [he’s the] WWE Director the Board great. But I think there’s a world with WWE really benefits and this young audience being able to connect with him they don’t know him as the people’s champ they know him as The Final Boss. That offer stands whenever.”

On being told he might not be in the main event of WrestleMania 40:

“There’s a group of people who were visiting and who kept coming on my bus. And at one point, we just had to have a full hey, I need you guys to know what’s about to happen. And everyone who was in that group knows it is one of the best and worst days of my professional career. It somehow was both. If you watch closely after I win, and I kind of like hunched down over the mat. I am saying I’m sorry, I’m saying I’m sorry multiple times. And looking at people dead in the eye saying I’m sorry because I knew pretty much to a degree based on what Triple H had told me that it probably isn’t going to happen and I was as lost as I have ever been. So here I am. We’re talking about am I in character? I had lived my life to finally find myself finally have all the utmost confidence. And it was the lowest I’ve ever felt, but also I just won the Royal Rumble for the second time. That’s a life-changing moment. How can you not appreciate that and enjoy it and feel it? But that was a very rough day. And I kind of apologized to my colleagues and peers around me because I was forgetful. I was in the ring I might have been a little forgetful but I was also trying my hardest to make it seem like that meeting had never happened knowing it had happened and you know having a look at Punk in the eyes and Wonder like do you know? And I never had this discussion with him, do you know what’s happening? But it was also, I freely discuss it because the documentary is out there and everyone’s told their story and all that, but it was just a very, very tough day. I have great relationships with some of the top brass at WWE really huge respect. And it got shaken a little bit. But also I realize the burden, like I mentioned, this is the problem with being yourself. You can’t not sell this, you can’t not hide this, if you were playing, the astronaut characters, it’s a different thing, the astronaut characters winning the Royal Rumble but not wrestling at Wrestlemania. In this case, I felt like I was, I took it personally. And it was a nice reminder, not to take anything personally in wrestling. And if anybody who’s in the I’ve worked in management, I’ve done this, I should know that more than anybody. So I had to walk out of that room and not take it personally.”

On the Homelander comparisons:

“With all the love I have for The Boys and his performance as Homelander, the entire cast, and their production is first class., what a production. The robe is not based on it. The robe is based on military dress uniforms. It’s the little bit of scales, the gold are on my bigger robe that has the eagles and of course, the blonde hair and I think the AEW run where people thought I’m pretending to be a good guy but I’m actually a bad guy, which maybe it was what was happening? I think that’s where it really became is he’s gonna go full Homelander? Truthfully, Homelander the character is a terrible human being.”

On not turning heel:

“You can do whatever. WWE is such a hot ticket now. It moves on. It’s great to have a quarterback, great to have franchise players or top stars, whatever it might be, but it’s going to move on with or without you there, someone will fill that spot. Social media for pro wrestling is very important and you’ll hear people try to say it’s not important, you’ll hear people say they’re just trolls. I think you need to know what a troll really is. This is a real person who probably has a pretty good high-paying job. This is how they release. This is their event, whatever. This is my weird psychology or theory on trolls. But with all that said, there’s a whole section, a huge section of WWE audience that’s not actively on social, they have it, they do stuff on it, but that is not their bread and butter. They’re not dictated to by it. Whereas some of the other independent and smaller promotions are dictated to by social media so we have to always look at it. “We want Cody” is a prime example. Is this social media or is this bigger? It only became bigger when we showed up in that arena on Monday and they started chanting it in real time. That’s where you know the difference between a fad, between this thing and something that okay, this is a wave that’s far far bigger. It could happen for sure. I just don’t see it happening.”

On a negative moment from his time in AEW:

“I hated that in The Young Bucks’ book they said I was last to the signing. Because that’s a big thing. Some of the AEW defenders who don’t realize they’re turning people off to their product more than they’re turning people on. That’s one of the things that people always sight, Oh, he was last, he wasn’t that big a deal to the origin? No. This guy here who’s off camera was the first person to ever meet Tony. And he met him in a vetting process for all of us. So yes, I guess I was the last and yes, I had different thoughts and it’s not incorrect at all what they said. Yeah, it’s not incorrect but I was just in on it as well as anybody else.”

What is Cody Rhodes grateful for?

“Healthy family, the WWE Championship and the opportunity to take this story and remain interesting.”

Booker T (@BookerT5x) is a WWE Hall of Famer currently calling the action each week on NXT. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at Reality of Wrestling in Houston, TX to discuss his time in WCW, WWE and now NXT, the recent partnership between NXT and TNA, the iconic supermarket brawl with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and how much the damage cost, being paired with his wife Sharmell on TV, winning King of the Ring and becoming King Booker, his rivalry with Edge over a shampoo commercial at WrestleMania 18, whether or not he will ever have one more match and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: It doesn’t take talent to show up on time and work hard.

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On Reality of Wrestling:

“The Reality of Wrestling is something that I thought about many, many years ago when I first got in the wrestling business. It was an underground sport, it is not something you can just get into. So I wanted to give young people a chance to actually be a part of something, but the reality of it is you got to work your ass off for everything here at Reality of Wrestling. Nothing is given to you. We’ve had guys that have been here for many, many years that have worked on their craft and didn’t get it in the beginning. They could have easily left but they stuck it out and those are the guys that excel to the next level. That’s the reality of it. Here at Reality of Wrestling, I lead by example. I’m one of the first guys to get in and get the job done and I’m one of the last guys to leave just to make sure everything is done properly. So is Reality of Wrestling is just a little bit of everything.”

On still being in great shape:

“I’m blessed, but it’s all about just action, as well. It’s just staying on the move all the time. I mean, I’m on my way to Jacksonville here in a little while and then got to turn around and go to Vegas, and then turn around and go to Orlando, then back home for a minute. But then when I’m home is all about still staying on the grind, working with my partner Brad Gilmore with the ESPN podcast, as well. You know, it’s just all about staying relevant and sometimes staying relevant means you got to do the little bitty things. I love it, though.”

On one more match:

“Well, I’m never gonna retire. I’m definitely gonna get back in the ring at some point in time to do something. But it’s gonna be here, in Reality of Wrestling, or in Saudi [laughs].”

On the return being another Royal Rumble spot:

“You know, I think that spot was a great swan song for me doing it at that time, it was one of those unexpected entries. It was a moment, it’s kind of hard to really create those moments, duplicate those kind of moments, replicate that. So I think Rumble for me, I’m not looking to do anymore. “

On NXT rising stars:

“The talent that’s coming in NXT right now that I’m high on, he’s not gotten really his full shine right there is Lexis King. He’s gonna be here this weekend. The kid is definitely cut from the same cloth as the old man. The old man was innovative and before his time. I mean, he’s here all the time as well. But to see him from the perspective to where he didn’t have to listen to me, but he sits and listens, he takes it all in, sucks it in like a sponge because he wants to be the best and he knows that is not something that’s going to happen overnight. It’s something that he’s going to have to put in time. But like I tell him, you put in the time when you get there, everything else is gonna pretty much play itself out. If you put in the work, nothing else matters. Talent trumps everything, cream rises to the top. So to be able to work with someone like Lexis definitely has been cool. And then I watch a kid like Wes Lee, who when I first came into NXT and I saw him. I watched his matches and I thought he was just a regular flippy guy like most of the smaller guys, but I watched this kid and I look at guys and base them on whether they can fight. I was never really a good wrestler. I mean, I was a good wrestler. I was okay, but I was a good fighter and I was a really good performer. I was a really, really good entertainer. And when I watched Wes Lee, no matter who he works, no matter how big, how medium, how small, he goes out to perform at that next level, so yeah, man there’s a few guys down there on the rise.” 

On Bron Breakker:

“I can see his dad and his uncle, he’s a hybrid. And then I’ve watched him grow and get more comfortable over his time as well. He went to the main roster I think pretty much at the right time. No sooner, no later, I think perfect timing for him to actually make his way in and make his mark and have his moment. When he hit the ropes one time in NXT, he hit the rope so hard the ring actually shifted a little bit, it moved and I was like wow! So I talked about that got a little bit of stuff like that. He’s found something that’s so small, but it’s his signature. Boom. He’s out of the blocks. It is so awesome to see this kid make it to the WWE and do something his dad and his uncle really didn’t get a chance to achieve. I’m talking about that WWE run, and really have that WrestleMania moment. He’s gonna have a hell of a future, and he’s going to look back and say, Man, Dad, I did it.” 

On the NXT and TNA partnership:

“Well, back then in 2008 I couldn’t see that. Just because 2008 TNA, they were rumbling, they had a lot of steam behind them. Like they would make a big play to perhaps be that next competition. AJ Styles, Joe, Roode, all those guys, Awesome Kong, Sting, Steiner, it was nuts as for talent roster went back there. But now I can see it just because TNA is not a threat. I think being able to cross-promote and work with someone, a company like TNA I think benefits the talent more than anything. I think it helps the company stay alive in their markets, they’re gonna dig out a hole, they’re not gonna go anywhere now, I mean, just because they see the collaboration. So I think is a good thing for everybody, just because everybody is not going to be able to work in WWE at one time and be able to get shine and it’s just not going to happen. But look at Jordynne Grace, as far as what she’s doing at the Rumble. It was a huge moment for her as well as coming to WWE is not going to be for everyone. It’s just the way it is. Jordynne Grace, she’s the standout. She doesn’t look out of place at all. She’s a star by any means no matter how you look at it. She’s a bonafide star. And when you got guys like that, that need to be looked at like Moose. I say you give them a shot. Yes, I say because it’s only going to be good for business.”

On the resurgence in popularity:

“It’s crazy. I think I am. The first person is just coming around the corner, they said ‘Booker T! I saw you on NXT!’ NXT has revitalised me, it definitely has given me a lot more fire, that exuberance that I think I needed. Working on the main roster. I couldn’t get that. I couldn’t get that at all. But working with the young guys, working with the young talent, seeing them grow, being able to mentor them as well. I think that’s been the coolest part for me, with MXT I’ve got a certain crop of guys that have gravitated to me and you know, we network we do film study, you know, we go over stuff, what I think works. It’s amazing how these guys still make the old man feel good. So it’s pretty cool.”

On Bash at the Beach 2000:

“Maybe a week or so before I found out that I might become a World Champion, but it was like a tentative thing. And I was like, That ain’t gonna happen. A lot of people don’t remember I wrestled Canyon earlier that night, so I was like, can I just go home? It’s not gonna happen. And they kept telling me stick around, stick around, it’s gonna happen. And it was a night that it seemed like it was just a dark cloud, over the arena over everything, you know, so I want to be anywhere other than in that arena.”

Was it awkward backstage?

“It really was, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with me other than I knew it was about to be my moment and then Hulk pulled the creative control card. And for me, once that happened, I was like, it’s not gonna happen. So I was like, I actually, I can’t remember who I talked to, I say, Hey, is it alright if I just get my stuff out and get up out of here, and it was like, stick around, trying to work this out. I found out 10 minutes before, that I am winning the World Heavyweight Championship. But I had a professional that I was working with, Jeff Jarrett. Jeff Jarrett was so professional and going out there and doing His work. And he just got me around and, you know, put a title on me, it was an amazing night.”

On WWE informing the grocery store about the Booker T and Steve Austin brawl:

“Yeah, they let them know there was gonna be some damage. They were all for it. I just went back to the area and walked through the neighbourhood, it’s a dollar store now, but in the same neighbourhood, but there was so cool. It was so happy to have us there. You know, we did about $15,000 worth of damage.”

On what caused the most damage:

“I think the produce section, the vegetables and stuff. They would have to get rid of everything, all the fruit, all that stuff, they would have had to get rid of all that stuff. So I think that was the biggest area. Because that whole section we wiped out. But it was so much fun. I just grew out my dreads and I had eggs, milk, and flour in my hair. But you know, that’s show business, Lights Camera Action. That’s the beauty of the beast. That’s the part that I miss. I don’t miss the wrestling, other than the moments, but the show side of it, making the fans feel a certain way, man it is so great.”

On a WCW Mount Rushmore:

2I got a picture on my wall at home and somebody painted it. And it’s the Mount Rushmore of WCW. And it’s Goldberg, Sting, Dallas Page and Booker T. And I go for my time that’s my Mount Rushmore.”

On the Buff Bagwell match:

“Buff Bagwell did get a chance. I mean, he really did. I know there’s a lot of stories. They tried to bury me. I was just like everybody else, I was no different. But the one thing that was different about me, I was prepared for them to try to bury me. I knew exactly what it was going to take to make it in WWE, as well as I knew I was just as good as anybody in WWE. I was talent, man, there’s no way they could deny me other than saying, I would have been blackballed they weren’t gonna do that, because I was gonna make as some money, I was gonna sell some merch, I was gonna go out and perform at the highest level, every night. They weren’t gonna have to worry about if Booker T was going to show up, it wasn’t gonna have to worry about if Booker T was going to be able to perform tonight, that wasn’t gonna happen. I knew I had to make it in the locker room before I had a chance to make it in the ring. So it was a lot of elements that, coming from WCW, a lot of guys thought it was going to be easy. They really thought making that transition was going to be easy. And they found out that nobody there was going to give them anything, they’re going to have to earn it. A lot of guys just weren’t in a position already to put themselves through that.”

On bringing in Sharmell as an onscreen character:

“At one point I actually talked to Vince and said that’s it I’m gonna wrap it up. It was right after Sharmell and I got married, actually. I said, I’m gonna wrap it up. I think it’s time, just got married, I don’t want my wife to be at home while I’m on the road. And then Vince goes well, why don’t we hire Sharmell? Well, that would fix the problem. So they hired Sharmell and brought her on. I tell you, I really [did] just like my best work, Sharmell and King Booker that run solidified my whole existence in this business it really did. I mean that run, I wouldn’t say it overshadowed my career or anything like that, but it definitely highlighted my career in the best way when it should have. The King of the Ring tournament is tricky. Winning that thing and going on and making it something. I think I’m the only king to become the Heavyweight Champion and win the Heavyweight Champion as king. That’s never happened before, because it’s not for you to have that moment. But for me, like JBL said I was like Hercules. It was a time for me to where it really solidified my wrestling career because now people looking at me as royalty. Still to this day, people still call me King. Which wasn’t the master plan in the beginning or anything, but wrestling is is something that you can make whatever you want it to be, if you are willing to go that extra mile. And as King Booker, there was nothing that I wasn’t willing to do.”

On the WrestleMania 18 match against Edge:

“It was one of those things where we had to do something because the match actually was supposed to be a hair match. It was supposed to be I cut my hair or Edge was gonna cut his hair. That was what they approached us with at first. At least they approached me with that. I don’t know if they approached Edge with that, but they approached me with it. The first thing I said was ‘Is Edge cutting his hair? Because I’m not cutting mine.’ I just grew out my dreads and I really had become attached to them. I think they could have fired me before I cut my hair. I wouldn’t want to cut my hair at that time for anything. They couldn’t give me a big enough payoff to cut my hair at that time. They couldn’t have just told me to do it, so they squashed it and then they came up with this idea of a shampoo commercial because Edge wouldn’t cut his hair. It still was a moment, I look back on it and it was cool working Edge more than anything. Edge wanted to do the Spinaroonie in that match so bad. He didn’t do it. Because he just could not figure it out. But he worked on it all day in the arena. He had strawberries on his elbows and on his knees but he still could get it. But he tried so hard. But for me just working in his in his hometown. Like you say, that’s what I get out of it. That’s what I remember. It wasn’t one of my greatest highlight moments at WrestleMania but it was still a great moment.”

What is Booker T grateful for?

“My health, my family and still having a zeal for life.”

Shelton Benjamin (@Sheltyb803) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Houston, TX to talk about his WWE release and what the future holds, whether or not he would consider a return, the possibility of signing with AEW or TNA, why he thinks he is the opposite of John Cena, responds to Max Caster’s comments about him on social media, being called underrated, his epic match on Raw with Shawn Michaels, why he thinks The Hurt Business never should have ended, how much longer he intends to wrestle and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein

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On if the WWE release was a surprise:

“Yes and no. Yes, because I don’t think, I know there was more for me to do there. There were more opportunities there and I’m more surprised that they chose not to take advantage of those opportunities. But I also knew that if they weren’t going to do anything then it’s just a matter of time. We got a lot of talent there, a lot of rotation, I’ve been there for a long time. I understand it’s a business. So yeah, it sucks for me but at the end, at the end of the day, it’s a business.”

Why not keep you around?

“Honestly, that’s the question you have to ask them. Obviously, I’m more than happy to be around. But again, I just look at everything as a business decision. I don’t take anything personally. Yes, I’m just as disappointed as most people but at the end at the end of the day, it’s the job, gotta move on. You have to move on eventually. And again, like I said, I put about 18 combined years with WWE, so I’ve been there a long time. Sometimes yeah, you just need to move on.”

On not being that surprised by the release phone call:

“I had a hint. When they did the whole recruiting thing, when I wasn’t assigned to a show that was kind of my first this doesn’t feel right moment. Then as time went on, you tried to have conversations and things like that nothing’s really gaining traction. And again, you get the hints So when the call actually came. I kind of figured. I wasn’t that surprised. I was surprised, but I wasn’t that surprised.”

Was there any talk of being a producer?

“There was talk of me possibly becoming a trainer at some point. I don’t think that door has closed. I just haven’t pursued it yet. [You still want to wrestle?] Yes, I love training people. I love teaching, and that comes from my amateur wrestling background. But at this point, I still think a little selfishly, I feel like I have a few more things that I’d like to accomplish. So while yes, I definitely am interested. I have to put aside my own ambitions to really be able to do that job correctly. And right now, at least today, I’m not ready to not think a little selfishly.”

On still being able to go:

“I’ve got tonnes left in the tank. It’s just a matter of whether or not anyone wants to use it. Like I said, I’m always going to be synonymous with WWE. But I’m open to be anywhere.”

On interest from AEW or TNA?

“I had a brief conversation with AEW, that hasn’t really borne fruit yet. But I’m still open. TNA I haven’t spoken with yet. I’m more than willing to work with them. I haven’t talked to them. I know MLW reached out. So you know, I’ve been presented with options. I just haven’t found something that I’m satisfied with.”

On Max Caster being against Shelton Benjamin being in AEW?

“[Laughs] I guess my first thought was Who is this? I’m like, I really don’t know him. I have nothing against him, as far as I know I’ve never met him. I was more shocked that he would say something like that. And again, I don’t know him, I don’t have a relationship with him.”

On the fear of a spot being taken:

“So to that I will say one, you’re already on your roster and whatever you’re doing there, if you’re not happy, then you need to change that, I’m still on the outside, at this point I’m really no threat to you. But if I were to come in, someone with my name, you looking at me as a threat rather than an asset. Yeah, I’m because one, if I were to say go to any company, to me, my job there is to, again, bring more fans put more eyes on you. And my thing is I want to work with these people. So, at this stage in my career, I want to help other talent. So if you’re looking at this as Oh, you’re stealing my spot? Well, first of all, if I can steal it, that wasn’t your spot. I can’t take Roman Reigns’s spot, I can’t take Swerve’s spot, I can’t take anyone’s spot. However, you can lose your spot. That’s how that’s how I look at it. If I were to come there or anywhere, there’s a reason I’m being brought in. And I would think is to help grow the company and help bring more eyes there. So if anything, you would think you should welcome in old established talent. Because that gives you another opportunity to work with someone who can elevate you so that that spot that you’re so afraid of losing? It helps you secure it, because now you’re working with people who elevate your game, you’re working with people with experience, you’re working with people who fans know, and will tune in to watch because I don’t know anyone running around with Max Caster merch, I don’t know anyone. He’s not a household name.” 

On going back to WWE:

“I would definitely consider it. Like I said, it’s the biggest game in town. So because I’ve worked there for so long, to answer your question, Yes I will go back if they offered me a position back and the right amount of money. Yes, of course, I will go back and I’ve said it before you’d be a fool not to at least consider it. Because I look at pro wrestling as a business. I love it, but it’s a business. So despite everything that’s happened, despite people’s opinion on creatively how they viewed me, it’s still a business to me. I look at wrestling as a business. So I will make the best business decision, not personal decision.”

On The Hurt Business suddenly breaking up:

“To this day. When I spoke to Vince and I asked him why and his comment was we’ve gone as far as we can with The Hurt Business. I’ve had a few, quite a few conversations with Mr. McMahon, and that was the first time that I could look at him and go, Okay, now you’re blowing smoke, that’s bull. But that’s also when I was like, Okay I don’t see much happening here. At least right now.” 

On being undervalued:

“I would say undervalued. Mainly because I think, to your point, most people know I can have great matches with anyone. But great matches are not necessarily the most important thing in WWE. In New Japan, I don’t think I was undervalued. In Ring of Honor, I don’t think I was undervalued. Because they really push wrestling. Like that’s what’s at the forefront. In WWE, there’s a lot of glitz and glamour. While it was, pro wrestling, the entertainment aspect of it. I’m an athlete first and I’m fine with that. But because of that, it’s like yeah, the guys who were a little more theatrical is just valued more there because it’s easier to market. And I understand that. I don’t like it. But I understand it.”

On feeling like he is the opposite of John Cena:

“No, no, I didn’t [fight for myself]. Because I felt like my work should speak for itself and I didn’t want to fight for myself. I knew what my strengths were I knew my weaknesses were and obviously I tried to work on them. But at the end of the day, it’s like, sometimes, once you’re typecasted or pigeonholed into one idea, no matter what you do they won’t let you out of that. I know I used to get so much slack from my promo work and it’s like yes, I was horrible that one time and then like I said, I improved. But while I improved, I still wasn’t as flashy. I will say I’m the anti-Cena because in a wrestling match in a move-for-move, whatever, he can’t hold a candle to me. But when it comes to mic skills. I’m at the shallow end of the gene pool. I just think what he brought to the table they valued more. Or Even my look, I was in the land of giants and when you got a guy like Brock, it’s really hard to stand out when standing next to Brock, and a Batista. So while I always had a great physique and things like that. Again, you got these monsters around you, it’s really easy to [stand out], because it’s also visual, our audience is visual. So, I don’t want to call them shortcomings because they weren’t shortcomings. It’s just a matter of what the company valued at the time.”

On his biggest regret:

“I was taught to just, again, let your work speak for itself. I’m not going to go argue for a spot, I’m not going to go cry for a spot. I’m just going to keep doing my job to the best of my abilities and whatever you asked me to do is like, Okay, I’m just going to do it. It’s been very rare that I said, No, I’m definitely not going to do that. There’s only one thing I can really look back at and go, I wish I never had done that, the Yoshi Tatsu promo on ECW. That is, to me the biggest black eye of my career. Just because quite frankly, it was just racist. It didn’t reflect who I was then it doesn’t reflect who I am now. And literally, from the moment I did it, or when we did that segment, I hated it. I love the story. Because, you know, he kicked me in the head and beat me in two seconds. That’s exactly how that story should end. Just to find out that sometimes I’ll see that pop up. And I’m like, that’s the one thing I wish I would have put my foot down and go, I’m not doing this.”

On Billy Gunn:

“I don’t know. I mean, I see guys like Billy Gunn is what 60? By the way, Billy Gunn is the greatest athlete in pro wrestling, period. Because if you want to judge athletes, you want to judge the greatest, you can’t look at it from when they’re in their prime, you got to look at the entire career. Who’s done it. Who’s been as athletic as long, high quality matches, as long as Billy? Billy, like I said all the time, Billy on TV, David Banner, Billy in person to Hulk. Like he’s phenomenal. I consider Billy Gunn, the greatest athlete ever in wrestling. But again, it’s because of his longevity.”

On how much longer he intends to wrestle:

“I’m pretty sure I could do two [years] easy, five depending on the schedule. But I also don’t want to overstay my welcome. I’ve been doing this a long time. Again, there’s going to come a time I have to stop thinking selfishly and look at things like as far as the wrestling business go, where am I bigger benefit, in the ring or behind the scenes? Right now I still feel like I can be a huge contributor in the ring. Definitely can still be behind the scenes, but again, this has to be in the right place before I can do that. And that’s definitely coming. I will say that’s definitely on the horizon. But right now, I still feel like I got a little more I can give.”

What is Shelton Benjamin grateful for?

“My children, my health and that I still have a good reputation in the business.”

Marc Copani (@marccopani) is a retired professional wrestler known for his time as Muhammad Hassan in WWE. He joins Chris Van Vliet in Philadelphia, PA to talk about His short but impactful run in WWE, how his character was originally pitched to him, not actually being Arab-American, getting heat from the locker room, always staying in character even outside of the ring, plans for him to beat Batista to become World Champion, being written off of TV following pressure from the network, what he is doing today, working in education, if he still gets recognized, any plans for another match and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life” – Muhammad Ali

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On never getting back in the ring:

“I cannot step back I would shatter into a million pieces I think as soon as I took one bump, I threw my back out two weeks ago picking up my nephew. I blew my hamstring racing my daughter on the beach. Like it’s just amazing as you get older, like you just come you just pile up injuries for no good reason. I wish I had a good story for how I threw my back out, like, I mean, I could squat and I could bench and that I’m just getting out of the car and doing this and like boom, gone.” 

On what he is doing now:

“I started as a teacher, then I became an assistant principal, and then I became a principal. And now I am the Director of Human Resources in the city school district.”

On being recognised in school:

“The ones who like wrestling. Yeah, it’s funny because my son’s nine and he’s on a basketball team and his friends are all huge wrestling fans, like I’m signing things for them. Shawn actually got them tickets to the show in Syracuse last week, they had a blast. And my son, you know, he’s into basketball. None of my kids are really into which I’m completely fine with. But it’s funny because he’s at that age now where I started getting into wrestling. And he’s just, you know, not a big fan, I guess.”

On if he still follows wrestling:

“Not really. I know a little bit, I’ll check it out here and there. It’ll pop up on my Instagram feed and watch videos but I don’t really watch the show. Not because I don’t want to, just I really don’t have time. I only tend to get to watch TV in my bed at like 10 o’clock at night.”

On possibly being fired for being too good of a heel:

“Someone had said, too controversial for WWE, which I kind of liked because that is a distinguishment right there. Yeah, it was definitely a controversial character and I feel like I played it pretty well. I was talking about this last night, it was very hard to get into character with Shawn [Daivari] because everywhere we went, we kind of faced that. I mean, it was still pretty fresh after 9/11. We went to the airport and Shawn would always be randomly checked at every single airport. It’d be very annoying because then we’d have to run to our flight. So I kind of use that as my anger, obviously, more things than that. But it was very easy to fall into that character and be able to speak the truth about what I saw, because that was what was happening back then. And again, that character would never fly today. You know, it kind of had to stay in its time and I think it’s kind of cool for me doing something completely different that that character still stays as controversial.”

On how long the character would have lasted:

“It would have been gone I think within a couple of years, the world really started changing and the things that we were doing in wrestling back then would never fly today. That was definitely one of them. So I mean, what if Yeah, I’m happy where I am now. So I never really think of it like that. Now, this is fun. Like, this is extra stuff for me to be able to come and do this and talk to you. You know, it’s not real life for me so I really enjoy it. But I’m happy where I am.” 

On the initial character pitch:

“God, I think Jim [Cornette] and Arn Anderson was there at the time and we really didn’t know what that character was going to be. They pitched the idea and we knew about Shawn. But we weren’t sure other than I was going to be an Arab it was going to generate a lot of heat. He talked to me about travelling with Sheikh back in the day and all the heat that it generated. And are you up for this? And I’d been you don’t say no, I remember talking to Rip Rogers, who was trainer there at the time. I’m like, I’m not ready for this. He’s like, you never know if you’re ready. You had to jump into the fire and see if it burned. But I wasn’t gonna say no and it sounded fascinating. Then Shawn came in and we had great chemistry and it kind of took off. We were at the house shows we first started just trying different things, seeing what the crowd would boo at or if they would even cheer. I don’t think we really had a decision made until after the second or third vignette that we filmed in Connecticut before I debuted about what that character was going to be. People are going to cheer him because I am kind of telling the truth. We could have an ethnic demographic that might cheer that character on. But I think the way that I interrupted and the way that character was presented once I got on TV, and after those vignettes became more and more aggressive. I mean, it was obvious that they were going to boo but we kind of film those in order waiting to see the reaction.”

On not being Arab-American:

“I am not. I am 100% Sicilian. And Shawn is not Arab, either. He’s, he’s Iranian. He’s Persian. So again, you know, like, I still hear about that like that. I played an Arab character. It’s like, it’s all phoney, man, it’s this character on TV. It’s the same thing. But with Shawn speaking Farsi, it really tied the whole thing together. And that’s what really started generating a lot of heat.”

On the timing of the character:

“It was a very different time in this country. And it was obviously not a great time to be Arab in this country, so that character really did speak the truth. I do hear from people who are Arab or Middle Eastern quite frequently about how they identified as that character, with that character and how important it was to them, which is really cool to hear that you actually could have an impact like that on someone’s life playing a character. But it wasn’t just an Italian playing the character that was important. It was what that character was saying and what he stood for and really, the hypocrisy that that character was up against in the WWE was really what shone through on that character.”

On picking up momentum:

“It picked up momentum right after the debut. Then I think what really put that character on the map was working with Shawn Michaels. I had done some smaller angles, but working with Shawn and then eventually Hulk Hogan. I think that was kind of where I felt that that character is at the top of its game, in the ring with someone like Shawn Michaels every night you really can’t look bad. So yeah, definitely right around then, and then it kind of ebbed and flowed a little bit up until the end.”

On jealousy from the locker room:

“I think there was, especially when I first got there, and nobody knew me, I felt like a lot more heat. Coming in and getting a push to the moon, it doesn’t upset the top guys, it does upset some of the mid-card guys, because they look at it as that’s the response, the top guys will tell you, if that was your spot, you would have taken it, that did. So all the top guys treated me really well and most of the middle card guys did too. But you know that there’s just heat coming in and being new and back then it was a different locker room. You know, there wasn’t a lot of rules. But I definitely had some heat during my career in the WWE.”

On being told the character can’t be on TV anymore:

“So I remember when we didn’t know where we were gonna go with it. I remember when they were getting a lot of pressure, the character was gonna change or come off TV. I remember talking to Johnny Ace, who was head of talent relations at the time, and I was like any idea what’s going on? And I said something like I’m about to buy a house and he’s like, don’t buy the house. That’s when I knew I was like okay, and I didn’t know what’s gonna happen after that. But after that, it was pretty quick. We couldn’t be on TV anymore. We did the pay-per-view with Undertaker and Buffalo and that was it. They wouldn’t even put the character back on TV in any capacity.”

On this being a Vince McMahon idea:

“I was told later that it was Vince’s baby, that whole idea of bringing back an Arab character was Vince’s idea and he was very, you know, big on the idea. So I think that’s obviously why we got that big push.”

On the rumoured World Championship reign:

“I know I heard that and I don’t know where it originally came from. But I was supposed to, as far as I know, beat the Undertaker, obviously with a lot of help and then wrestle Batista at WrestleMania in Washington, DC. Dave was announced as being from, he is from Washington, DC. So it was kind of like, the era of beats the hometown boy in the nation’s capital was supposed to be the story.”

On not wanting to stay in wrestling:

“It took me a while to really figure it out. I think I was a little depressed. I was definitely heartbroken, turned off. The constant travelling in the spotlight, it was fun while it lasted, but it wasn’t for me. It took me a while to figure out that I just didn’t want to get back in there because it really was a huge, heartbreaking moment for me. You work so hard, you spend so much time just training and preparing, and then it’s all taken away kind of for no reason. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t bomb anyplace. I understand why the character is taking off to me it absolutely had to be but I think that was the heartbreak for me is that I was just out there doing the best that I could and it kind of just was pulled out the rug was pulled out from under me.”

On falling out of love with wrestling:

“It took a long time. I would not face it for a long time and that’s why I never did a lot of signings or appearances, or when anywhere else, it was almost like I was trying to avoid the reality of what had happened to me and as that character. But now, years later, like I look back and I think it was a cool trip. Sometimes because of it, my kids think I’m cool. That’s awesome. I’ll take it when I can get it.”

On having a return match in 2018:

“It’s funny, I was just there to sign and you always bring your gear with you. So I was going to do a signing and the guy was like, Do you want a wrestling match? I was like yeah, I guess I do. There was no big story, and it just kind of like what you’re here do you want to wrestle and I was like yeah, why not? So I put my stuff on got the ring, messed around a little bit and then ended up just wrestling a match for like 10 to 15 minutes was a lot of fun. And then I did like one or two more. It’s kind of like I just want to see if I could do it again. It had been so long and I really enjoyed the the wrestling aspect of being a wrestler being in the ring and working with somebody in the ring. So I just did it there was there was not a lot of thought put into it, man, it was spontaneous.”

Was there any plans of turning that into another run?

“Absolutely not. I don’t want to travel, I don’t want to put my body through [that]. It’s been rough enough as it is getting old. Like I said, Absolutely not never, I just wanted to have a couple of matches. There are small local shows and local promoters, nice guys. So it was just something to do. I did I think two or three matches, and that was it. I’ll never do it again.”

What is Muhammad Hassan grateful for?

“My family, my wife and to have the opportunity to work in education.”

Billy Gunn (@RealBillyGunn) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood to talk about his legendary wrestling career where he has wrestled in 5 separate decades, how he still looks this good at 60 years of age, why his AEW run has been the most fun of his entire career, working with his sons Austin and Colten Gunn, not being a part of the DX reunion on WWE Raw, winning King of the Ring and the promo where The Rock called him “Bob”, coming up with the legendary entrance for The New Age Outlaws, wrestling Sabrina the Teenage Witch, wanting a retirement match against Will Ospreay and more!

“Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.” – Grace Hansen

Sponsors:
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PRIZEPICKS: Download the app today and use code INSIGHT for a first deposit match up to $100!

TIMELINE NUTRITION: Save 10% off your first order of Mitopure at http://timeline.com/INSIGHT

BONCHARGE: Use the code CVV to save 15% off your infrared sauna blanket at https://boncharge.com/cvv

BLUECHEW: Use the code INSIGHT to get your first month of BlueChew for FREE at http://bluechew.com

ROCKET MONEY: Join Rocket Money today and experience financial freedom: https://rocketmoney.com/cvv

BETTERHELP: Get 10% off your first month with the code INSIGHT at http://betterhelp.com/insight

PLUNGE: Get $150 off your Plunge with the coupon code CVV150 at http://plunge.com

On being in better shape than when he debuted:

“Well, I’m a different me than I was then. So because I know you want to talk about this, I’ll give you a perfect lead-in because that’s what kind of guest I am. When I was training horses and riding bulls and all that other stuff working out was the last thing I wanted to do, in a sense of working out to look good. Working out to keep your joints and stuff good is one thing, that’s a total different workout training horses and stuff. I don’t have to be me now, so working out was never really a thing. I mean, I worked out when I played football in high school, but you know how that is, hey, you guys go do full body and you let me know when you’re done in an hour. This is one of those when you really don’t lift you just go hey, I can lift more than you and that’s it. Like there’s no structure, no plan, no nothing, that was the extent of my working out until I got into this lovely business. Once I kind of got into it and realised it was a thing and now I’ve transformed from that to this, which is not bad.”

On looking this good at 60:

“I have a different mindset than most people. It’s just not an option, it’s just not in my DNA, it’s not in my thought process to not be me, to not work harder or not to be better than I was yesterday. Age doesn’t mean anything to me. If I’m gonna get older, it doesn’t matter. That doesn’t mean because I get older that my life stops and I stopped doing the things that I love. So just probably five or six years ago, I really just when dove head off. Help from Mike and help from Ferland and guys in Orlando that know that this is their life, right? So if I want to be in their life I’m going to the people that have done this. I’m sure if those guys wanted to know about wrestling, they’d come to me, right? Because I know a little bit about that. Not a bunch, but I know a little bit. So it’s the same thing. When I really wanted to get into this really it’s just been the past few years that I’ve really got into seeing what I can do.”

On competing:

“My wife and Mike, they didn’t have to talk me into it, but they kind of convinced me. You’re that type of there’s, it’s not that you can’t do it. It’s just that’s a different animal than what I do. And sometimes I get a little shaky when I get outside of my comfortability. I’m not a dieter, I am very good with my food now. But I’ve been super lucky because my genetics and my metabolism have always allowed me, as long as I’m close to eating good, I’m okay. But once I realise about competing, that is a whole different animal. My kids thought I was a walking action figure. I remember the day we were in the gym, and I happened to have this big sweatshirt on and I was probably maybe four or five weeks out. I took my top off and my kids just stood there and stared at me and they go you’re like a real live-action figure right now. And I went well, thank you. So that was kind of cool. But yeah, the dieting and the way that you eat and what you do. It’s amazing if you take the time to figure out what food can do to your body.”

On having fun:

“At this point, that’s all I want to do. I’ve done it all, pretty much everything that you can do. I’ve been to the top, I’ve been to WrestleManias, I’ve done this, I’ve done that and I’ve lived that stressful being on 24/7 and for so long that now my kids, The Acclaimed me, it’s all about having fun. Now it’s just enjoying because I can’t do this forever, and we know, of course, everybody thinks I’ll do it until I’m 100 years old, which ain’t nothing. You haven’t missed a step and it’s not a thing. So they’ll come a point where it’s it’s over, but at until that point, I’m not going to let myself go out there and just be that’s just not in my genetic makeup.”

Was it ever not fun?

“It was probably my TNA run and it had nothing to do with TNA, I was in a whole other headspace. I love the girls, Beautiful People were amazing. Trying to redo the thing with Brian, Road Dogg, just kinda was a thing that we were trying to recreate. But when I was with the girls, it was so much fun because they made it fun. It wasn’t just me, they put me with them for a reason. It was just kind of window dressing at the time. But the girls had total trust in me, they believed in me, they knew if they had questions or wanted to do something that I wasn’t going to just do something. It’s never about me, it just isn’t, with the wrestling stuff it has never been like that. Because I’m not a wrestling person. We all know that right? We all know Billy’s story, he just got into it because he had nothing to do, so he became a wrestler and I just happened to be good at it in certain aspects of what I do in wrestling. It’s not that I’m the greatest wrestler, I’m not that. But I did enjoy it. But I didn’t know what I was doing. And to this day I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m very good at making other people and making other people live the dreams that they want. And that’s okay because I’ve had my run in the sun or whatever they say. So I don’t need that. I just want to have fun. I just want to watch my kids because that right there in itself, I watch them and just laugh so hard, because they are probably the most entertaining kids that I’ve ever seen. The energy, the enthusiasm the way that they just, and they’re the same way they’re not selfish at all. They just aren’t, it’s amazing.”

On scissor me Daddy Ass:

“So this is the thing. It’s very interactive with us, and this is my outlook on wrestling. I’ve never been good at the wrestling part but I’ve been really good at figuring out how to get people to react. So when I do some kind of wrestling move, there is a reaction. Because I’m not going to wrestle and get the people. That’s just not my forte, that’s not my thing. That’s never been what I’m good at. I’m good at taking a heck of a butt-whooping. That’s what I’m good at and taking things. But now that I’m older, I don’t want to take off these things. So it’s all about crowd participation. We have it, you can channel there’s all kinds of stuff to chant, there’s something to do. So now, when we come out, it’s it’s very much, okay, now we get to be interactive. Now we get to participate in a show that we came to see. So that I think that’s where that comes from. Not that Max and Anthony aren’t appealing to the people because there’s all the rap, the energy from Anthony, the, you know, the scissors stuff. So it’s very interactive and if you can do that you can get anybody.”

On The New Age Outlaws intro:

“The thing about it is it for some reason it never got old. I can do it 100 times and it’s such a time to get, I can just just let it rip. And I can’t tell like I tried it. I’ve tried a couple of times just to kind of get into and I can’t I just can’t do it. I just if for some reason. It makes me I guess so excited and so glad to do it I guess that I lose my mind when I do it. I love it. Yeah. Never got old.”

Who came up with New Age Outlaws?

“I think Vince Russo. I’m not 100% sure. So Brian was wrestling somebody’s in a singles match, I was on commentary. If I could find it, I would go back because I’m sitting there and JR pitches something to me like, hey, so I hear you guys are calling yourself the New Age Outlaws. And I go Yeah, that’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard. Don’t ever say that again. And Vince buzzes me in my ear. He goes, Hey, that’s your new name. Hey, this is a good place for me to know that like maybe just buzzed me before, but things happen like that, you just go at the moment, right? And then, like I and so now I go from like trying to be Mr. heel talking to just going oh, because I hated doing ringside, commentating anyway, so it was just like, let the sails right out of me and I just went, okay. So, so bad.”

On being at his worst while battling addiction:

“I woke up in a house. My house was destroyed. There were things everywhere. There were no dogs, there was no wife, there was no nothing. I literally just went, Yeah, this is it, I can’t do it anymore. One or two things is going to happen, it was just like a couple of days before that. I just drove to the gas station and hit one of the pumps and the cops came up to me and go hey, you alright? I said Yeah. When you’re an addict you come up with [excuses], I have some of the best excuses ever. So you just start splurting out, and they just have to take me at my word. I went home and I’m like, Damn, if they just arrested me maybe that would have straightened me out. But when you wake up, and you have nothing around, you have nothing to your name, and nobody wants to be around you. You can’t talk to anybody, because they don’t want anything to do with you. My wife left cuz she knew she was getting a call one day and she ain’t sitting around waiting for that. That’s one of the worst things that you could ever put somebody through, those are my biggest regrets. The call that I’m dead because I wrecked two cars. I would take a massive load of pills before when I flew home, just so I didn’t have to deal with her and listen to her. And they would kick halfway there. I ended up in a ditch and now she’s at the hospital having to come get me you know. So, like, you don’t want to live like that. So she left, she was out. She goes, I ain’t doing this no more. It was my decision that like, I had to know that this was it for me. This is it. I can’t do it like this is I don’t want to live like this and I don’t want to be by myself anymore. But this is how I’m going to be because nobody wants to be around me. So I made the phone call and was gone.”

On potentially not going back to WWE if he did not get clean:

“Not at all. When I left rehab and kind of started doing my programme like I was supposed to, they’d asked me when I left there, they just come up with this 18-month programme. It was a new trial kind of thing where if I can remember. The first three months of you call this number if your color comes up, you go take a drug test, and then you have to call a counsellor every day just to kind of check-in and just say, Hey, how are you today, this kind of thing. And then at the end of the three months, if everything’s good, the next three months is like every other day you call this number, and then it just kind of backs off instead of going and living in a sober house. I didn’t want to do that. Not that I am too good, just that it wasn’t going to suit what I was doing at the time. But this checking in and keep being accountable every day was something yes, I had to do. I went to meetings every day, it was right down the road from my house and just doing everything that they told me I had to do to stay where I wanted to stay. I did it and it worked. It’s amazing. It worked, it never gets easier. It’s just I know that if something starts getting weird or going haywire, I just go to a meeting and that’s it, that’s all I have to do. I don’t have to use that’s the last thing I have to do. Because there are times when I start kind of it’s not that I don’t have [urges]. We were in Vegas, I was going kind of beer would taste good, but it’s not anything crazy. It’s just, if I get overwhelmed with things I just go and that usually fixes it right off the bat.”

On not being a part of the DX reunion on Raw:

“Yeah, it was just a miscommunication. It was trying to get [there] and believe you me, I get it. I work for a completely different company. If I can do it, fine. If I can’t get it I’m not gonna [be mad]. I spent the majority of my life doing that company and being a part of it. So of course, they want me to be there. But if the company that I’m with now has some issues of what they need and what they want, and if it doesn’t work out, then I can’t go, I can’t be mad about it. You know what I mean? And was I upset? Yeah, cuz I want to hang out with the guys and relive that moment as much as you can. But if it doesn’t work for the company that pays me then I’m not gonna go.”

On guest starring on Sabrina the Teenage Witch:

“So they were looking for somebody to do the show. I didn’t know anything about the show I just knew at the time it was pretty hot. But she lives in a regular world but there’s a realm world and I’m whatever I am there. And so they asked me to come do it and I said, Well, yeah. I’ve done some spotty stuff, in some shows, but nothing like that. A talking role and a major part where I got to beat her up and all that. So I was doing it and it was great. But the way they [shhot it], I’m so used to live TV, that when you do movie stuff, that’s a whole other animal. Because they like I kept trying to tell them, hey, I can do this in one shot, I’m really good at this. Like if you just tell me and they go, Well, that’s not how we do it. So that was my first real experience of how to do that and that’s okay if I don’t do that anymore, but I did do it anyway. But yeah, it was that and then they wanted me to press her and do all this stuff. And I said I ain’t sticking my hands in between her legs, because I’ll be cancelled. So we did certain things with her and then certain things with her stunt double and then they said they’re gonna throw a cat on me and I had to do these lines with a cat and stuff. A talking cat in the realm world. So it was a different experience and it was actually pretty fun.”

On not knowing the lyrics to I’m an ass man:

“I didn’t know the lyrics to ass man for a year. I never knew the lyrics to that song because all I do is listen and feel what I can do with the song. It’s never about what I hear that people singing. It’s about the melody and what I need to do, like energy-wise with the song. I walked out to it and they said hey, we got new music for you tonight. I went Okay, walk down it and listen to it. I went oh, that’s kind of catchy but never heard the lyrics. Didn’t know what the lyrics were for at least a year.” 

On never seeing Chuck Palumbo in AEW:

“He just has no desire right now. He has all his other stuff going on. I’ve asked him to do a couple of things. He just, it’s not that he won’t do it for me, it’s just not him anymore. The boys wanted him to come do my birthday celebration when we did the birthday thing. I called and asked him and he’s got so much other stuff going on that he’s okay that he doesn’t do any of the wrestling, and I get it.” 

On Will Ospreay:

“I don’t know what it is about that kid. I love him, I tell everybody that’s my retirement match. When I retire it’s me and Will, and he just said on some media scrum that he’s in AEW to retire me. Because his work really isn’t me. It’s so opposite of me. But I love him. He’s good. He’s very energetic. Just the stuff he does is amazing. He’s so athletic and could do so much stuff. But he has charisma with it and he’s very good at that. And I love that, I don’t know I just love that kid.”

On The Rock’s “My names Billy…” promo:

“I don’t think there is a story behind it. It was just we were in a programme to go to Rumble or something, whenever we did the kiss my ass match. He always had his own rider and stuff. When I heard it the first time to I went, That’s genius. The only thing that used to make me mad, I’m telling you right now and I’m not the greatest promo ever, right? I’m just not good at it. It was something that I’ve struggled with a little bit. But I could do it. But the problem is when I did it, they would always let him come over the top of me and just crush every bit of heat that I had. But that was because they weren’t his promos, they were just promos to the point of what I’m trying to get across. They weren’t in-depth. It was just more to the point Hey, this week I’m gonna go out there. I came out of the segment and I’m gonna beat you half to death. That’s what I’m going to do whatever. And then he comes over the top and he’s one of the best promos ever because he just is, it’s hilarious, It’s entertaining. So whatever heat that, again, was wiped away. So finally one day I walked him back. I said, Okay, that’s it. Stop letting him come over the top of me. I can’t compete with that I just can’t. And you’re killing every bit of heat that I’m trying to get to there, trying to get to where we’re trying to get to. So now the only way I’m getting heat is like beating the life out of him is just beating him to death. You know, which gets old, but if you can’t cut that promo, you got to protect me just a little bit. Let me do it. Give me some time to kind of let it sink in. And then he can come over the top somewhere else. But he cut that, I laughed so hard. It was great. It was so good. It’s hilarious. But all his promos are, he has that niche and he’s good at it.”

On winning King of the Ring:

“They just came to me. So they just said that, hey, you’re winning King of the Ring and I went awesome. I said that should go somewhere and it went, Yeah, right down the toilet. They hardly even mentioned me in the past King of the Ring winners. But this sounds bad, I don’t care. I don’t. That doesn’t define me, winning things and doesn’t define who I am. As long as people know, hey, I could stick him in there with anybody and He’ll do whatever I want him to do and he can work with anybody, and he’ll do his best to make them or do whatever we want, I’m cool with that. The winning titles and winning this and winning that it’s, you know, it’s all fake. But it is exciting, I get that. And it is exciting and I’m not trying to diminish any of the things that I’ve done or won. But it sits different with me because like I said, I just was never brought up in wrestling because I don’t know how it works. I barely know how it works today. But it was a guy is going to pay me a pretty good amount of money to run around and do stuff that I love to do. I’m going to travel all over the place, I’m going to go out there for 10-15 minutes, I’m going to run around in my underwear, I’m going to pull my pants down, and they’re going to pay me to do that. So I don’t care about positioning and all that other stuff. It’s what it is.”

On the potential retirement:

“I wish I knew, I don’t feel too bad. But a lot of it is the way that I take care of myself. I mean, yeah, do I wake up and everything until I get moving? Yeah. I just found I have two stress fractures in my back, but they don’t stop me from doing what I do, it doesn’t hinder me, but I can still do what I do at a pretty good level. I mean, I’m not gonna go out there and go 25 minutes with Will [Ospreay], that ain’t happening. But do I still have equity in the company? Can I still bring something? Damn right. I can because the minute I step out there those people go nuts and they start saying my name. So as long as I bring value and it’s not, you know, if I go out there and they go, Oh, God really? The first time I hear that I’ll quit. But as long as I can do something to help The Acclaimed or help the company or help my kids. Yeah, I’ll stay around. There’s no reason I can’t. I have no problem just being The Acclaimed’s sidekick. I love it. Because I get to run around talk to people act like a goofball interact when I want to and work every now and then. When I work it’s nothing crazy. My kids asked me that they go, did you just take a triple powerbomb? Go What are you thinking? I went, I thought it would help the match. [They go] Okay, don’t ever do that again. I said okay. Well, I thought in my head it did. But as long as I can do that, and I feel good and I’m not you know, it’s a struggle. The only thing is a struggle is flying these days. Because I hate it. Yeah, but I mean, as long as I’m still as long as I’m still having fun and doing what I do, and I can bring something to help I’m in, I’m good.”

What is Billy Gunn grateful for?

“My wife, my kids and my job.”

Joe Hendry (@joehendry) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studios in Hollywood to talk about the viral success of hit entrance song “I Believe in Joe Hendry” which reached number 4 in the UK charts, plans to return to the UK charts and representing the country in the Eurovision Song Contest, his recent musical performance on TNA Impact, working with the likes of Cody Rhodes and Drew McIntyre earlier in his career, getting a phone call from John Cena when he was 15, his time in WCPW where he faced off against Kurt Angle and more!

Subscribe to Joe Hendry on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JoeHendry

Quote I’m thinking about: “Success is not the absence of failure; it’s the persistence through failure.” – Aisha Tyler

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On creating a catchy theme song:

“Well, I reverse-engineered it from what I wanted to happen. So for me, professional wrestling is all about crowd interaction. So throughout the song, you’ll notice we literally show and tell what we want the audience to do. So ‘Say his name and he appears…’ and you will see the two claps. Whichever version of the song I’ve had, there’s always been a visual of the two hand claps. Then I literally tell the audience to wave their hands from side to side, and it comes from I heard Queen talk about how they structured We Will Rock You and how they found the perfect BPM for how they wanted people to stomp and clap. And then I looked at the BPM they used for the slower moments and I went for 120 BPM for the faster which is the kind of hypnotic pop timing.”

On the change of tempo:

“The song I had before people liked and it was catchy but I just felt like it needed a bit more energy. So I wanted something a bit faster. So the first section is a little bit like International Love by Pitbull. I mentioned this when we were driving over, I was a musician for a long time before I got into wrestling. And this melody was me saying, Oh God, we’re never gonna make it with this rock music, we should just be like Pitbull and just name places. So I came up with a song that was just making fun of how not successful we were, and after shows would be driving and going ‘London, and Paris and Tokyo…’ And then when I was coming up with the song, it just kept getting stuck in my head and I was like, maybe this is the one. And so yeah, it was a song that I made for a joke making fun of the fact that I wasn’t successful as a musician about 10 years ago and then that just kept getting stuck in my head and here we are now.”

On when the song went viral:

“So I think that professional wrestling and entertainment is all about timing. So there are certain things that I’ve done that would be good ideas in isolation but if the wave is coming at the right time and then you deploy the idea, that’s when things explode. So I’ll give you an example. The billboard that I just appeared on, that’s an idea I’ve had for months and months and wanted to do but just never had the right moment. I thought, well, you know, 10s of 1000s of wrestling fans are going to be in my home country on a certain day at a certain time, maybe that’s the time to deploy the idea. So I kind of take the same approach with everything and I take my approach to wrestling like that. So with the song, a lot of people were telling me to upload it to Spotify and release it officially and I knew I was going to do it. But it was when I noticed on TikTok that if anyone made a TikTok with the song, it was getting hundreds of thousands of hits. I thought now might be the time. So I decided to upload it, I did that and then I started to think actually, how many units do you need to sell for it to chart? And then as with many things I do in life, I watched a YouTube video on how to do it, honestly, YouTube is such a phenomenal education for anything. So there was a video about these guys who got sponsorship money from Saints Row and they were told to make something to promote the video game in a YouTube video and they were like, Let’s make a song about Saints Row and get it in the charts. And they unveiled the units it takes, they unveiled the process you have to go through and I didn’t do the exact strategy, but I took elements of that. The funny thing is the charts run from Friday to Thursday, but I didn’t know that. I just thought well, I’ll release it on Monday. So this all kicked off, this is where the luck came in, this all kicked off because there was no release competition on the Monday because all artists released on the Friday. So in Monday’s iTunes charts, we were like, I looked at my phone, I was like, oh my God, number 20 in the iTunes charts, that’s crazy! Then I tweeted that out and everyone’s like, he’s number 20. Let’s push him up. Then it went to one in the UK on iTunes six in the US, one in Malta, and three in Ireland, it was wild. Then it really caught fire and then we hit the media trail, and then it started to actually do pretty well.”  

On why the song did not catch on in Ring of Honor:

“There are many elements to it, but I think I’ve put things together in TNA. So before TNA I had the gimmick but not the character. So I had these custom entrance songs that were over and people really enjoyed. But that was what I was doing. Whereas the character elements of who Joe Hendry is on television, that came to be in TNA. I think you can see that in the video, you can see the Joe Hendry character in that video. I will say this, it really has taken an army of people to get me to this point, and I will shout out with many people. But one person I’m going to shout out first is Eric Young. Just this is where I feel like you know, someone’s looking out for me a few weeks before I got to TNA, me and Eric Young first met on a show in Germany. And he was like, right, this should be your finish this do this, do that do this, don’t do that kind of stuff, and he helped me understand how I should approach this. So that’s when it started. Then TNA management has worked very hands-on with me, and it’s just been an incredible learning experience. So I think it’s putting everything together in the video that you see now for TNA, you hear the songs which I had before, but you see the character elements.”

On creating lightning in a bottle:

“We say I’ve created lightning in a bottle but honestly, I would not be doing any of this without the fans and the loyalty that I’ve had over the years. There were times when the only thing that kept me going and my rent paid were my Twitch audience when it was like 12 people watching, so those are the people that I’m thankful for. I’m thankful for the fans that are helping me do this because, without their support, it doesn’t mean anything. All the stuff that I’m doing means something because they believe in it, forgive the term, but that’s why this matters because the fans believe in it. So I’m just incredibly grateful to be in this spot. I really don’t take it for granted. I know how important timing is. I know that there’s so few times in life where you get a window of opportunity like this and I fully intend to seize it with both hands. But like I say, it takes an army of people to get you to this point, I have so many supportive colleagues, TNA management have been unbelievable. I just wouldn’t be in this spot if I wasn’t working with Eddie Edwards and Brian Myers and Moose and Frankie Kazarian. It’s one of those things, I’ll miss somebody but it’s just like, there’s a lot of people looking out for me, there’s a lot of people who are who have helped me a lot along the way. I have to say though, I may have to retract that about The System in TNA because we’re having problems now. They might have helped me get to this point. But now, you know, the student might have to [fight back].”

On a very early conversation with John Cena:

“This is when I first got into wrestling. What happened was, I couldn’t go to a wrestling event that my friend went to and he got the VIP package. So I’ll tell you from my perspective, my friend was called Kyle and my phone goes and I saw it was Kyle’s number. I answer the phone and I hear ‘It’s your boy John Cena’ and it was John Cena. My friend Kyle in the middle of this, you know, busy Meet and Greet said my friend couldn’t make it. Would you phone him? And John Cena said Yeah, sure. Me and John Cena talked for 10 minutes and he let me tell him about my thoughts on creative and I thought he was going to win the title the next year. And he let me have that moment in that conversation when I’m sure the queue was, you know, just infinite. So that really meant something to me. I was 15 at the time, so that meant something to me. That displayed leadership for me when it came to how to treat your fan base.”

On Cody Rhodes:

“So Cody and I initially worked together in What Culture Pro Wrestling and I think that was a real missed opportunity for me to get mentorship from Cody. Because I came up through a company called ICW in Scotland, which was like, at one point, it was the hottest indie in the world, but it was very much a shark tank, it was just that type of environment. I don’t mean that in a bad way, necessarily, I just mean that everything was moving so fast and it was like I have to be respected and I have to convey myself as a top talent. So when I got to What Culture, I think rather than learn to be a student, I was trying to be like, I can be on Cody’s level, and I think I maybe missed mentorship opportunity there. But we were on the same tour right around the time that he was starting AEW. And obviously, at the time, that may not be the right fit, but rather than just be like, No, Cody came to me and he says Listen, like, I think Ring of Honor is interested in you, he’s like you’re not under contract? Because I’d done some stuff with TNA when it was Impact back in 2018 and I think there was the assumption that it was under contract, but I just done a handful of shows. So Cody set up the that that call with me and Ring of Honor, and honestly it was like, deal was done in five minutes. So all of this happened because of that call, I did the first Ring of Honor show back with the new ownership so if I hadn’t had my time in Ring of Honor, I learned so much that I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now. So I definitely owe Cody Rhodes a cigar for sure. [Cody Rhodes basically stuck his neck out for you?] 100%, and the thing I respected about him was it’s like, okay, like, we can’t make something work here right now. But I know I know these guys want you, I’m gonna put in a good word, Just a great dude. Yeah, very thankful for that.”

On his musical segment on TNA Impact:

“Interestingly, I was asked to do the concert by TNA management and I was initially hesitant because The Rock had just done another Rock Concert and I thought I’m gonna have to bring it, this just can’t be a concert. This has to be knocked out of the park. One of the other problems I had was I hadn’t played acoustic guitar since 2015, which was the last time I did something like that. I’m the type of musician I am. See for my entrance song I played the guitar isn’t that but what I’ll do is I’ll practice what I need to practice to play the parts in the studio and then forget about it. If you asked me to play the solo in my entrance I would need an hour or two just to refamiliarise myself. It’s not planted in there. Again, I feel that your brain only has so much information. So I was like, right. Okay, so I got to play these three songs and I haven’t played acoustic guitar in a long time. So to me, we’re adding in these little chaos variables. And I remember TNA management said to me If you feel that you can’t do this, we won’t do it. But if you really want to be a top guy in this business, top talents don’t say no, this is what we need. And I was like, fair point, absolutely fair point. And they said, so if you’re telling us it can’t be done, can’t make it work, we won’t do it. But we’re going to prepare as if you can do it. And when I look back, that is the same conversation I had almost every taping for the six months prior to that, me going I don’t know if we can do that. I don’t know if we can do that. And management says, No, you can do it. You’ve done it. It wasn’t like a lack of faith in myself. It was more just like, I’m thinking about logistical variables and all that. And that really taught me the lesson I think just in time that actually is a top talent. Your job is not to get over under ideal circumstances, it’s your job to get over under the given circumstances. So the conversation then became about how can we do this so they won’t just feel secondary to the musical concerts that have come before. So we were told we might be able to use a copyrighted song and I was like, Okay, we might be onto something here. So if we can use a copyrighted song, it has to be something that people associate with wrestling. So it has to be like a Limp Bizkit or Evanescence or Creed. So we started with like, I couldn’t really find something for My Sacrifice.” 

“Then Higher [by Creed], it was like fired, Can you please get fired? Oh, man, that’s a little rough. AJ [Francis] love him, he wasn’t the biggest fan of that one. I will say this about AJ, working with AJ has been fantastic because he’s the perfect catalyst for what I needed at that point on the show and whether he agreed or disagreed with what I was doing, or liked or didn’t like it, it didn’t matter. When he went out he gave it 1,000%. Part of the reason why it got so over is because of the way AJ sold it. So you know, I hate to give the guy credit. But I knew when I went out to do the concert, what had to do was I was like, How can I make this as easy as possible for myself? So you know how I said you have those chaos variables? How can we take away those? So some of them are gone because we were in a music venue. You know how live music sounds sometimes in you know, wrestling shows or whatever it sometimes doesn’t always hit or if you’re watching music from a festival on TV and the sound just isn’t quite there. Live life sound can be tough. But rather than play full band, it was acoustic. So you’re going right? I’m going to a decent music venue an amazing music venue. So we took away some of the chaos variables there. So I decided I would get the best guitar that money could buy. Because I thought there’s a lot of things I can’t control and this is what wrestling is control the things that you can control. So I got the best guitar that money can buy in my view. It was a Martin, one-piece solid mahogany guitar, which set me back like two and a half grand, something like that. And people are like, Oh my god, I can’t believe you did that. And I knew I had to do it. Because I knew with that concert my career would never be the same after it. Whether it be bad or good, my career would never be the same when I came back from that concert. That was the moment that people started seeing me in a different light.” 

Didn’t you lose the guitar?

“So what happened was I got this guitar and I’m told you can take it with you. So they took it off me, they checked that and my bag. My bag made it but the guitar didn’t so they just chose not to pick the guitar and I’m going oh my God, because the rehearsal was the day before. So I’ve got to Las Vegas with no guitar. So I’m in Vegas. We can’t do the rehearsal now the day before because the guitar is not there and I am sweating buckets about this. It was BA, I hate to throw them under the bus. So it eventually arrived at midnight, the night before the concert, right? The crazy thing was when I opened the case, I remember opening the guitar and I thought this has been in like freezing temperatures in the sky. This has been in the Vegas heat, these strings, this is never going to be in tune, picked it up perfectly in tune. In that moment, I knew I’d made the right decision by getting the best guitar that I could get. I mean, there’s more expensive guitars, limited editions but in terms of, you know, a solid guitar that’s gonna get you through it. That’s when I knew I made the right decision on that.”

On potentially representing the UK in Eurovision:

“So Eurovision is a contest that we have in Europe where millions of people watch this contest. Each nation supplies a song and people weren’t that happy with the UK’s contribution in recent years. So I was doing an interview with the BBC and they said they would back me to do Eurovision, so I won’t say exactly. They were joking, but this is where you have to take that little thread of truth and ou have to make it real. So that’s what this whole thing has been because they said that. Now I’m going to build upon it and eventually, hopefully get enough steam where it becomes a realistic option for Eurovision. So I won’t say exactly what I’m going to do, because the details aren’t confirmed, but I’ve got something pretty epic planned.”

On the billboard over Clash at the Castle weekend:

“Yeah, that was a tough decision. That was a tough decision. [Why was it tough?] It was tough because you want to push the boat a little bit, but you don’t, sometimes you don’t know where the line is until you’ve gone too far.”

Could it be perceived as trying to get yourself over?

“I think that’s absolutely what is, let’s not pretend that’s not what it is. But I think it’s like I need to be bold and respectful of the business at the same time. You know, so that’s why I did on the Friday and not on the Saturday, I thought that was respectful and not because it was half the price [laughs]. But I did kind of think, Pat McAfee did happen to say his name, and he appears on TV. So I thought, well we’re both having fun so why not join in the fun?”

On Drew McIntyre saying he believed in Joe Hendry:

“I appreciated that. I really did. That means a lot because, again, I’ve said this as well. I’m gonna compare him to someone you met recently, which is to me on the UK indies Drew was our Undertaker. He was the guy you went to, he lifted the shows, he was an example. To me, he is just like Jordynne [Grace], like Drew is an example inside and outside of the ring. And yeah, so I was absolutely honoured for him to say that, especially when this was his moment and to even just take a second to say that he knew how big that endorsement was going to be for me. So I’m always grateful for having worked with Drew unbelievable wrestler unbelievable human being. Just, you know, him and Jordynne are credits to the business.”

On being one of Kurt Angle’s final opponents:

“So I look back at this, and I’m like, how on earth did I have the balls to pull this off? So I started training in 2013 and in 2016 I made it to What Culture Pro Wrestling. That was just a fun time. That was the Wild West, we were bringing in everybody into What Culture. And there’s some funny things that were talked about that never happened there which I’ll tell you about in a second, because I don’t think I’ve ever said it publicly before. But what happened was a fan asked me, What’s your dream match? Now, The Rock is the reason I got into the business so that’s my dream programme with segments. I have to say this, I fully 100% believe that, especially now with companies crossing over, I can’t tell you why. I just believe it in my heart that I will have some sort of interaction with The Rock and John Cena. I can’t tell you why I just believe it in my heart.”

On how the match came to be:

“So a fan asked me, but what’s your dream match? I thought and I answered it, well, just like a one-off match, and I went Kurt Angle and I tagged him thinking nothing of it. Angle DM’d me in 2015, a trainee. He says, Listen, I’ve heard your name, I’ve seen a couple of things. Because I think at that point, I’d done like my first viral entrance, I came to the ring to wrecking ball but I came to the ring in a zorb as Hendry ball. So Kurt said, I know who you are and you’re not ready yet, but maybe one day, you’ll get the match. And I was like, wow, I had a bit of back and forth. So ICW bring in Kurt Angle for their show at the Hydro, which was huge at the time, it was like for an indie promotion to get 6000 people or however many thousand people it was, it was insane. But they brought in Kurt Angle. And so I went to management, and I said, Let’s do a match. Because it was Joe Coffey that was facing him. I says let’s do a match with me and Joe Coffey. Because at this point, I’d started amateur wrestling, which for some reason decided to take out but 26 Right. But we can maybe get into that later. But I thought because of the amateur wrestling thing. I just won one of the championships in amateur wrestling, or got a medal of some significance or something and I was like, they might think it’s me. So let’s have me and Joe Coffey face each other to see who faces Kurt Angle. So Joe is facing him, but Kurt DM’s me and says, That’s great that we’re going to be facing each other at the Hydro and I said Kurt it is actually just an angle we’re not [wrestling]. I thought to myself, and I was like well What Culture is doing pretty well with that YouTube money over there. And I heard through the grapevine that What Culture had asked Kurt to come in and he’d said no. So I asked for a meeting with the owners of What Culture at the time. I walked into the boardroom, and before I got there, I said, Okay, Kurt, if I had a financier to pay for a match, what would you need? And he told me what he needs. Then I went and I sat down with these two multimillionaires, and I have to say, by the way, I’m very thankful for What Culture Pro Wrestling. What Culture did a lot for me. They don’t get enough credit. If you think about all the wrestlers that came through there and really made a big name there, Cody did a lot of cool stuff there, Will Ospreay, Gunther… If you look through the names yet, like Pete Dunne, like you, if you look through the names that are so many, and obviously, the stuff that I’m doing, and Gabriel Kidd, and so many people came through What Culture and I don’t think they get enough credit. But I walked in the boardroom and I said, Thanks for meeting. You guys tried to get Kurt Angle didn’t you? I’m just a trainee at this point, anyway. Yeah, yeah. I said what did he say, knowing what he said. and they went he said, No. I went I can get you Kurt, but if I get him, I need both your word that I wrestle him and I’m the top guy after that. And I’m a trainee at the time and they went you can really get Kurt Angle? I was like, those are the terms. And they were like, alright, they shook my hand. I was never meant to be like a top guy in What Culture. So I went from being like a guy to getting that opportunity to wrestle Kurt. So if you can imagine this, how I got the balls to do that. I don’t know. But I started trading in 2013. And in 2016, it was the week of the third anniversary of my first match. I was standing opposite Kurt Angle, we’re in a sold-out building and I look over and there’s Jim Ross and Jim Cornette commentating in the main event of an internet pay-per-view, and I’m looking at Kurt Angle and my family is on the balcony. I’m looking at it and I go is this happening? Am I facing Kurt Angle in the main event of a pay-per-view with Jim Ross to Jim Cornette commentating?  Is that what’s happened here? I’ll tell you this, Kurt is the man. When I made the entrance video for him, I threw his metals in the bin, I shredded him. And I was I was like, Oh, God, like, I hope he’s okay with this. And he loved it. He loved the entrance video, he loved it. And for him, this is what I learned about top talents. He’s Kurt Angle. He was so secure. He was just like, this is about your moment. This is going to help your career and we need to maximise that. He didn’t care about getting himself over because he’s Kurt Angle. He was like, What can I do for you? And I just thought that again, another leader, another example. And at the end of the match, he said some awesome stuff. Again, another credit to the business just unbelievable.” 

On his previous WWE cameo:

“I was actually Rusev and Lana’s lawyer at one point as well, which was crazy. Because if you think about how few people get mic time on Raw and SmackDown, I cut a 90-second promo as their lawyer, I think it was Smackdown in Liverpool. [How’d that even happen?] So it’s quite a funny story. So what I didn’t know is two people had been specifically hired to be brought in to do this role, specifically hired. I didn’t know this. William Regal told us that when you are asked if you can do something, be the one that steps up. Someone backstage came up to me and said something about like, Oh, I remember the red ties. And I was like the red ties? So I went to you know, some clothes shop and bought red ties. What happened was whoever that was backstage, I think it was one of the referees, but they got the wrong person. So they told me to go get red ties, and it wasn’t me. So I brought the red ties and I said to someone what are the red ties for? They said oh it’s Rusev’s lawyers and was like, Oh, cool. So someone goes, where’s my lawyers? I went [raises hand]. So some poor dude that had been hired to do it specifically is sitting behind me, he had to shave his head for it and everything, right? So he’s got prepared, and I just went like this. So they asked me to come forward. So it was me and it was me and Lionheart actually, who very sadly passed away. Again, someone who gave a lot too, especially Scottish professional wrestling, and Piper Niven actually had, I think it was like an armband with his symbol on it. So you know, that was really cool that she did that. But it was me and Adrian and they said, here’s this promo and you’re both gonna read it out and we’re gonna pick one. I remember at the time, this was really cool because me and Adrian were close so for both of us to get this moment on, on TV, it was very cool and I’m glad that we got to do that. But they said to me, can you do a Russian accent? I remember Stone Cold saying about the forklift truck. It was like, Can you drive a forklift? Just say yes. So I was like, Yeah, of course I can. And I’m like, looking up like Russian accents, my Russian accent was horrible. But they said go read out the promo, we’re gonna let a couple of people do it and we’re going to pick one. I knew in my heart, I was like, the thing was this long. It was like a lot. And I thought if I memorise this word for word, they’ll just pick me if I don’t use the sheet. So we went in the ring, there were a bunch of different people who were going to try it for it. I read it once without the sheet and they went him, nobody else got the chance to do it. So that’s how that came to be.” 

“I think the other thing that people need to realise is that don’t think I’m not terrified when this stuff’s happening. Don’t think I’m not [nervous], I’ve got to say this in a Russian accent, that I can’t tell you how nervous I was before that concert. I knew I couldn’t show it. But anyone at TNA will tell you I was freaking out because I hadn’t played guitar in however long, but sometimes you just have to go out there and you just have to get the business done. It doesn’t matter how you feel. And I think to me, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this. It sounds like we read similar books, but courage is not not being afraid, is being afraid and having nerves and going out there and giving it your best anyway, that’s that’s what this game is. It’s about just going you know what, if you’ve prepared like as best you can, if you go out there and you give it everything that you’ve got, then that’s all you can do.”

What is Joe Hendry grateful for?

“The challenge, my home and to be content.”

Rey Mysterio (@reymysterio) is a legendary professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas to talk about his incredible career and the fact that he is still wrestling in WWE, being inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame as an active wrestler, his son Dominik developing his heel persona, never wrestling Triple H in WWE, his thoughts on retirement, how he developed the 619 as a wrestling move, being swung on a stretcher by Big Show, his favorite mask, getting thrown like a lawn dart by Kevin Nash, the rumor that he was a stunt double in the horror movie Freddy vs. Jason, his iconic match against Eddie Guerrero at Halloween Havoc in 1997, winning the Royal Rumble from the #2 spot, never turning heel in WWE and much more!

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On being recognised without the mask:

“Now, more than ever. Back in the day before I lost the mask in WCW I had a big amount of time that was my private time and nobody knew who I was. Obviously, my size would give it away most of the times, especially travelling with with the rest of the boys, they kind of figure it out, that’s gotta be Rey Mysterio. But when I did lose the mask against Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, rest in peace, that time period with The Filthy Animals and then that whole Rey Mysterio unmask kind of opened the eyes of a lot of fans who didn’t know who I was, now my face was out there so I was recognisable.” 

On how many masks he owns:

“I’ve lost track over time. But I can probably say between the ones that I have in my closet and in my office and then now the rooms of the house, a little bit over 500.”

On retiring masks:

“Yes, I do. The crazy thing is, I have so many outfits that I’ve used throughout my career that I won’t remember sometimes when I use a particular outfit. There’s a good friend of mine, he comes over to the house every now and then, he likes to see my collection, and I’ll show him something. He goes, Oh, that’s the one you use against The Big Show? How do you remember that? I didn’t remember that. So particular ones really stand out like my first match with WWE on SmackDown, which was against Chavo, that red outfit. That one was special so those kinds of outfits do stand out.”

On unmasking in WCW:

“My god, that was one of the conversations that we battled for it not to happen. And not just me, Konan was probably the first one that said no you don’t understand there’s a history here. Not just the history, but the fact that Rey is marketable with the mask, like the kids. I just started watching Who Killed WCW? actually was following up with Episode Two last night, and I had to turn it off because I was tired. But it took me back to that era. And I wish that WCW would have known how to market the character of Rey Mysterio. It’s something that maybe at the time, because there was so much going on and so many big names, I was nobody back then, I was just given an opportunity. But I truly believe that at the end of the day, everything happens for a reason and it didn’t happen in WCW because it wasn’t meant to be. As soon as I came to WWE everything just started happening. Funny thing is that when I got signed by WWE, I remember going to OVW training a week prior to my debut. Somebody came up and asked me Rey, they’re asking what outfit Are you planning to use on your debut? I said while I was thinking of using this right here, and they were like, What about the mask? I said I’m not wearing a mask, I don’t wear a mask anymore. They go no no, no. Vince wants you to come back with the mask. So my idea was already taken Okay, I’m gonna come back with the baggy pants, the horns that I was wearing at the time. And they’re like No, no, no, we want the old Rey Mysterio so right then and there I thought okay, this is now the time to just kick it back in gear and then start moving forward. I guess they probably subconsciously thought well, he’s gonna come back with the mask. But at the time I was wrestling without it. So I kind of started getting used to not using the mask for a while.”

On being undersized: 

“I truly believe and I’m a faithful believer that my work got me where I’m at now. But my work wouldn’t have been accomplished without the opponents that I’ve had over the years. You know, it takes two to tango, and starting off with Psychosis, and just the chemistry we had. They would see Rey Mysterio and be like, wow, this is unbelievable. Like, we’ve never seen anything like this. And that has a lot to do with the person that would be across from me in the ring, making me look good, extra good. And me, as far as my work goes, it was the fans believe that this heel that’s in front of me is a badass heel and can eventually take me down at any point. And over the years. That’s pretty much would happen. Dean Malenko my first match in WCW, ECW with Psychosis, and we had already had a history from just training together in the ring back in the early 90s. So yeah, I lost track of the question. But yeah, that connection that I’ve had over the years with rivals has definitely secured my position where I’m at today.”

On not being brought to WWE immediately after WCW closed:

“I think at the time, I was probably making a little too much in WCW money-wise, and the contract was still running when the company was bought out. The conversation at the time was sit back, enjoy your pay for the rest of the year. That’s in your contract. And once it’s expired, we’ll sit down and we’ll negotiate. And at the time, I thought it was a way for them to say we’re not really interested. That’s what I thought because I had always heard that. Too small. Definitely too small for WWE, and that it wasn’t going to happen. So remember when Eddie and Saturn, Jericho was the first one to leave. But when Dean and The Radicals, when they left, I kind of had a bit of hope. Like, okay, if they’re there, probably one day I’ll be able to make it. But sure enough, when they bought out the company and told me to wait, I thought it was them saying in a good way, we’re interested but not right now. But no, I mean, JR kept his word. Once my contract expired, we sat down, we negotiated and I kicked off the first year.”

On developing the 619:

“So that move. The first time I ever saw it was from a wrestler that I grew up watching in Tijuana, he used to be one of my uncle’s partners. He was probably about 5’1” or 5’2”. Very stocky, had like a Mighty Mouse look to him. And he would haul ass and just swing through the ropes. Nobody being there, he would just swing and kind of fake dive to the floor and the opponent kind of like just move out of the way. But when I saw it the first time I’m like oh, this is so cool. And then surely enough later, when I started getting into Japanese wrestling, I saw Tiger Mask and I believe he was probably the first one to start doing it, if I’m not mistaken. And then one of my good friends, Damian 666, said to me one day, why don’t you do that move, but put your opponent against the ropes and swing your legs around and hit him connect, like, oh, that sounds cool. Sure enough, I started doing it, it started to get a reaction. And the name at the time behind that move. I kind of picked up off of Stone Cold 3:16 so let’s put a 619 here. So that’s how it all came about.”

On being inducted into the Hall of Fame while still being active:

“So when that was brought up to me, Rey, we want to induct you into the Hall of Fame and it was Hunter that mentioned that to me. We were thinking of doing it in LA, it’s so close here to your hometown. And my first response was, but I’m not ready to retire Like, no, no, you don’t have to retire. We just think that it’s the perfect spot to induct you to the Hall of Fame. I was like, wow, I really felt it was just just such a cool moment. That was one of my goals and it was on my bucket list. But for it to happen then it was a special moment for me, overall. Being able to do a storyline with my son being able to work against him for the first time. It was just so many moving parts that at the end of the day lined up perfectly, and I feel truly blessed man for the opportunity and very thankful to WWE for the run they’ve given me for over 20 years.” 

On Dominik Mysterio:

“Incredible. I remember speaking to Dom before him breaking into WWE when he was training. We would bullsh*t Hey, imagine if you were to make it before I retire and we can do a run together as Tag Team Champions. We were not thinking heel terms, it was completely babyface being together. At one point, I remember designing one of his outfits. And you know Rey meaning King so maybe you can be Prince Mysterio.”

On the 2005 Custody of Dominik ladder match:

“I want to say that that came from Bruce [Prichard] and Eddie [Guerrero] I don’t know if somebody else had some input in it. But when that idea was brought up to me, I said, Sure, that sounds cool. Let me speak to Dom about it. Dom from his understanding had always been a little bit shy, timid especially back then, younger. But when he knew that money was involved, he said, Yeah, I’m down. I’ll do it. But Eddie spoke to him, I know Bruce spoke to him as well, which is crazy, just to even, like, see, so many years past and now Bruce being there and talking to Dom and Bruce kind of telling them okay, this is what we’re gonna have going on for the next storyline. You know, I can’t imagine what Bruce feels when he speaks to Dom when he spoke to him when he was only seven years old. And it’s got to be such a cool feeling.” 

On talking to Dom about the match:

“Being a kid sometimes you don’t take into consideration how important or how this is really going to work out, it was just minor details. And I know Eddie had a lot of saying to making him feel comfortable. I know he would feed him Twizzlers, every now and then when we did some of the shoots, like on the swings. But overall, the surroundings that he was in, he felt like he was at home. And I think that had a big part to do with him saying his lines and doing what he had to do at the right time. And you ask yourself now, why is he becoming so good, so fast? Well, he’s been around for so long, and it’s just insane.”

On there possibly being another Custody of Dominik ladder match with Rhea Ripley and Liv Morgan:

“I always ask myself this question. And I like to every now and then kind of just let my brain wander off. If Eddie would still be here in this scenario, with Dom being who he is now, I can’t even imagine the kind of pleasure we would bring to the ring, to the audience of being able to see Dom, Eddie and myself. You know, it’d be such a cool moment, man. And I do think about that a lot.”

On Dom being a future World Champion:

“Yeah, most definitely. Dom is getting really good at what he’s doing and he’s understanding the craft. The fact that he’s where he’s at with such little time, I wish I could be there, or I could have been there with four years of being in the business. I didn’t know sh*t at 4 years. [Look who he’s learned from] Not only me, I mean that, yes, I am his father. But the fact that he’s been able to be in there with the best Seth Rollins, Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, John Cena. All these moments are moments that give you the ability to learn. So I think he’s taken very well advantage of those moments and has added him to his career.”

On thinking about how much longer he wants to wrestle:

“I don’t until it’s being brought up and when my wife brings that up, that’s when I pause. I don’t know if I want to do it another two years, three years. I kind of listen to my body and my mindset, because my body’s been feeling great. And with all the benefits that I get from doing like the cold plunge and the sauna. Overall, my mind has to be in the right place, so that’s probably the hardest thing for me. Because sometimes the age factor comes into mind and not in the moment, but thinking ahead like I want to be able to still move around and walk at 55 or 56. Is my body going to feel the same?”

On possibly turning heel in WWE:

“I remember bringing it up one time when Dom and I were working together, I brought it up to Vince and it was brief. Like maybe I turn on Dom and we continue with something along the ways. But getting feedback from some of my colleagues, like no, you’re the babyface that could never be a heel. Like you’re Ricky Steamboat, nobody can ever see you as a heel, I don’t think they would buy into it. And I’m kind of glad that I listened and that they didn’t listen to me. Because the best thing that could happen is for Dom to become the heel and be the evil one.” 

On being swung on a stretcher by The Big Show:

“We were just talking about that on Monday. I think Dominik was making fun of it. But anyway, I remember going over that and Big Show and the production team were like is that possible? Yeah, definitely it’s possible. We just never thought of what would happen after he swung. There was no way that he would be able to swing and hold on like if there was a bat. No the weight as soon as that hit. It went down and with my arms strapped to my side, headfirst. Crazy moment.”

What is Rey Mysterio grateful for?

“God, my life and the life I have been given.”

Mark Calaway (@undertaker) is a legendary professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He is best known for his 30+ year career in WWE as The Undertaker. Chris Van Vliet sits down with him at his home in Austin, TX to talk about his incredible career, his podcast “Six Feet Under With Mark Calaway”, appearing in the main event of WrestleMania 40 to help Cody Rhodes with the WWE Universal Championship, his tag team with Kane, memories of Paul Bearer, the hilarious story of his coat that wouldn’t come off, not remembering anything from his match with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 30, his legacy as both The Deadman and The American Bad Ass, his iconic entrances, never breaking kayfabe and much more.

Check out “Six Feet Under With Mark Calaway” here: https://www.youtube.com/@SixFeetUnderwithMarkCalaway

Quote I’m thinking about: “Legacy is not what’s left tomorrow when you’re gone. It’s what you give, create, impact and contribute today while you’re here that then happens to live on.” ― Rasheed Ogunlaru

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On how retirement is treating him:

“For the most part good. I actually have spurts though now where I’m out more than I was the last few years than when I actually wrestled. I’ll get busy and it’s like dang, when is the last time I’ve been home? But then I’ll have stretches like I’m on right now where I’ve been home for a month and a half and I get into a rhythm of doing things and it’s nice. And then soon as I get in that rhythm, I’ll get bombarded with a million appearances that I do.”

On being fact-checked by fans:

“I’m trying to think where it was. This happened, it may have been Australia. This guy, I would say something and I’m absolutely horrible with dates and all that and I will butcher it completely. The story will be accurate but the dates of when it happened and maybe what pay-per-view, Premium Live Event, I’ll screw it up every time and you know how wrestling audiences are. I think it was Australia and I would say something. And this guy on the front row [says] that was 94 it was In Your House or whatever it was. Okay, thanks. So I would go on and tell another story like that. And I’d get to a point where I couldn’t remember what and I just turned to him, it became a running joke in the show. I was like, hey, that time that I worked with Bret Hart in the UK? And he would give it to me like that. I’m like, Dude, you need to get a life because I lived this stuff and I don’t remember. It’s crazy how much and how quick they will fact-check. I mean, if I say something on the podcast and they say you got that wrong because this guy said it and I looked it up. Well, look, I can’t remember it all man. I’ve got a few concussions and I’ve got a few years on me and I just can’t remember it all.”

On realising it was time to retire:

“I never really [thought about it]. I knew the end was near, but I didn’t. It’s weird. Like, I knew that it was going to come but I wasn’t mentally preparing myself for it. I always just thought I was going to be able to do it and realistically, you know, Father Time is undefeated. I knew early on, even when I was still working, and I love this business so much, but I knew I was going to have a hard time. People always ask me, Well why don’t you go down to the PC? Or why don’t you be a mentor? When I’m around, I do that kind of stuff. But as an everyday deal, I can’t do it. Because recently, I’ve just kind of had closure, Mania. I don’t know if you heard this but I struggled since I retired at being at live events. I would go, I was at the Rumble because I had 1DeadMAN Show in Clearwater. I stayed over and I was at the Rumble. By the time I think maybe the first match had gone out I left. Because internally, my body and my mind is you should be getting ready, you should be going out there and I get almost, I wouldn’t say anxiety, but I just get this feeling like I can’t take it because I want to be out there so bad. I wanted to continue to wrestle, obviously, my body broke down and Father Time is undefeated, I never wanted to be a parody of myself and I really risked that at the end. I had some matches that I think maybe at one point in my career, they were bad. But there was one point in my career I felt like I could take anything and turn it around and I just didn’t have it in me, like the match I had with Goldberg in Saudi Arabia. I should have picked up on the fact that he had his bell rung, and then [he] rung it again when he hit the post, I should have been sharp enough to adapt at that point, and not try to get to where I was getting.”

That was a scary match to watch:

“It was a scary match to be in and it was just Father Time. The worst thing as you get older are the breaks. When you have long periods of time where you don’t work and as you get older you lose that sharpness, the mental quickness to figure out things. That was something that I always really prided myself on [that] if something happened, knowing what to do. So in that match, I was so just like, I’m gonna make this good. I’m gonna make it good, I’m gonna make it good and I don’t think I had enough mental acuity and the physical attributes to turn that around, and it just continued to go backwards. It was nobody’s fault. Just, you know what happened. [Were you pissed when you went to the back?] Yeah, I was pissed because you don’t get many opportunities, especially that late in your career to do a first, I had never worked with Goldberg. And the Saudis for all the good and all the bad, they paid a lot of money to get us to come over there for that. And regardless, I always like to live up to my name and I really felt like I had let people down I’d let myself down. Because I hold a higher standard for myself than what anybody else does. I can get over what other people think of me but what I want out of me is the very best. It happened and it’s it turned into a train wreck and yeah, I was extremely p*ssed. But yeah, mostly because I knew it wasn’t good. And we both, he thought he had a concussion and my back, I thought was broken. It was just one of those moments, it was a frustration of the whole thing.”

On the WrestleMania 40 cameo appearance:

“It was a lot of fun. The rib was on me though. Because normally we would stage a lot differently. So when I get downstairs and they say, Okay, we’re going to put you here and then when this happens in the match, we got to start running. So I’m at the far end of the bowl of the of the stadium, and whatever spot happens. [They said] Alright, let’s go. So I’ve got all these ring guys, these tech crew, we’re all running a big group trying to hide me. And we’re running and actually no one is really paying attention. And so I’m running and I’m like crap. I said, Where do we have to go? And they’re like, you see the tent down there? We gotta get under it. And I’m like, crap, it’s 75 yards. I had both my knees replaced. So this is the first time that I’ve actually run on them. So I’m running through the crowd and I finally get to the place and I’m blown up. And so then I waited on the second cue and slid in there, [you looked good], Hey, man, that’s what two new hips and two new knees. Well, then the hips are not new, but now I feel pretty good.”

Could you still do it?

“I could do it, but I couldn’t do it to the standard that I wanted to do it. But I mean yeah, there’s certain things that I don’t feel like I would be able to do. But after I did it I came back and I was like, I’m good now. I don’t need to do this again. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t if they needed something like that again, but I’m not gonna have a match or I’m not coming out of retirement.” 

On what drove him in his career and what drives him now:

“At the peak of my career, I wanted to be the best. I wanted my name at the top of the page, I wanted to carry the company or do the absolute most that I could. I always felt like when you stop growing and you stop improving, it’s basically time to move on. And I never felt like, and I said in my Hall of Fame speech, never be content. That was one of the things, I was never content. I was happy. Obviously, I was very proud of what I was able to accomplish in the business. But I was never content. I was always like, Man, I wanted to do this. Even back in the middle of the Attitude Era when Rock and Austin were the top two guys, that was a driving force for me to be better. Like, man, whether it was attainable or not, that was a goal. I want to be at the top of the page. Obviously, I was happy for Steve and I was happy for Rock, I was happy for all those guys because we were killing it and business was awesome. But for me personally, I wanted to be that guy. And that’s what drove me and I never got discouraged, just that was a goal. We’d go after it and unfortunately, Steve’s career gets cut short, Rock goes on to be an adequate movie star, I guess. Then I moved into into the role I took there in the 2000s. Now what drives me? I’m just looking to enjoy myself because as much as I enjoyed the business which I did. The business came first, second and third with me. And my kids paid a price, everybody paid a price for this dream that I was living. So now it’s trying to catch up and enjoy the civilian part of my life and do things like going hunting and going fishing and doing those kinds of things. But still, the 1DeadMAN Show, it keeps me out just enough just to stay in the world, but not so engulfed in the world of sports entertainment. I’m a trained soldier man. I have a battle all the time like man you don’t have to say sports entertainment. You could say professional wrestling, you could say the belt, the strap.”

On having 2 legacies as The Deadman and The American Badass:

“I think my legacy is going to be wrapped around The Deadman but I had so much fun being The American Badass, I enjoyed it. I think I had to do that just for the sake of staying relevant during that time period. Again, you go back to the promos that everyone’s cutting and the content that we were getting away with at the time As great as that Undertaker character was it was also kind of shackled to where you’re in a box, there’s only so much that you can do within that box. I think I just needed a little break and let me show the other side of what I had in the toolbox. So it allowed me to cut promos on the likes of what Rock was cutting, what Austin was cutting and Triple H and everybody was cutting. So it allowed and it freed me up to do that and then it freed my work up to where I could really get into what I enjoy most, which is storytelling. I had kind of figured out a way to do it with The Deadman but The American Badass was just there was no box, there were no parameters I could do and say whatever I wanted to. I love doing the pre-tapes backstage with the chewing tobacco and just making Tommy Dreamer drink barber water and everything else that he did. Before I get any bullying hate he did that without reluctance. He relished the fact that he could do those kinds of things. That was how he liked to operate.”

On the origin of the eye-rolling:

“Crazy enough I did it by accident. I had a match and I want to say it was Greg Valentine. I was working with Greg Valentine, and I was on him and I had him down down in the corner. And then like I said, just slapped a choke on him, you know, because of my hair being long like it was, I just put the choke on him, and I threw my hair back. And when I threw my hair back, my eyes went back. And I wondered if I could hold them back there, and I did. I wasn’t consciously thinking roll your eyes back, but I did it. And then I go back, I get to Gorilla position, and everybody is looking like, What the hell was that? That was the coolest thing, that was so creepy. And then they run it back and show it to me and I’m like holy crap. That’s scary. So it just happened by accident. And then naturally, I used to have a fairly long tongue. So the eyes and the tongue. Those were requested a lot by people that you probably wouldn’t think would want to see that.”

On not liking chops:

“Yeah, I’m not fond of chops at all. [But you worked with Ric Flair?] I told Flair he gets 3 [laughs], I think I ended up giving him more. I’m pretty sure he got more than 3 and Shawn used to chop me up pretty good too. It’s kind of a weird deal with me, and I didn’t mind getting [hit]. I’d rather get a potato than for a punch to look bad. I’d rather you hit me, hit me in a safe spot, but hit me. I’d rather the match be good than me selling a punch that misses by six inches. So, guys, they spent all this time working on their punches and trying to work light and then just knock the crap out of you with a chop. Just I don’t know, it was just a thing. I would love right now to be able to work Gunther, I’d let him chop the sh*t out of me. I mean, I would love to work with him. But it was just one of those deals man. I remember I worked with, it was me and Kane, I want to say we were working against Rikishi and Haku and Haku put me in the corner and chopped me. Instinctively I grabbed him and spun him around. I didn’t potato him or anything. Thank goodness my common sense kicked in before I did anything stupid. I’ve turned him around real quick and then I was like, oh sh*t, man that’s Haku. I don’t want smoke, man. Thank goodness. Haku is a sweetheart of a man, he liked me thank goodness, but I don’t know. It was just one of those deals, it’s the chop now. There’s two things that get overdone is the chop and then the leg slap, drives me nuts. just drives me absolutely nuts. It’s so bad. Even my daughter, my 11-year-old points it out. And she does it cuz she’s she’s all about the business. wants to get in the business.”

How do you feel about that? 

“Well, if her heart is in it and she puts in the work then I’ll support her. She’s a tremendous athlete [she plays] flag football. Yeah, that’s the fastest-growing women’s sport right now is flag football. But yeah, she wants to she wants to get into business. So we’ll see. We’ll see how that goes.”

On Cody Rhodes:

“I think he’s doing a phenomenal job. And again, I think he’s gonna have a tremendous run as a babyface, but I think his bigger run will be as a heel. I think there’s just something about Cody that I envision as a heel. It’s down the road. Because right now I think he’s killing it as the babyface and his promos are on point. He’s fighting all the people, he’s almost the anti-Roman for the most part. So things are gonna be really interesting when Roman comes back too.”

On an idea that did not work:

“There was a pair of snakeskin pants I wore at a match with Kurt Angle. That I really regret. It’s one of my biggest regrets. They were horrible. So the rumour for a long, long time was that I forgot my tights, or I forgot my pants and I had to borrow those from The Godfather. They were mine. Terry Anderson bless her heart, she did all my gear pretty much my whole career. I told her what I wanted to do. Throughout my extended career, my gear was very, I mean, it was minimalistic. I mean, there was not a lot of love and thrill to my character. When I told her I wanted a pair of python pants. She went no you don’t, I went yes I do.”

What was the thought behind it?

“I just thought it would be cool looking. They were snakeskin pants. I’m a biker, it didn’t translate well. I really regret those pants those are awful, man. I see them every once in a while. They’ll pop up on a feed or something. [Do you still own them?] No, no, no, no, they’re long gone. I think I burned those. And the horrible thing was, it was a really good match. That’s what really sucks is I had a really good match with Kurt. That’s when we used his twin and they screwed me out of the title there. But I can’t watch it and enjoy the match for its quality. All I see are those damn [pants]. I’m touching 330 At that time, too. I’m a big dude. And big dudes don’t wear snakeskin pants.”

On Kurt Angle:

“I mean, he gets his flowers but he didn’t get enough credit for how good he really was. He was willing, and it’s strange because of his background. Like a lot of times, shooters or, you know the amateurs, they can’t get that mentality out of their head and become professional wrestlers at a high level. They just can’t do it. And man, for an Olympic gold medalist to do what he did and be able to put his ego on the shelf and make himself look like a friggin idiot week after week after week it was so entertaining. But when you crawl through those ropes dude you better be ready to go because he could flat go. I had some really really really good matches with Kurt, he was a machine man. He was another guy that I really had a lot of fun working with and enjoyed working with. But he was so good. He could cut promos. I mean, his vignettes. And his backstage stuff was, I mean, next level and his work was so solid.” 

On an underrated rival:

“Because he had his big run late, I don’t think people really realise how good JBL was. He came in as a cowboy and then he was an acolyte in the APA. But not until he became JBL I think he really got to showcase his true ability. Not only as being able to cut promos, but also his work as a heel, as a big heel. He’s a big dude, but he was a chickensh*t heel and that’s sometimes tough to do. Just like being an amateur wrestler. It’s hard to conquer the ego part but he was a lot of fun to work with. I worked with him. I don’t know how many hundreds of times in dark matches after TV tapings. It was always just a constant, trying to get me to crack kind of deal.” 

On the laugh with Brock Lesnar:

“That was Brock. So we talked a little bit about that match and he ran it by me but I don’t think I was paying enough attention to what he really wanted to do. So when he did it, I was almost taken aback a little bit like what the freaking hell are you laughing at that? And then it kind of dawned on me what he was doing. And then I laugh back at him and it’s yeah, it’s become kind of an iconic deal but yeah, if I’d have been paying close enough attention I’d probably go Yeah, I don’t know if I want to do that. But the way it worked, it worked out worked out fine. Fortunately, too it was at the tail end of my career and not in the middle or the front end of it because that surely wouldn’t happen then. But I think for the time period, it worked out okay.”

On the scariest moment he had in the ring:

“Thinking that I was injured, that was probably Saudi. I mean, I already was nursing several injuries and body parts that already needed to be replaced years before. My spine was already starting to fuse so I didn’t have full mobility. I don’t know if that protected me or hindered me. I don’t know which way that went. But I know I went for a little bit and then it was like a bolt of lightning went through me. It went up my leg and right through my spine and I didn’t know like for a second there. I was like, Man, I hope I can move because I didn’t know that I was going to be able to. But thank goodness, I got up and got to be p*ssed off and walked out and I lived. [Didn’t you go to the hospital after WrestleMania 30?] Wrestlemania 30 is with Brock. Right? Yeah, that was, I got concussed somewhere in the first five, maybe 10 minutes of that match. I’ve watched it back. I can’t pick it out.”

Do you remember WrestleMania 30?

“My last memory of that day happened around two o’clock in the afternoon. Michelle had come backstage to check to see me. Then I told her, because I didn’t know until 30 minutes before that we were going to break the streak. I got to the building that day thinking I was going over. So I just got the news that we’re going to break the streak tonight. I remember telling her and the next thing that I remember I’m in the hospital at like 4:30 in the morning. When you get concussed like that they come in every five minutes. They want to know your name, your birthday, where you’re at, and everything like that. It was crazy. Because evidently, I knew who she was but I had no clue who I was. [They asked me] Sir, can you tell me your name? What year were you born? Where are you? [I said] Erm, hospital? This happened several times. But so evidently I knew who Michelle was, they left and I was like, come here, she goes, yeah? [I said] What’s my name? She says, babe, I can’t cheat for you on this. What’s my name? Just tell me my name. Finally, at 4:30 I figured out my name and where I was. It took me a while to figure out that I’d already wrestled. I gotta get to the stadium. No, it’s already over, all that had already happened. I’m in no pain whatsoever. They gave me a CAT scan as soon as I got there. A lot of people don’t know this either, Vince left WrestleMania, him and Brock both got in a car and followed the ambulance to the hospital. So the first thing they do is give me a CAT scan and they come out and Michelle and Vince are there and they say he’s he’s broken his neck. They’re like, oh, my gosh. Then another doctor comes in who reads the scans and he goes, No, no, no, he goes, that’s a that’s an old break, it’s an old injury. So I had broken my neck at some point and didn’t know that I had broken my neck. So no his neck is fine, he’s just got a really bad concussion. So I eventually remember my name and my birthday and where I was at and everything, but I have absolutely zero recollection of that match until I watched it back. I mean, and the reason why I know it’s like, five or 10 minutes, because I can tell by how I’m moving. I went through the whole match did whatever, did everything that we were supposed to do. But I can tell by how sluggish I was and the way I was moving. My timing was a little off, just a little bit off on everything. I think what it was, is out at that point, I was in that period of time where I was only working WrestleMania, I would do WrestleMania I would go have something fixed. I would rehab and then I started training again for the WrestleMania next year. And I think what ended up happening was it just again, Father Time, I wasn’t used to the trauma that you get during a wrestling match, and especially a wrestling match with Brock Lesnar. There’s not a lot of people that pick me up and throw me around like he was able to. It wasn’t anything that he did that was unsafe. It was just the fact that I was taking a bunch of belly to backs and something just rang my bell on.”

On being set on fire during his entrance:

“Yeah, that was pretty hairy and potentially could have been far worse than what it actually was. A lot of things happened just by chance that night. Backstory, two weeks prior I have Kevin Dunn and the lead Pyro guy out on the stage. I’m saying look these Pyro balls when I stop at the edge of the stage right before I hit the ramp. I said these two powerful bursts right here are too close, I’m getting a lot of heat. I said I want my entrance to be as scary and as cool as possible. But I said these right here, they need to back out a little bit. The guy goes no I think it was there’s just a draft in the building. I was like, I don’t care if there’s a draft in the building. I’m telling you these Pyro bursts are too hot, they’re too close. Kevin Dunn said you need to back them up. Okay, so now we jumped forward two weeks. It’s the Elimination Chamber, it’s in St. Louis and I’m the champion. We’re gonna switch the belt because we’re leading into me and Shawn. So originally, I had one of my Hellraiser jackets on. I had that coat on, well, when I wear that coat and when you wear the belt, you can’t see it, because it all fastens together. And I said, Okay, this is my last night as champion, I want people to see the belt. I don’t want to carry the belt, I don’t want to drag the belt, I want to wear the belt. This could be the last time that I have it. So the last minute I switched from the Hellraiser coat to the duster and hat so that when I walked down, you’ll be able to see the title. The first thing that I did right was that. So now I was the last one into the pod and I was gonna be the last one to come out. So I’m thinking about, okay, my hair is gonna dry out and when my hair dries out I can’t see a thing. So I take a couple of extra bottles more than I usually would do and I just doused myself with water so that my hair stays wet so when my music hit, I’m drenched in water. I mean, it’s just pouring off of me. That was crucial. I come out and make my entrance. I stop at my normal spot, my head down waiting to do the lift. The Pyro ball on the left comes up and it comes right up my left side. I mean, it’s like he moved it in and it’s so hot. I will no sell something as long as I possibly can until I can’t take it. So I turned to my right to get out of the fireball and then this one goes off. Now I’m right in it. So I’m totally engulfed in this propane Pyro ball. And the only place that I knew safe to go was go straight. Because you’re also dealing with walking off the stage and I’d be on fire and take a huge fall. So I run out of the fireball and obviously everyone’s freaking out and they’re trying to cover for me. [The announcer says] But he wants to get this match he runs into the ring. So I come out of this Pyro ball and I can see my hat’s on fire and my right sleeve is on fire. Now if I hadn’t switched coats this arm would have been totally just trashed. Then without all the water that I had on me, I mean, my eyebrows were all singed up my face was burnt and then I had a big burn right around my singlet. So I’m in the pod, I know that I’m okay but now I have the burnt flesh and burnt hair smell. I’m looking down and I’m watching the skin on my chest bubble up, it’s blistering up and I’m getting madder and madder and madder. They’ve got a couple of ring crew guys underneath. Back then the floor of the pods were grates. So they’re handing me bottles of water up from the bottom and I’m taking the water and I’m pouring them on myself. I still gotta go. They’re asking me do you want to stop? Do you want to get out? I was like, No man, we got business to do, I’ve got to drop this belt to Jericho. So everybody they work, they work, they work. Finally, I’m the last one in and then I ended up going another 20 minutes with Jericho and that Jackass puts me in the walls of Jericho. My burned chest is on the mat and I’m thinking you got to be kidding me! So finally Shawn comes up through the ring gives me the Super Kick and then I get out of there. I’d already told him, I said look if that dude backstage when I get back I’m gonna kill him and I totally meant it. So I’ve been out when I came out it was all over with man, I blew through gorilla backstage it was like a ghost town. There was nobody anywhere. And everybody’s kind of behind me chasing me because they want to take care of my wounds and everything, but I was like, man, if there’s any chance this dude is here he’s dead, because I was pissed. But yeah, so I had severe burns on my chest and ended up having to go to the burn centre the next day and went into a little bit of a shock later that night. Once I started trying to shower and get cleaned up I came out of the shower and I was just shaking. So yeah, that was pretty scary, that one could have been avoided.” 

What is The Undertaker grateful for?

“God, my wife and my children.”

Quinton “Rampage” Jackson (@rampage4real) is a mixed martial artist, actor and former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood to talk about his legendary MMA career, beating Chuck Liddell to win the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship, what went wrong with his run in TNA Wrestling, how he got the role to play B.A. Baracus in “The A Team”, the real story behind destroying the door on The Ultimate Fighter, powerbombing Ricardo Arona in PRIDE, his favorite flavor of F3 Energy, his involvement with United Fight League and much more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Life is a guy trying to play a violin solo in public while learning the music and his instrument at the same time.” – Joseph Campbell

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On taking part in Bloodsport:

“I miss it. It’s been four years since I had an MMA fight. But Josh Barnett hit me up the other day, like, Hey, you got time to train MMA because I’ve been training boxing. I was like, Oh, damn, I need to go start training MMA because I’m doing Bloodsport for him in Japan and that’s pro wrestling but it’s like the MMA fight.”

On being nice in real life but scary in the cage:

“I don’t know. I know I have two personalities I know that much about myself. You know, I’m two people I’m Quinton and I’m Rampage and it just happens. [What are most people calling you in real life?] Most people call me Rampage. But you know, but I have a lot of names and some people call me Q, some people call me Page some people call me Ram.” 

On how difficult it was to dial it back in wrestling:

“That’s totally different. If it’s pro wrestling, and stuff like that, if it’s not like MMA style. Yeah, that’s fun. I always wanted to be a pro wrestler. So that’s fun for me. I’m not really trying to hurt nobody or knock anybody out in pro wrestling.”

On wanting to be a pro wrestler:

“I didn’t even know what MMA was. When I started wrestling in high school I was disappointed when I found out it wasn’t pro wrestling. Because you know, I grew up in a certain side of Memphis where we didn’t have wrestling in high schools. Then my mom remarried, we moved to a better side of Memphis and the schools were better. And they had a wrestling team and I offered to go join his pro wrestling team. And I get there and like they got singlets on and they hook on each other and I was like what the hell is this Coach? I was like where the ring at?”

On falling in love with collegiate wrestling:

“I fell in love with it because I picked people up and slammed them. And my coach, he taught me how to slam people legally. I had to drop to my knees first before I actually let them hit the mat. That’s the legal way of slamming in collegiate. But freestyle you can do whatever you want.”

On becoming an MMA fighter:

“This was all a mistake. So I ended up going to college for wrestling and I got injured. Then I came back home and one of the guys I used to wrestle against him and I became good friends at the time. We always used to see each other in the finals of a tournament in our weight class. We used [to be] the two best wrestlers in Memphis. And his coach and my coach were best friends. So you know, we had to practice together sometimes. So we stayed in touch over the years and when I came back home to Memphis he was training for an MMA fight. He took me to my first MMA fight, I had never really seen it. One of my coaches in college was doing UFC and I still didn’t watch it. I just heard about it, Vladimir Matyushenko, he was one of my coaches in college, he fought in UFC back in the early days. So he actually took me to a fight and I saw this guy submit the guy and push his face off with his feet and I was like man, I would like to fight that guy. And, you know, time goes by and he asked me to help them train for a fight. I’m there for like, two or three days, I’m having to train for a fight wrestling and he showed me some stuff. And the coach said like, Hey, you want to fight? Like yeah, when? He was like three days, the champion’s opponent pulled out, okay? Now I was like, Okay, I don’t know anything. Then my friend said like this the guy you said you want to fight. I signed me up. So I went out there and I fought the champion of Memphis with three days notice. I beat him by decision and then my friend is like, Oh, you a fighter now.”

Who did Rampage love in wrestling:

“I grew up watching Memphis. I used to love The Moon Dogs. Jeff Jarrett. I used to like Macho Man Randy Savage. Ultimate Warrior was my favourite, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant. I like Junkyard Dog, that was my little brother’s favourite. I like a lot of people.”

On possibly pursuing wrestling instead of MMA:

“I was thinking that it was going to be my destiny to be a wrestler. But you know, I used to be friends with Chris Benoit and I talked to him one day and he was like, Man, I’m always on the road. And I’m like, what? He said, Yeah, we’ve got like, 300 some days a year. I was like, wow, I didn’t know that. That’s that’s basically when I changed my mind. I don’t think I could do it. I don’t think I can keep that schedule.”

On facing Chuck Liddel for the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship:

“I had no idea I was getting the title shot. I think Joe Rogan asked me in an interview or something in the cage. I played it down like No, no, I’m not ready to fight. Because at this time of my career people thought I was finished. Because in Japan, maybe like couple of years prior I had turned real religious. I fought Shogun and I got injured going into the fight and people didn’t know that, I didn’t say anything about it. And he beat me pretty fast. He like broke the muscle to my ribs. And then people thought I was done. So you know, they thought that maybe Chuck could beat me because Chuck was on his comeback tour when he had beaten everybody that that beat him in the past and I was the last guy. So I figured I figure that’s why they brought my contract to get me over to the UFC. I was like, yeah, they will put me with Chuck. But I knew I could be Chuck.”

On not being in the UFC Hall of Fame:

“I don’t know. You know, the weird thing about me is that I didn’t start fighting to be famous. So I really don’t care for the Hall of Fame. I don’t know if these guys called Dana up and said hey put me in the Hall of Fame. I really don’t care for the Hall of Fame, like what was gonna do for me?”

On his relationship with Dana White:

“I don’t talk to him much. He and my manager are really close friends and every now and then they are on FaceTime he sees me and he says, what’s up, but he always reminds me of that movie I did. You know, that’s when our relationship went more south. I took a movie over a fight one time, The A Team.“

On losing money for taking the movie role:

“I got paid like less than 10% of what I get paid for a fight. And so you know, I did it because I’m a big fan of it, I like doing movies. I’m a big kid and I was hoping to get more movie roles. All I can say about that is that the manager I had at the time was a f*cking idiot. And he thought was a good idea to sign with the same agency that represented the UFC and I didn’t get any more movie offers. So that’s all I’m gonna say.”

Was that a bad decision to take the movie role?

“I don’t think it was a bad decision. Because A Team, it brought me and my father, not closer together. We always been close. But back when I was young, that’s one of the ways my dad and I bonded, we used to watch A Team together and stuff. And I’m a weird guy. I’ve never been a real big fan of anybody. But I’ve always been a big fan of A Team and Mr T. I always was one of the biggest fans. It was like a personal thing for me to do the movie. You know, my dad went through a bad patch in his life with alcohol and stuff as I got older, and now he’s back on the straight and narrow. So I brought him out to the set, and he got to be a big kid and stuff like that. It was good fun for my dad and he talks about this one that was one of the best times he ever had, because he had never been to Canada, never been nowhere. He got to be on set and see The A Team movie and stuff like that. And my dad had a great time. So, you know, I wouldn’t trade that for the world.”

On why he is doing more movies now:

“I love it, man. You know, I’m a big kid. Because I get to shoot at people, doing that type of action and stuff like that. It’s fun. I enjoy it. I’ve done a lot of movies. But you know, most of them. People will never see them. They were B movies, but they’re fun to do.”

On his TNA run:

“I did TNA I was so stoked to do it. They had me and Kurt Angle do to stare down. I thought this is going to be huge. I thought like, oh, yeah, you know, I was going to find out a few more MMA fights then did leave to go to pro wrestling. I don’t know how they dropped the ball. I had my own gym at the time and they put a wrestling ring there. They were supposed to be training me and they never trained me.” 

On how the TNA deal fell apart:

“You want me to tell the truth? All right so at that time, I started deal with Paramount Pictures. Remember that dumb manager I told you I had from England who thought was a good idea to sign with the same agents that represent UFC? This fight manager, he thought he thought was a good idea to sign with them He was the same motherf*cker who went over the contract and everything and I did a deal with Paramount Pictures. So I did a deal with Paramount Pictures and they wanted me to do movies, pro wrestler fight, and give me a reality show. But they offered me this huge contract when in all reality, they just wanted me to fight for cheap. So they promised me like movies and then they promised me my own reality show and I found TNA and all of it was a sham. So I don’t read contracts it’s my manager’s job to read the contract. And so Paramount actually tried to sue me because I didn’t want to fight. It’s all designed for me to fight. I’ll go make money doing this make money doing that but they wanted me to fight for $250,000. I was like I haven’t fought for $250,000 in f*cking years. [They said] But you got to make like 10 million a year with this contract. And so when they sued me, I got my own attorneys and stuff, I fired that manager and I broke down the f*cking contract and they said we going to get you in front of movie execs. They never said that they’re gonna get me in movies. They said like they’re gonna give me a meeting with people who make movies. The reality show, is it was actually shoulder programming like a 24/7 type of thing. It wasn’t like a reality show. Everything was bullsh*t, they just said all this to get me to fight for cheap. And the pro wrestling was under the same thing when I supposed to get paid like a certain amount every time I made an appearance it would take them like six months to even pay me. It was just all bullsh*t and I was like, f*ck this sh*t [Was it TNA that wasn’t paying you?] Yeah, everyone was supposed to pay. Then I found out that Paramount Pictures, they got all these channels and all this stuff, but it wasn’t like what they sold it as. I felt like they always competing against each other, Spike TV was still around and stuff like that. It was all competing against each other.” 

On the WWE appearance in 2010 possibly leading to discussions:

“It never led to discussions, I really liked it over there. But it was really cool. But none of guys will let me powerbomb them but I understand now. I talked to Ric Flair he was on my podcast. Ric Flair told me like yeah, they let you powerbomb me, they don’t know you know what you’re doing? Okay, it makes sense, though. [You did a chokeslam?] Yeah, yeah, I did a chokeslam and Big Show gave me sh*t about it. You want to use my move? Like come on, bro. He was joking, he was cool.”

On his current condition:

“I’m all f*cked up. If I sit down and play video games too long, and I have to get up and go to the restroom. I’m like stiff for like the first like 20 seconds. I don’t know. But when I wake up in the morning, I’m fine. Most days when I’m in a clear mind, I wake up, go for a run, I’m okay. When I get back from the run I ice my knees and stuff like that. But I go to Columbia, I go to bio accelerator, stem cells. Oh my God, those guys changed my life. So I’m good. But I guess the way I’d be sitting when I sit down because my right knee is really bad. I am supposed to get stem cells on it once a year but I took a couple of years off. So last time I went I thought it was gonna be training for a fight. So I just did my elbow and my shoulder. I didn’t do my knee. Because you can’t train like it’s hard for a while. So I regret that now. I wish I would have done my knee. So I’m gonna go back and get my knees done. At first my hand hurt, I had like a fracture that wouldn’t heal up. But I got stem cells and healed up in less than a week. My hands are small for a small for a fighter.” 

What is Rampage Jackson grateful for?

“My kids, my friends and that I met Harrison Rogers.”

Carmella (@carmellawwe) is a professional wrestler with WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Philadelphia to talk about recently becoming a mom, being in labor for 60 hours, what Corey Graves is like as a dad, when she plans to return to the ring, being a Lakers girl when Kobe Bryant was on the team and cheering for the New England Patriots when Tom Brady was there, winning in Money In The Bank and cashing it in to become the Smackdown Women’s Champion, being paired with Enzo and Cass, her favorite memories of NXT and much more!

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On being in labour for 60 hours:

“It was just such a long, long experience and it was honestly just very defeating because I spent my entire pregnancy preparing for labour and delivery. I feel like as a WWE superstar I’m used to being in pain, I feel like I have a pretty high pain tolerance. So I just could not wait to get into labour and deliver this baby and call it a day. I did all the preparations and took the classes, I exercised every single day in my pregnancy. And then when it came time to have the baby it just didn’t go the way I planned and it just took so long and it felt like it was never-ending. And but ultimately, at the end of the day, everyone was healthy. So that’s all that matters.”

On what Corey Graves is like as a dad:

“He is the best dad. I’m so impressed. I mean, he has three kids I have through stepkids. So obviously I know of him as a great father to them. But I’ve never seen him as a father to a baby and to a newborn and it’ll melt your heart. If I told you the things I see him do with this. You would never believe it because Corey Graves, we all know Corey Graves. But as a dad, he’s just the sweetest. Oh my gosh. I mean, so our son is obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and there’s this little dance called the hot dog dance and Goofy does this move and he will be in our living room Cory does this move with as the as Goofy doing the hot dog dance and it is the funniest thing you would never in your life picture this but it is so funny and it’s so cute.”

On a WWE return:

“I would love to return. I mean, obviously, I’m so immersed in this motherhood world right now. But honestly, I actually have an injury from delivery. So I have a lot of nerve damage that happened and my foot is kind of non-functional right now. So it’s something that I never knew could happen during labour and delivery. But I have two herniated discs in my back and that is correlated to my foot. So I haven’t even been able to work out. I haven’t been able to do anything that will get me back to the ring quite yet. Hopefully, eventually, I’ll get there. But right now I’m just kind of working. I’m going to be in physical therapy and things like that, too. I mean, I’ve been wrestling for 11 years, I’ve never been injured knock on wood. And now here I have a baby and I’m going to physical therapy. So I don’t know how that works out. But here we go.”

On the Money in the Bank cash-in:

“I guess that was all part of the plan and I knew that he [the referee] was gonna give me a hard time with it. But I didn’t know he was gonna give me that hard of a time. I was like, Okay, how many more times am I gonna tell you to cash this damn thing in? Let’s go. But I’m watching it back. It’s hilarious. I just love him so much. He’s so awesome. So it’s funny to have that memory. I just sprinted down the ramp, and of course, my adrenaline and everything. I’m so excited because I know I’m about to cash in and hopefully win this title. So I mean, I was just like, how much longer can I sit here and scream? I was so it was ridiculous.”

On the unlikely path of following in her father’s footsteps:

“Never ever in my life that I think I would be here. I love performing, I was a dancer in my old life I cheered in the NFL, NBA and then when this opportunity presented itself, I just felt like, sure let me try it. I don’t know if I can do it, I’ve always been a small girl. So I never thought it was something that I could do. And then I went to the tryout and I just fell in love with it. And of course, with my history of watching it, I knew what it was all about. So it’s just kind of cool that it all came full circle especially with my dad’s history, my love of performing and, you know, led me to where I’m at.”

On choosing between Lakers Girl and WWE:

“I was a Laker girl and I had found out about an opportunity to try out for Tough Enough. I just kind of did like a video submission, I think or something like that, was emailing with somebody. They had said what the commitment would be for Tough Enough and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it because I’d already committed to Laker Girls, I couldn’t do both. So I thought well, I moved to LA to be a Laker girl. I’m here on this squad, I need to finish my commitment with this. And then I just never thought again about WWE until this opportunity came about. And you know, it’s great. It ended up working out.”

On not being called up to the main roster with Enzo and Cass:

“We were at WrestleMania 32. I guess Triple H had talked to Enzo and Cass separately and told them they’re debuting the next night on Raw. And they were talking about it because we had done tours together. We had done loops, and I was with them. So I thought okay, well when they go up, of course I’m going up with them. So when I found out that Triple H had talked to them, and someone came and pulled me off the bus we were about to leave. It was TakeOver, I think or I don’t even remember what we’re doing. But I was pulled off the bus. We’re about to head back to the hotel, Triple H wants to talk to you. I’m like, oh yeah, we’re debuting tomorrow! I was so excited. And he pulled me and he’s like, Enzo and Cass are debuting tomorrow. And I’m like, yeah, he’s like, you’re not going to debut with them. My world just came crashing down. I was devastated in the moment. But now I look back and he had told me no, this is a good opportunity for you to prove who you are on your own. You’re going to be a strong character. You don’t need to be with them. You’re going to be strong on your own. And at the time, of course, it was devastating to hear but it all worked out I think the way it’s supposed to. And here I am 11 years later still here and killing it. I mean, not right now. But soon.”

On the 24/7 Championship:

“I just loved being paired with R-Truth. He is such a treasure and he’s such a good person and so fun to be around. It was just full-on shenanigans all the time whether the cameras were rolling or they weren’t. We just always had fun ideas. We would adlib things that weren’t in the script. And it was just fun to play off each other in that aspect. And I just think you just never knew what to expect. And people were looking forward to seeing what we were going to do. You know, we’re in costumes and disguises and just getting into the most ridiculous situations. And I just loved being that entertainment part of the show, rather than going out, I had already at that point been Women’s Champion, I show what I can do in the ring. Let me show what I can do with my character and be fun and be silly and have comedic timing and play off somebody. I think to be able to have that range is so important. Not everyone can do that and I’m so grateful I was afforded the opportunity to show that side of my character, especially alongside R-Truth.”

What is Carmella grateful for?

“Family, my health and wine.”