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Rhea Ripley: Mami Is ALWAYS On Top, Dirty Dom, Crazy Fans, Fav WrestleMania Moment, Buddy Matthews

in LATEST EPISODES on June 26, 2025 January 30, 2026

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Rhea Ripley (@RheaRipley_WWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed with WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet to discuss her rise in WWE, working with Dominik Mysterio and being called “Mami”, intergender spots and being compared to Chyna, her favorite WrestleMania moment, her viral stinkface spot with Nia Jax at a house show, an unwanted fan visit to her house, how she came up with the Riptide as her finisher, overcoming anxiety, her husband Buddy Matthews and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “The more you practice the art of gratitude, the more you have to be grateful for.” Norman Vincent Peale

On the celebrity she wants to meet the most:

“I think everyone knows who it is, David [Howard Thornton], good old Art the clown. I want to meet him so bad. I’m just waiting for that day. I’ve been trying to get him to come watch WWE, and it’s just like our schedules just don’t line up. But one day I will meet him, and I hope that I’m not too annoying. I really hope I’m not too annoying. I love my fans, but I really hope that they haven’t made my name stale to him, because he’s probably heard it over and over and over again, ‘Do you know Rhea Ripley?’ He’s like, ‘Yes, I know Rhea Ripley.’ So I’m excited to meet him one day.”

On whether she thought this success was possible:

“Honestly, no. I always talk about my Riot City Wrestling try-out, and it’s funny, because my coach, he went around the room after the try-out and was like, ‘Where do you want to go in wrestling?’ He asked everyone in the tryout, and everyone said, ‘I want to make it to WWE.’ He straight up got sick of that answer. He’s like, ‘I don’t want to break your heart or ruin your dreams, but that’s probably not going to happen. We’re in Australia. We’re very, very far away. WWE doesn’t really come here, so making it to WWE is going to be extremely difficult and probably won’t happen.’ So for me, I was a little bit realistic about that, and I was like, I just love wrestling. I find it fun. I find it entertaining. I like going out there and entertaining a crowd and showing people that they can do whatever they want to do, especially a female in such a male-dominated sport. I liked that challenge.

I’ve always been someone that likes a challenge, but I never thought that I would be able to make it as far as I’ve come. Even by the time that I did get signed and I moved to America and I started NXT, I never thought that the name Rhea Ripley would be as big as it is now, and it’s just wild to see, especially the last couple years how much I’ve blown up. I forget who I am sometimes. I’m walking around and I’m like why are these people looking at me? Do I look like a 13-year-old boy? Just staring at me because I look stupid, what is wrong with me right now? Is my hair staticing to my face or something? Why are they looking at me? And I get mad. I’m like, look away. Take a photo. It’ll last longer. And then I’m like oh sh*t. They probably know who I am. I just get mad sometimes. I just forget that I’m known. If I knew that they knew who I was, I wouldn’t feel bad about it. I’d be like, oh you want a photo? I’d be really nice. But it’s just like, I forget that I’m Rhea Ripley sometimes.”

On the inspiration behind the name Rhea Ripley:

“So when I first started, they asked me for five combinations of names, and I went through trying to make combinations of names that I liked from either band members or just strong women in general.”

What were you going by before?

“Demi Bennett, which is my name. I don’t know why. They just didn’t want to change my name. They’re like, ‘Yeah, Demi Bennett is good. It’s a good wrestler name.’ It’s really not. I’m glad because some people have three, four wrestling names, and I’m glad that I just have two.”

On how the names paired together:

“Oh man, this is a long time ago. I really like the name Isla. I love the name Isla. And that was one that I didn’t actually pull from anything, but it was Isla Radke, because at that time, I really loved Falling in Reverse and Ronnie Radke. He’s the main singer, so I loved his last name, just because it was so different. You don’t really hear Radke, especially not in Australia. I don’t know about America, but I like that one. And then there was something Ashby. I can’t remember what the start of that one was. It was something Ashby. And [Alan] Ashby was the guitarist for Of Mice and Men. And then Rhea Ripley came from, Rhea is a Goddess’s name. And I was like, she’s cool. I like that. And then Ripley came from Alien [Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver]. She was a badass, and I was like, I want to be like that. I want to be a badass. They just mesh so well together with the RR, it just always works out. I mean, you see Roman Reigns, Ronda Rousey, Ruby Riott, Raquel Rodriguez, I don’t know what it is, it just works. But yeah, Rhea Ripley just stuck, and we were getting ready for the first Mae Young Classic, and I think it was Bloom, I believe, just walked past and he goes, ‘Rhea Ripley.’ I go ‘I guess so?’ I got no choice. I sent you my five names. You guys pick one.”

On still feeling the pressure:

“I feel that pressure all the time. I’ve said it before, but WrestleMania 40 against Becky Lynch, I was terrified. I worked myself up so drastically that whole day, and I put so much extra stress on my own shoulders with things that I couldn’t even, they weren’t my responsibilities. I worked myself up because Becky was sick, and I was like okay, well, I need to be at 110% so that I can help her wherever I need to help her. Then I hadn’t had many matches, so I was like, I need this to be a good match. I need people to remember that I can actually go and I can actually wrestle. Because a lot of the times back then, when I had the championship, I wasn’t wrestling a lot, and that made me a little rusty, then I got self conscious, and I’m just like, I don’t want to sh*t the bed. I don’t want to go out there and have a stinker and then have people say, ‘Oh, this is why she shouldn’t be champion.’ ‘She sucks.’ ‘She can’t wrestle.’ ‘She’s overpushed.’ ‘She’s Rhea Hogan.’ I didn’t want all of that to start spiraling, because it does, and it’s hard to escape from.”

“So I just had so much stress on my shoulders, and I get ready super late too, which doesn’t help the fact. I remember sitting in hair and makeup, and I was just freaking out, because I think the show started at 8. I was in the chair at 7:30 and I wasn’t dressed yet. I was like, Okay, well, Gorilla is a good 10-minute hike. It’s all the way on the other side of this building, and I also don’t know how to get there, because I haven’t been there all day, and I’m just sitting there panicking, and I’m like, I need to put my boots on. I had these boots that I’ve never worn before, and they go over the knee, which is a lot of tying. My normal boots take a good five minutes for each boot. It’s going to take a long time, and they’re brand new. Am I going to be able to walk in them? Am I going to be able to move and wrestle in them? Are they too tight? I just overthought everything and that happens so much more than I would like to admit, but it’s such a stressful thing going out there and being on live television, where anything could really happen. We’ve seen injuries happen. Zoey Stark got injured and Kairi and I had to go out there and have a singles match when we were supposed to have a triple threat, and it was Kairi’s first match back within months. She was gone for months, and I haven’t wrestled Kairi since an NXT house show. So it’s like, okay, how do we do this on live television? If we stuff up, no one’s getting blamed but us; they’re not going to blame anyone else. We’re the two in there, and we’re the two going at it and on live television. We got to put this stuff together.”

On her favourite WrestleMania moment:

“Honestly, the WrestleMania moment, I always said my match with Charlotte [at WrestleMania 39], because it’s everything that I wanted my first Mania to be. Because it ended up being the COVID Mania. I didn’t get my family, I didn’t get the crowd, I didn’t get anything that normally goes into a Mania. And it was just like, wow, I’m back at the place that I really didn’t like going to every day, and this is my WrestleMania. So to then go and face Charlotte again, but it being in front of a crowd, and I saw my family in the front row, I had all the adrenaline in the world. Everything was so perfect, and then I beat her for the first time. I won the SmackDown Women’s Championship, that was my WrestleMania moment. But then now I feel like the match with IYO and Bianca has triumphed that. I am literally so proud of that match. I love those two so much, going through NXT with them, overcoming things with them, watching them overcome things, watching them grow as performers, and then me growing as performer to get to that point where we could go to WrestleMania and have such a stellar match, and have people chanting, this is awesome, and us being the opener. I couldn’t ask for anything more. I understand I lost, it doesn’t matter at that time. It really didn’t, because that was IYO’s moment, but we all got a moment from it at the same time.”

On her husband Buddy Matthews saying she’s his favourite wrestler:

“It’s safe to say he’s mine too. He really is. He moves so incredibly well for the size that he is. He’s so smooth with everything, and he’s so crisp. And just everything that he does is perfect. I don’t think I’ve seen this man have a bad match. And I’ve watched him since Australia. I used to go to Riot City, he used to be in the ring, wrestling, doing his thing. I don’t think I’ve seen him have a bad match. I used to hate him. I think he said this when he was [on Insight]. I hated him. I hated him with a passion because I loved Sway, which was a female wrestler, and he was from Melbourne. He came from the back, and he just punched Sway straight in the face. I was like, sir, how dare you? I don’t think I saw him before that too. I think that was my introduction to Matt Silva at the time. And he punched Sway straight in the face. And then Jimmy Scarlet jumped the barricade and chased him away. And then they had a whole feud and all that. But, yeah, I didn’t like him.”

On an impromptu dog adoption:

“It was the day that I got back after vacating the title, because I was in the sling, and I was just depressed. I was so depressed. So this guy was in the middle of the road. It was this slither of an island in the middle of the road, and he’s just holding this dog like this, and she’s all four feet just dangling. He’s got a sign. And we drove from behind, and we didn’t see what the sign was. As we got to the other side, I tried to turn around, and he half turned I was like, I can’t read it. [Buddy said] ‘Do you want me to go around again?’ I was like, yeah. And he knows, the verbiage better of what we said, because we both have different memories of it.

He went around again, and we missed it again. He turned and he’s like, if I go around again, I know that we’re going to have a dog. I’m going to get the dog if it’s for sale, because it doesn’t look healthy; it looks very malnourished. So we went around again, and by the time he went over the 7-Eleven, it was just like a wild goose chase, just trying to track this guy down. Then he was walking around the dumpsters, and I was like, Matt, he’s going to dump this dog. We need to get this dog off of this person, because I don’t know what he’s going to do with it.

So then when we pull into 7-Eleven I literally rolled down the window, and I didn’t even finish my sentence. I was like, ‘How much?’ And he’s like, $100. Okay, first time I’ve ever had cash on me as well. I was like, it’s meant to be. Then he starts talking, and then this lady comes over, and she’s just like, ‘We had a whole litter of them, and this is the last one, and if we had to keep her, then we’d keep her. But we got six dogs already.’ I was like, These people don’t have six dogs, not a litter of puppies. I was like, take your $100 go do what you got to do with it. Give me the puppy. I was in my sling, and I gave him the money, and he just holds her up to the window. I was like, ‘Sir, I cannot grab the dog. Can you please just put it on my lap?’ He’s just holding it. I’m like, ‘I gave you the money. Now give me the merchandise, give me the dog.’ But as soon as she’s out my lap, she curls up in a little ball, and she’s just the cutest little potato that you could ever see.”

On working with Dominik Mysterio:

“Honestly, I think that was like another turning point in my career, being partnered with Dom and also being a part of the Judgment Day. It made me open up as a performer. It made me have to work a lot more because I was doing nine segments in a 16-segment show. Sometimes more. We were doing everything as a part of Judgment Day. I was running around helping Finn and Damian, and then helping Dom and doing promos, making business deals, wrestling myself, doing women’s storylines. And I was just like, I had no time to think about absolutely anything. I just had to go. I was like, What do I need to do? Cool. Going live in 3, 2, 1, do what you got to do.

Then being partnered with Dom, it just helped my character transform into something different. Because I feel like in NXT, I was doing the same thing, but on different brands. I was on NXT UK, and I was that force that came from the second Mae Young Classic, and then that kind of transferred onto NXT, but in a babyface sort of manner, which was a little bit different, but kind of the same. And then as soon as I came to the main roster, it was in COVID. So Vince didn’t know what to do with me. He didn’t know if I was face or heel. And he’s like, Well, she looks like a heel. And everyone was like, You don’t understand, she’s a babyface. People actually like it. He’s like, Nah, she’s a heel. So then going out there and being so confused on what I’m doing, but not having that crowd reaction to actually feed off of and prove my point that I was a babyface at the time. It made it really hard. And then after that, like, obviously the trial and error with the tag team stuff, but also, holding on to who I was in NXT. I feel like when I got partnered with Dom, I could actually blossom a little bit into something different. Instead of being the hard ass all the time, I was Mami.”

Did you know Mami would become so popular?

“No, I was trying to push the Papi agenda. And they were like yeah, we can’t do that. And then Priest was like, ‘What about Mami?’ I was like, Okay, guess I’ll be Mami. I was really set on the Papi thing. I was like, I can be a little sh*t stirrer, just be Papi this, Papi that. But they’re like, we just can’t go there. And I was like, Okay, I respect that. Mami’s gonna grow on me, though.”

On her unique pin:

“So that actually started in Australia. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I pinned Zack Sabbath that way, which was an intergender match that I had. But I’ve been doing it for a long time. And I think the reason that it’s really stuck with me is because Matt and Chris Basso, my trainers, they used to call it the sexy pin, and we used to laugh about it every time we’d do it, we’d be like, ha sexy pin. So it’s just like, I think that’s just stuck in my head. I don’t know why. It’s just my automatic movements now. It works. Very Rhea.”

On slamming Luke Gallows:

“I got him up there, and literally, I think you could see the smile on my face like, Oh my God, I’m doing it! And then once I threw him down, I got so in this man’s face. I was just screaming, ‘Do you know who I am? I am Rhea bloody Ripley!’ I’m just so hyped that I got this man up and held him for a couple of seconds and then slammed him because he’s a big dude. He’s long. When you pick up someone that tall, their body proportion, it rocks you around. So I was really proud of myself in that moment. And it’s funny because Priest comes back afterwards, and he’s like, ‘Course, you had to go all Rhea on him. You just got so excited afterwards and just started screaming and made it look like it was nothing.’ Sorry dad [laughs]. I was there to help you.”

On the Chyna comparisons:

“I love them. I really do love them. I think she was such a unique being in this industry, and she really did open up so much for women, especially intergender wise, and just like being part of DX and all of that. She’s done so much incredible stuff, and she’s really someone that I look up to, especially being different, being bigger and bulkier and and just having a different build to a lot of the women, she’s someone that I really do look up to. So I’m glad that I get the comparisons, but at the same time, like, I want to be the first Rhea Ripley. I love that the whole storyline with Dom, him being Eddie, me being Chyna, it kind of just flowed. And a lot of the stuff that we did, we didn’t actually mean to match up with stuff that they did. It just kind of worked out that way. Even mannerisms, it just came so naturally that that would be what we would do. And we did it, we’d come back and then on Twitter, people would have like, comparisons of us doing it next to Chyna and Eddie doing the exact same thing. And we’re like, wow, we didn’t even mean to do that. So, I love that there’s that comparison, but at the same time, I want to be like the first Rhea Ripley.”

On the stinkface spot and the reaction:

“I knew it was gonna be big, but that sh*t exploded. It wasn’t even my idea. It was Nia’s idea. She’s like, ‘Yeah. And then you stink face me.’ I’m like, ok, if you want. But then, before all of that, I was like, I think I should do like the Rikishi pull them up, just do the little dance beforehand. I was like, I’m not gonna get it spot on, so I’m just gonna do my own thing. But I’ll do the whole gimmick and yeah, it still pops up on my Twitter, it’s wild. I got so much publicity off that, but I also got so much like, negativity. I was like guys, you need to calm down.”

What do you mean?

“Just people were saying that I’m taking the women’s division back 20 years. And I’m like, That’s not what’s happening. It’s a fun moment, and it’s a house show. Am I not allowed to have fun? If it was anyone else, you’d be supporting it. I feel like people love to hate Rhea Ripley. And you know, the more you talk about me, the more you act like a fan, so continue talking. It wasn’t even my idea, Nia wanted to take my ass to her face, just trying to make the wishes come true.”

On some fans being jealous of her husband:

“I get a lot of people saying that on Twitter, the Dolph Ziggler meme is a massive one. ‘It should have been me!’ It’s just funny to me at this point, because I’m like, I love my husband, and there’s no way that I’m ever going to do anything bad to ruin what we have. But it’s really funny watching people try.”

On a fan turning up to her house:

“We looked at the Ring camera, and there’s some chick at our door, and I didn’t think anything of it. And I was like, Why does she keep ringing the doorbell and just stand there for eternity? And then we had our Australian friends who live near us, and they came to pick up our mail, and they go, ‘This is for Rhea Ripley. I think it’s fan mail?’ I was like, Oh no, who the hell has my address? That’s just something that people shouldn’t be doing. That’s kind of like crossing the line. We are normal people outside of work, and we like our privacy. We like to have our normal humanity. But I went back and I watched the Ring doorbell, and this chick was like she just came out of the movie Smile. I’m sorry if you’re watching this lady, but you were terrifying. She was scary, she rang the doorbell, she got real close to it and just [smiles creepily].”

“Then she looks at her phone and she [smiles again], and she did this for so long. She was there for like 10 minutes, and then she left, came back, did it again, and then she left, and then she came back wearing something different and rang the doorbell. I was just like this lady really thinks that we’re home, the cars are there because we left them there. If I was home, I wouldn’t know what to do. If I opened the door and she was just standing there, what could have happened? She could have done anything, I don’t know you; you could have attacked me, and I don’t know how she got her car in the gate. We have a gated community, no one lets you in, terrifying.”

“This stuff happens all the time with everyone. Like Liv had one the other day as well, and then there was a whole Roxanne stuff that was going on. People need to understand that wrestling is our passion, that’s our love. But at the same time, you have to understand that that’s our work, and it’s like we go home and we’re different people, and what you see on TV is not what you get outside of TV. So it’s like we’re normal people. Please do not come up to our house. Do not stalk our property, do not threaten to kill us over a storyline on WWE. And it’s craziness like that, and people need to understand boundaries sometimes.”

On deciding on the Riptide as a finisher:

“My finish from the first Mae Young, I was doing that for a hot minute, and I was like this is sh*t. It doesn’t look impactful. It doesn’t look good if people don’t help me, I can’t do it myself. Because, literally, if they’re a little bit taller, I can’t pick them up very high. So I was like, I need to work on something. I went to the PC, and Shane Haste, he was there, and he’s like, I’ll help you work on something. So him, me and Tegan Nox went into this squishy ring that we had, it was like a padded ring where you could do high flying stuff to practice. And it just a nice landing, instead of landing on the normal mat, which sucks when you’re learning.

He was throwing out random moves and then we got onto the pump handle slam. And I was like, that’s kind of cool, I like that one. I’d watch the video a little bit to see how it was performed, looks like it could be really impactful. So I did it with Tegan in the squishy ring for the first time. I said I like that. I think I’m gonna stick with this. It was at the time where everyone’s trying to find a finishing move, and if you’re not on TV, you’ve got to keep your stuff hidden, because people will steal it. So it was like, I hit it a couple of times, and I was like, Okay, I think it’s good. Filmed it, had it on camera, and then I hid it away until the second Mae Young Classic. I hid it away for so long, and I was like, I can’t let anyone see this move, because someone’s going to do it on TV before me, and I can’t get booked to save my life. I had to wait all the way to the second Mae Young Classic, where I finally pulled it out and hit it.”

On whether anything hurts due to wrestling:

“Normally my lower back, especially lately, I don’t know what’s been going on. I think it actually started from the match I had with Raquel in NXT, where she gave me the back body drop onto the announce table, but we undershot it and I hit the very edge of the table, like right on my lower back. After that, my lower back was never the same. But I mean, I do whatever I can to try and make it better. I have a masseuse Matthew come over and he works on it. He helps stretch me out, and puts my hips back in line pretty much, and just fixes all that. And thank God for him that he comes over to help. Because sometimes it gets really bad. I didn’t think that I would be able to wrestle at WrestleMania 41.“

On possibly missing Mania 41:

“WrestleMania 41, I didn’t think I was going to be able to compete because my back was so bad leading up to it. The two nights beforehand, I got [my masseuse] Matthew to come to my room, and he worked on me the night before Hall of Fame and the night of Hall of Fame. I was like, I need you to make sure I can walk tomorrow. And he worked on me those two nights, and it loosened completely just in time for the match. Then after the match, it was okay, and then, slowly, because I’ve been wrestling more, it’s just slowly tightens up, but that’s because I just don’t stretch on my own, so that’s my fault as well. It gets really bad. I don’t know if it’s a sciatic thing or whatnot, or just my body in itself, the shape of my body and how I’m put together. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s something. But it does go down, and it definitely revs up sometimes, and sometimes it’s just bearable.”

What is Rhea Ripley grateful for?

“My husband, my dogs, family, my journey and my fans.”

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Ethan Page On Working With The Rock In WWE, CM Punk, NXT North American Championship, Ricky Saints

in LATEST EPISODES on June 24, 2025 January 30, 2026

https://cvvtix.com – Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in NYC with VIP Meet & Greet!

Ethan Page (@OfficialEGO) is a professional wrestler signed to WWE and the current NXT North American Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at Insight Live at the Hollywood Improv to discuss his brutal match with Ricky Saints where he won the title, his backstage segment with The Rock, taking a GTS from CM Punk on the NXT on CW premiere, possibly becoming a Grand Slam Champion and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” ―Henry Ford

On his brutal match with Ricky Saints:

“Haven’t been arrested! Well he hasn’t been back to work. So, I mean, there’s a good and bad in that, depending on who you’re asking. For me, I think it’s good. I would like to just add it to the list of terrible things I’ve done to human beings at work and gotten away with it.”

On his mean streak in NXT:

“A part of me that I’ve known has been there my whole life, and then Shawn Michaels pulling it out of me. I don’t know, maybe he just sees a little of his crazy ass in mine, and he’s just like, hey, let’s be some pricks together.”

On a possible babyface turn:

“That’s an interesting question. It would take a lot in me to be nice to strangers [laughs]. At this stage in my career, with the amount of things that I feel like fans expect from me, I don’t know if I would ever like to be nice.”

On being NXT North American Champion:

“What an interesting question. It means a lot to me, and the more I think about it, I think it should mean a lot more to NXT. There was a moment in my NXT career where I was challenging Tony D for the North American Championship, and I told him in the locker room that this championship was beneath me, and now I’m sitting here holding this same championship, and I wanted to address that. After some time and thinking and using my logical brain in professional wrestling, which usually doesn’t work out, I came to the conclusion that the North American Championship is actually the most prestigious championship in NXT. I mean, Oba Femi, current NXT Champion. In description he’s the champion of NXT, which its home base is in Orlando at the Performance Center. So Oba Femi is the champion of the Performance Center. Ethan Page is the champion of three entire countries. Meaning that this championship is also higher than the United States Championship. So I wanted to actually thank Jacob Fatu for doing such a great job representing the US, as his superior. Because, born in Canada, made in America, and tomorrow will be beating some Mexican luchadors. I am the greatest North American to ever hold the North American Championship, and this is truly the championship in NXT. Prove me wrong.”

On his NXT debut:

“[It came together] Very quickly, within like a week or two. I just ended up getting a phone call. This story might already be out there, but I was in between events. I was flying from Winnipeg. I had to go to Detroit and then drive from Detroit to Ohio for Revolver wrestling. And in between my connections, WWE called and offered me a job. And I did not think the call was real. The first call happened, they hung up, and I was like, Yep, that was a crank call. Then the second call came, and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, wait, this is real?!’ And they’re like, ‘Yes, we would like to offer you a contract.’ I was like, very nice.”

On winning the NXT Championship in record time:

“Let’s just add to that stat as well. Magically, because of how amazing I am. I won both singles championships in less than 365 days. It was 364, but still less than a year.”

On taking a GTS from CM Punk after losing the title on the CW premiere:

“Let’s also talk about how that was the last thing people saw on that episode is confetti falling in my stupid face after CM Punk knocked me out in the middle of the ring. You know what? There was some joy that I got out of it. It was the fact that Trick Williams won the championship. But the last thing people saw was my stupid face.”

On his segment with The Rock:

“To me, doing anything with him was always the dream. I was very fortunate enough to be given the chance to pull him to the side and tell him what it meant to see something that I created on my own and envisioned my whole life would be on screen with my favorites. To do it with my actual number one, and in the position that he’s in, and what he’s been doing for the last couple of years. The amount of things that needed to fall into place for this to happen, pretty crazy. But I was very glad that I was able to express that to him and to get some one-on-one time, and then it just kept extending, he gave me great advice, and he’s turned me into an absolute menace. Because, I mean, when the person you look up to the most, pretty much tells you to not hold back. Yeah, you ain’t gonna hold back. I’m sorry Ricky Saints about your throat.”

On how much inspiration he took from The Rock:

“Quite a bit, honestly. Mostly, I would say just in the confidence to say and do whatever you feel like out there, like on a microphone or in front of an audience. He’s someone that’s completely comfortable in doing some ridiculous things, or what he finds entertaining, or what he finds funny, but he’s always, I feel like just at that perfect level of charisma, and I tried to keep the energy the same and give people their money’s worth when I’m entertaining them.”

On the biggest pinch-me moments:

“The obvious one would be to be on screen with The Rock, but having Undertaker backstage very often because they’re filming the LFG stuff, and he’s just constantly there, that is sometimes the most surreal. Mostly just because, I mean, I’m just having a conversation with a wrestler of that status and the amount of, I mean, just for him to compliment me at all is a pinch me moment. I won’t get too much into it. But yeah, I’ve had a couple with him, and those have all blown me away.”

On working with Shawn Michaels:

“I mean, that’s crazy too. There are many days where I show up to work and I can’t believe the cast of characters that I’m around. Yeah, I can’t say enough good things about working for and with Shawn Michaels, I’ve never had that good of a relationship with anyone in that position in my career. So it blows my mind that I get along with one of the greatest wrestlers of all time.”

On getting put through a table at the 2300 Arena

“D-Von brought that table out. What a jerk. Okay, I’ll give you something positive out of this, and then I’ll give you a little funny story too. The positive is that I had one of the worst matches of my entire career on my 19th birthday, which is ironic, because I turned 19 in America, would have made me legal drinking age in Canada, but I decided to go have a bad match in the ECW Arena instead, that match haunted me my entire life. So I have spent many years in that hole in the wall of a building. So to get to redeem myself and to go back there with the WWE was very cool. And a little backstory, I ended up winning that match, even though I was dealing with an infection that day, and my entire body broke out into hives, and we had to get that under control before the match. So yeah, I’m pretty much the most hardcore guy that’s ever wrestled in the ECW arena. Just saying, your little cuts on your forehead, don’t give a crap. My whole body sucked that day.”

On his SmackDown appearance:

“To actually perform on SmackDown, yeah, that was last week or the week before, and I was on commentary, which caught me off guard. Was very happy that so many people got to hear my voice for that long.”

They just let you run your mouth

“Oh, they sure did. They sure did. And I’m happy that they did. And if you would like to keep letting me Triple H, I would love it.”

What is Ethan Page grateful for?

“My family, my health, and the professional wrestler WWE has made me become.”

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Cora Jade (Elayna Black) On WWE Release, CM Punk, AEW, OnlyFans

in LATEST EPISODES on June 19, 2025 January 30, 2026

Elayna Black (@ElaynaBlack) is a professional wrestler best known for her time in WWE as Cora Jade. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss getting released from WWE and why it wasn’t a surprise, leaving school at 15 to chase her dreams of becoming a professional wrestler, the first time she met CM Punk and getting to work with him in WWE, dealing with criticism about her wrestling and launching an OnlyFans page, her matches in AEW and possibly becoming All Elite, her current dream match and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.” – Henri Bergson

On being able to process everything that has happened:

“I have. Because I feel like I’ve just sat in my apartment, me and my two little dogs, and I have all week now to just do whatever I want. As opposed to before, I was doing stuff Monday through Saturday, Sunday was my only day off, so it was constant, go, go, go, go, go. It’s the first time I actually feel like in my life I’ve been forced, especially I was forced for 30 days, to just sit and do nothing except think and process and yeah, it was a time, but here we are.”

On messaging Mandy Rose about the release:

“I feel like everyone kind of has a sense. I feel like it just happens. The cuts happen all the time. You see them all the time. I feel like at any time, anyone who works there is going to have some thought in the back of their head that it could be over. So I feel like it could be a shock, and it was. But at the same time, I was always ready for it. I think it was like two weeks before I had texted Mandy, and I was like, ‘Hey, I think I’m getting fired. I need to have some advice.’ She was like, ‘Girl, whatever happens, you’re gonna be fine.’ Immediately, she got all the research resources for me, all the advice. She’s literally so helpful. She’s been not only like a wrestling mother to me, but like a business and management type mother to me, just seeing what she’s been able to do with her life and how much she’s helped me, just in this short period of time of me, it’s literally been the month since I was released. She’s helped me so much, and I can’t say enough good things about Mandy.”

On how she feels now:

“I feel good. I feel like the up and down has kind of passed now, where it would be like I was feeling okay some days, and then I would be really sad the next day. At this point, I feel good. I’m at a very emotionally calm state. I feel free. I feel like I have the world ahead of me. I feel like I have so many creative ideas that now no one is able to tell me no or not listen to the ideas. It’s all in my hands now. And yeah, a little bit of that can be scary, that it’s all in my hands now. But that’s also the best feeling that it’s all in my hands now, and any idea I want to do, any avenue I want to pursue, anything ever is mine, and that’s all I ever wanted. So I feel really good.”

On why she felt like the release was coming:

“I don’t know. I feel like people have asked me that a few times, and I don’t know exactly what it is, nothing specific happened. I’ve just always kind of been like that. I feel like a handful of my friends that I had talked to. I specifically remember talking to Roxanne, she’s my best friend, and I was like, I know I’m gonna be gone and [she said] you’re crazy, no no. But I always know, in my intuition, when something is happening. I don’t know what that is, I just had that feeling. And at the end of Vegas, we had that whole WrestleMania week. I remember on my flight back, I was just like, well, that’s a wrap. That was it. I just knew. And then what was it? I got fired, May 2. It was two weeks later, after Mania, it was like, well, I already knew that was happening.”

On whether she was surprised by the release:

“I feel like, overall, yes. But if you had asked me, just because of my intuition, in those like few weeks leading up to it, I would have said no. I kind of felt that it was coming, again, not because something specific had happened. It was just that gut feeling. But I feel like, overall, I was a little bit surprised. Because two days prior to my release, I had went in and had a meeting with said person two days before and I had given so many ideas. I had set aside my personal feelings for this person, given so many ideas, was very professional, we had what I felt like was a great conversation. He’s pulling out his laptop, typing all these ideas, basically gaslighting me, and then two days later I get fired. So it was like, why even do that? Why have me give you all these ideas? You asked me to come in for this meeting. I had asked to have a meeting prior, but you asked me to come in on that day, at that time, typing in all these ideas. And then two days later, you can’t even respond to a text.”

On missed opportunities in WWE:

“I feel like, obviously, there are things that I didn’t get to do. But at the same time, like you said, that was my dream. I was eight years old, I watched wrestling and I immediately wanted to be a WWE superstar. Then I would look at all my little notebooks, I would have these bucket lists, little lists, and I would cross them off every time I would do something. It would say, get an action figure, have merchandise, wrestle this person, wrestle here, do all this stuff. And then I looked and I was crossing off so many of those things. Really, the only one I didn’t cross off was wrestling at WrestleMania, or winning the NXT Championship, or obviously any other championship. But I had gotten to do so many things that my little eight-year-old self [could only dream of]. I would lay in my bed and dream of doing those things at night. So again, obviously there are things that were disappointing and stuff like that, but never will I sh*t on WWE or trash WWE. I loved my time there. Obviously, when you care about something and you’re passionate about something, things are going to bother you. It’s because I care, it’s not because I’m like, oh f*ck this, whatever. I care about wrestling so much, and I love wrestling so much, and it is my dream and it is my passion. So yes, things did bother me, and things did upset me, because I’m only human, and I’m a human who cares about my passion, my job. So obviously, that’s gonna come up, but at the same time, I can’t say enough good things about the people I got to work with, the things I got to do, all the dreams I got to accomplish. I loved my time at WWE so much, and especially those last six months, I got to do it with Roxanne, with Bayley, with Giulia, Stephanie, all these girls I became so close with and I got to travel with them and do all these great matches and storylines with them. I loved my time at WWE so much. Were there things that upset me? Yes. Am I bitter or anything like that? Absolutely not. I’m only 24 years old. Who knows what the future holds? I’ll never burn a bridge because I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if I’ll be back there one day. I don’t know where I’ll end up, but all I know is that I loved WWE, and I loved my time there, and I have no bad things to say about them.”

On dropping out of school at 15 to chase her dreams:

“I don’t know. I was always pretty good at school, just by nature, but it was never for me. I never participated in any sport in school, besides soccer when I was in middle school. But I never wanted to do any extra activities. School was just not my thing. I hated it. I just wanted to be home watching wrestling. I remember, I think I was like 15 years old, and I had found a wrestling school that was 45 minutes to an hour away, and they were training. Obviously, indie training is very different. It’s kind of like do it yourself, create your own times, and whatever you want to do. It’s not like a college sport where you train from 6 to 8 pm, it was kind of we just did whatever we wanted. So I had found this school, and they would train sometimes from 7 pm to like 1 am sometimes, just because we just did whatever we wanted. Everyone loved wrestling there, and it was like this little warehouse in Chicago with no heat or air no matter the time of the season. So we’re just either freezing or sweating to death at all times. But that’s what wrestling was, and that’s what I loved about it. But I found that place, and they were training like that, and I couldn’t drive. So my poor mom, she would drive me to training. It was like 45 minutes to an hour away, and then sometimes she would sit there till one in the morning and be freezing to death. She would have jackets and blankets. Or in the summertime, she’d be sweating to death because it was either so hot or so cold in there, and I couldn’t drive, and she wasn’t going to just pick me up because it was far away. So I remember I was just like, I can’t do this while being in school and having to wake up at six in the morning. I think they agreed with me, especially because she was driving me and seeing the dedication it was taking and the hours it was taking, and the toll. It was kind of hard to go to school when they kind of knew I didn’t really want to do anything with college. So I remember I asked them if I could, or I think I had found a place that you could get your high school diploma in a year online, or whatever. So I found that, and then I remember I either wrote them a really, really long note or made a PowerPoint. I don’t remember what I did, because I also tried to do that when I wanted a hamster one time, I made them a PowerPoint. [Did you get the hamster?] Yeah, it’s very convincing. So I was like, I’ve done it before. I could do it again.”

On why she thought she could be a success at 15:

“Honestly? I don’t know. I feel like at first I didn’t realize that it was something normal people could do. I remember just watching it and not really realizing, and then one day, my dad was like, you know that real people do that? You could be a wrestler. And I don’t know why in my head, it didn’t click. I just thought, I don’t know, they were like superheroes, because that’s what they look like. But for some reason after that, I was like, okay, maybe I can do this. And from that moment on, I just wanted to be a wrestler. I think before that, I wanted to be a dolphin trainer at the zoo. I don’t know, but, like I said, it’s so completely far opposite. But once I become obsessed with something, that’s all I see.”

On meeting CM Punk as a child:

“It was a Christmas present from my family, because they used to do the holiday tour, and they would always do Chicago and then Madison Square Garden. I believe Chicago was always the day after Christmas. It was always December 26, so that was my Christmas present. They got me floor seats. Punk was my favorite, obviously. I remember he came out at the end, and he just went around and signed stuff for everybody, and I was like, now’s my chance. I was so happy. I think I cried after, but that picture is just ridiculous. And then I think he quit WWE like, a month after that picture, and I took it so personally. I was the saddest person in the entire f*cking world. But, yeah, that’s that picture. Then I after he quit WWE, then there’s that video of me crying, meeting him again. I think it was the second time I met him, but it was after he had quit WWE. It was a year and a half later, and I was like, Oh my God. I thought I’d never see him again.”

Did he remember you when you got hired by WWE?

“Yeah, it was weird. My return. It was right after I had come back from getting my boobs done in December of 2023, it was for Deadline. He was coming to NXT, and that was the first time I had seen him since I was a fan. But he remembered me because anytime he would do anything in Chicago, because I lived in Chicago, and so did he, I would be the first in line for every single thing, borderline crazy, now that I’m thinking about it. [How many times?] Probably like 10 times I was there, every time it got to the point where he would remember me in the line, and he would laugh at me because I would be first in line every single time. We laugh about it. Now I’m like, Jesus Christ.”

On the best advice she has received from CM Punk:

“I feel like he’s told me a lot of things, in very different situations, but I feel like the number one thing is to just drown out what everyone else is saying, because I feel like he knows it better than anybody. Everyone has an opinion on him, whether you absolutely love him, or you absolutely hate him. Everyone has an opinion on CM Punk, and I’ve always wondered, how does he just continue to be himself and not give a sh*t when there’s a million different opinions from a million different places. But he’s really, really always helped me just understand that it doesn’t matter. People are always going to say something. They’re going to love you or they’re going to hate you, and either way, it doesn’t matter, because you just have to be you and do what you feel is right and stay true to yourself and if people support you, great. That’s great motivation. But if they don’t, and they don’t like you, and they don’t want to watch what you do, or they want to watch what you do and criticize it, that’s still your name in their mouth, and someone’s talking about you and you’re doing something right.”

On dealing with criticism:

“I feel like my work is one thing, because everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. I grew up a wrestling fan. There were people I didn’t like and I didn’t know them as a person. I feel like you’re entitled to your opinion about my work. If you don’t like me as a wrestler, as a character, that’s fine. When you come for me as a person and you start saying things that aren’t true, like the injury prone thing when you had no idea that I literally almost died, that’s where it’s like f*ck you, because you want to say all these things and expect me to be quiet because you don’t view me as a person. You view me as an object, online or on TV. But then when I snap back, it’s like, whoa, relax. No! You just thought you can poke and poke and poke and poke, but I am a human being. Am I going to sit there and respond to every comment? No. But there comes a point where it’s like, no, you need to understand that you’re wrong. And I just don’t think enough people do that.”

On backlash for launching an OnlyFans:

“I feel like I’ve gotten as much hate for it as I thought I was going to. I didn’t think I was gonna do it, and people were gonna be like, Oh, f*ck yeah. I knew I was gonna get hate for it. But again, it’s just, I don’t care.”

Why do people have a problem with it?

“That’s what I don’t understand. I’ve said this before. I’ve never once in my life looked at someone else’s life and what they’re doing with their life. If it’s not affecting me, my money, or who I love or anybody in my life, I don’t care. I’ve never thought about that. So the fact that people are so concerned with what I’m doing with my body, my career and my life, and being that angry about it. Most of them are going to subscribe anyway, it’s ridiculous.”

On how the launch has been:

“Probably the best career decision I’ve ever made. My grandkids will be rich.”

On getting advice from Mandy Rose about the content:

“She’s been so helpful. I knew I wanted to do OnlyFans after wrestling, whenever that was, but just seeing what Mandy’s been able to do. Obviously she, I don’t wanna say she came from nothing, because she did swimsuit modeling and stuff like that before WWE, and Tough Enough and stuff like that. But she was not nearly what she is right now. So being what she was doing WWE, and yes, she used the WWE platform to build her name and WWE gave her followers and stuff like that, but what she has taken from her time in WWE and what she is now. She’s like one of the craziest businesswomen I’ve ever seen. She knows what she’s doing, she knows how to handle her money, she knows how to make new money, she knows what opportunities to take. She’s so smart, and I don’t think people give her enough credit where credit’s due. I guess you don’t really realize that until this is all new to me. So having her help and her guidance, and I can call her and be like, hey, Mandy, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Can you help me? And immediately, she has a list of ways to help me. She knows what she’s doing. Same with her husband, Sabbi, they are such smart business people, and they know how to help and they know what to do with their money. So I’m so grateful for them, and just seeing what Mandy has become inspires me.”

On who Elayna Black is:

“I feel like Elayna Black originally, was a very timid, kind of still finding herself, kind of creepy little outcast. And then that kind of blossomed into mean girl Cora Jade. Cora Jade was many things. I feel like it got kind of surface level, though, where it was just like, Okay, I’m just this mean girl, and all the ideas I was giving really weren’t being used. So it kind of just felt like I was the surface level, meh. There was so much more I feel like I wanted to be or could have been, but Cora Jade towards the end, I feel like kind of just felt like a very flat surface-level character.”

On how close she came to signing with AEW:

“I don’t know. I wanted to be because I had seen a lot of my friends and people that I had worked with on the Indies all starting to do Dark, and then they were getting signed. So I did want to go to AEW because I just wanted to go anywhere. I wanted to be a wrestler signed to a company. But I did feel closer to signing to AEW than WWE, because I was doing Dark. I was friends with The Bucks. I had people there that I was close with, and I was having fun there. I loved AEW. I did think I was going to end up there, but WWE randomly, just same month. It was the same month. But the only reason I signed with WWE obviously, I love WWE as well, and wanted to be at WWE one day, but I thought I was going to end up at AEW, but WWE just ended up offering me a contract first.”

On possibly signing with AEW:

“I’m open to whatever. I’m not in any rush to sign anywhere right now. I’m not like sitting here waiting for that. Because I feel like for the first time in my life, I’m trying to be present and just enjoy life now and what’s happening now. Because I feel like a lot of times I was always worried about what’s next, and this business is so go, go, go, go, go. It’s hard to sit and be present. So I feel like I’m trying to just enjoy where I’m at right now and not worry about that,. But if the call came, I would definitely be open to talking and whatever. I’ve watched all the AEW shows since 2020, I never stopped watching them. Just couldn’t talk about it. I love AEW. I love wrestling. I want to continue to wrestle, wherever that is. If the call comes, hey, I’m here, but if it doesn’t for a few months or never, I don’t know, I’m not sitting here stressing about it, but I’m open to it.”

On the WWE storyline that made her feel more at home:

“I feel like once I wrestled Natalya, that was when I was still doing the babyface Cora Jade skater stuff. She really is the best. Not only is she just such a great wrestler, and she knows everything about the business, she’s a genuine, great person, and she’s another one of those people who are so giving and helpful, and doesn’t necessarily have to be. She’s been around forever, her family’s great, she doesn’t have to be as humble and nice as she is, but she is. I was a big fan of her, too. I have a picture of me and Natalya when I was a kid too. But after that match, I just remember, not only was she so helpful to me in the process of putting it together and even in the ring and stuff like that, but I just remember after that match, I felt like, Okay, if I can get through that, I can get through anything. Because it was a hard match to put together, at least more than what I had done before, more intricate. And just listening to Nattie and the way she puts matches together, and how she structures it, and everything like that was all very new for me and felt very overwhelming, but it was a challenge for me, and I felt like, once I overcame that challenge, I felt really, really good. So I feel like, in WWE, after that match, I felt okay, I kind of know my place. I kind of know what I’m doing, and I feel like after that, I felt more confident in myself.”

On her ectopic pregnancy:

“Not only was it an ectopic pregnancy, but it had ruptured. So I lost my entire left fallopian tube. So now I only have one left, which I’m still able to have children and stuff. But now it’s like, I don’t want to risk anything. If I get pregnant, I need to have a healthy pregnancy and make sure it goes through and everything like that. So I want to have kids, and I want to have a family one day. So I don’t want to keep putting a lot of damage on my body. I’m 24, I don’t know how long that is, but I guess it all just depends on where I end up and what I’m doing. But I would like to have a family and stuff like that. So I don’t know how long.”

On the surgery:

“Again, just my intuition. It was nothing really crazy had happened yet. Having the IUD. I don’t know if you’re super familiar, anyone watching, many women won’t get a period on it. You just don’t have your menstrual cycle on it’s just kind of what happens when you’re on it for that long. So I had never really gotten that and then I remember my boyfriend, at the time, was sitting on the couch playing video games. I was sitting there, and I was like, something just doesn’t feel right. I went to the restroom, I was bleeding, and I was like, this isn’t right, and it wasn’t crazy, but I was like, this is not okay. I have a bad feeling. So, long story short, ended up driving me to the hospital, and they had like five or six people ahead of me. So I remember, I got there at like 11 pm and I was already waiting an hour, two hours, and still no one was taking me in. I’m freaking out, I had went to the restroom, and I’m bleeding even more now. So I knew something really, really wasn’t right. So I remember telling them I need to leave. They had already gotten my vitals and stuff, but I don’t think they were taking it as serious as I knew that it was. I had told them you need to discharge me. I need to go to a different hospital, because this is not okay. And I think me saying that made them realize maybe okay, it was more serious than they had thought. I think they thought I was just being dramatic. And it was like, no offense, but the guy who was taking my blood was a male doctor, and I was like, I’m having an ectopic pregnancy, I think. And he’s like, aren’t you on birth control? I’m like, somebody help me, Jesus Christ! But then I think once I said that, they rushed me into an ultrasound, and I think they had told me it’s still gonna be a two-hour wait before the doctor could see me, but they had given me the ultrasound.”

“With an ectopic pregnancy, for anyone who doesn’t know, the egg gets implanted in the fallopian tube. It’s supposed to be in the uterus, but then, obviously, eventually, if it gets the baby grows too big, it ruptures the uterus, and that’s when the internal bleeding happens, and that’s when it’s very, very dangerous, because you can die pretty quickly after that. Most people catch it before it ruptures. I guess I didn’t. I just didn’t know. And they’re doing the ultrasound, and I knew something was off, because she starts taking a little bit longer than I think it was supposed to. Then they’re wheeling me back, and then they’re like, Okay, the doctor is waiting for you. I was like, the doctor is waiting for me? You told me it was gonna be a two-hour wait. What the hell is going on? Then they roll me in and they’re like, Yeah, you’re having an ectopic pregnancy. It ruptured, so your left fallopian tube has completely exploded, and you’re internally bleeding pretty bad, so we need to rush you into emergency surgery. I was supposed to wrestle Lyra Valkyria the next day on NXT, and I remember thinking, thank God I didn’t, but I remember thinking I’ll go to the hospital after the match tomorrow, I just need to get through the match. Just need to get through the match. I would be dead. So thank God I listened to my intuition and I went, because they skipped everybody and rushed me into emergency surgery within an hour. I have like, three scars, one here, one in my belly button, and then one on the other side. But they had to remove my left fallopian tube, and now I only have the right one, which is fine. You can still have children and everything, but like I said, it’s a little bit more risky now. So I don’t know how long I want to keep putting all this damage and stuff on my body. I want to have kids.”

How long were you out for?

“I think it was like the end of January. I missed Stand and Deliver, but I remember I was cleared right before Stand and Deliver, and I was really upset that I was missing it, because I was like, I’m cleared. So I think it was only two months, but then just the postpartum depression after that, which I didn’t even realize. I always knew it was a thing, but I guess I didn’t realize how serious it was, or that it was so serious. Even in that case where I didn’t even technically have the baby, but I was still, I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I was borderline about to kill myself. It got really, really bad, so I just had to take time off. And that’s when I went and I got my boobs done, which I had always wanted to get done, but I used it as an excuse to take time off because I needed it mentally. And then I was like okay, maybe I’ll feel more confident, and I’ll have taken this time off mentally and everything like that. So I went and I did that, and I did feel better mentally after I took that time to really get myself together, therapy and all that kind of stuff. Then when I came back, I felt really, really good. And then came back in December, tore my knee January 12, I think it was. Then I had just went through, like, a horrible breakup, too. Yeah, then I was living on like, the third floor of an apartment complex with no elevator, I had a dog, and I’m living newly by myself. Just tore my knee. My mom had to live with me for two months because I couldn’t do anything. It was the worst time of my life.”

On how she feels now:

“I feel great. I feel like probably the best mentally I have in, I want to say years. Obviously, sh*t has happened and you get through it and stuff like that. But I feel very at peace. I feel okay financially, I feel great in my career now with the freedom that I have, I’m excited for the things I have coming up. I just feel like, I don’t know what the term is, but the world’s in the palm of my hands.”

On a possible Mercedes Mone match:

“That’s my current dream match. I feel like her and Bayley were my favorites out of the four Horsewomen. I loved all of them, but I feel like I really, really looked up to them two specifically. I feel like I just felt the most connected to them two because Mercedes was always writing in her notebook too. And I feel like I look at her and see aspects of myself too. So to be able to wrestle her now, where we both have had our time in WWE and we’re both doing our own thing now and doing whatever we want creatively, I feel like that is the ultimate dream match.”

What is Cora Jade grateful for?

“My dogs, the opportunity to continue what I love and friends and family.”

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Shotzi On Life After WWE, Shaving Her Head On TV, Return From Injury, Horror Movies, Scarlett

in LATEST EPISODES on June 17, 2025 January 30, 2026

Shotzi (@ShotziTCB) is a professional wrestler best known for her time in WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles to discuss her time in WWE coming to an end and what’s next, missed dream matches, how her tank entrance was created and where the tank is today, suffering an injury on NXT and the return, getting married in Las Vegas and wrestling that night in her wedding dress, her love of horror movies and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” — John Wooden

On her time in WWE coming to an end:

“My situation is different than others, because I had my injury for like nine months that I was gone from that. Then I was at NXT for a small stint, and then I wasn’t on TV for a little bit. So I was ready for it. I feel like I had already done the grieving process, and I was already out of the locker room for a little bit. So it didn’t come as a shock to me. I was just like, Okay, now I get to work.”

On expecting the call:

“I don’t know. Honestly, I felt like I had a good run at NXT, and I was hopeful that there would be something for me at SmackDown. I kept getting little glimpses of ‘Okay, we’re gonna run with this storyline,’ or this or this. It wasn’t until around Mania that I started to think maybe they’re not gonna re-sign me, because it was just like storylines getting cut week after week. Then I was just like, Okay, I see where this might be going.”

On a storyline that was cut:

“I mean, they had teased that I would start something with Chelsea, but it just never happened. They called me into SmackDown a few times, and then every time I would come in, it was cut.”

On what’s next:

“I just want to wrestle again, because I was gone so long for my ACL injury, and then I was off TV for a little bit. So I’m just so excited to get back into it. I miss it so much. I might have already made my debut by the time this airs.”

On her social media promo:

“I had a lot of coworkers message me saying that it was like the greatest promo that they’ve ever seen me cut. A lot of people thought I was released, and that was me saying that I was released, but I hadn’t gotten the call yet. [It came] maybe, like, two days later, maybe.”

Because of the promo?

“No, because they were making their cuts the next day and then it just lumped me in with that. So, yeah, I don’t think that that promo stirred the pot. I mean, it could have. I’ll never know.”

On the segment that meant the most to her in WWE:

“The first thing that comes to mind is shaving my head on TV for my sister. That was something that just meant a lot to me. I didn’t get a ton of storylines in my time there, but that was the one that was just personal and for my family.”

On how the segment was pitched:

“So I went to Hunter. I went straight to him, and I was just like, ‘Hey, my sister’s going through this, and I really want to support her in a big way. I just want her to see this and know that I’m connected.'”

On her green hair:

“So my hair was red before this, like bright red, Eva Marie red. At the time, Eva Marie was there, and she had red hair. I was going in for tryouts, and I would run into her, and I’m like I should probably dye my hair. I should probably stay away from her look, because that’s her thing. So I was like, I’ll do green, no one really does green. So, yeah, that was kind of the backstory behind that. Also I love monsters, like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, all that stuff, it’s such a monster color.”

On her first tattoo:

“My dad took me to get my first tattoo when I was 15, and it was the drama masks, the happy and sad, because I was super into theater, that was my first love, I wanted to be on Broadway. It took my mom some convincing to let me get a tattoo that young, but my dad was like, hell yeah! If your mom says yes, let’s go. I still have it. It’s here on my shoulder.”

On coming up with the name Shotzi:

“So I was in this musical when I was a junior in high school called Starmites, and I played Shotzi, who’s this evil Banshee, alien lady. And yeah, it just kind of stuck. Everyone called me Shotzi after I played that role, and I just took it with me. So I’ve been Shotzi since I was 16.”

On returning to Hood Slam:

“I think I’m just excited more than anything. I know the Hood Slam crowd is crazy. It’s just a wild party, and it always sells out, so I know they’re going to be hyped. I don’t know if they’ll know who I am, just because most of the Hood Slam crowd is just like college kids partying. It’s not truly wrestling fans, but I hope that some will remember me. It’s been like five years since I’ve been at Hood Slam.”

On hosting Halloween Havoc:

“It’s crazy, because I didn’t even know that Halloween Havoc was coming back. I thought to myself, because I’m a huge Elvira fan, and she would show up at Halloween Havoc a bunch. I was like if I could just host a Halloween Havoc like Elvira, that would be chef’s kiss, that would just make my life, that’s all I need, and for it to happen in my first year at WWE was just crazy.”

On the tank:

“So I found this Mini Tank at Walmart, and I bought it for the Indies. I used it only on a couple of shows, because obviously I can’t travel with that tank, I don’t have the buses that WWE does. So for local shows, I would come out in the tank. There were actually some indie promotions that were like, we bought one for our show, and they would bring me in, and I’d have a little tank there, but I sent Hunter a video of my little mini Walmart tank, and he was like, ‘Can you get it to Full Sail tomorrow?’ And I was like, Oh, yes. And I ordered an Uber XL to get this Mini Tank over to Full Sail.”

On whether the tank will make an appearance post-WWE?

“I’m still trying to get that tank back. Because Okay, so my little tank, they actually cut in half to make the bigger tank that you see on TV. So half of that is mine, which is the point that I made. I was like, ‘Can I have half of the tank, or maybe all of it?’ So, I mean, I’m willing to drive to Connecticut and get it out of the warehouse, if I have to.”

On her NXT injury:

“It was just kind of a freak accident. It’s not that far of a drop, and it was a move that I had done like a million times, and I just landed funky. I heard the pop. I felt it. It was painful to where your ears ring. But I think adrenaline kicked in a few seconds after that, and then I thought I was good, even though I heard the pop and it hurt really bad, I don’t know, I think when adrenaline kicked in, I was just like, ‘Wait, no, I’m fine. I can go. Please, let me go.’ But I had already told the ref that I heard the pop, and when he heard me say that, he was like, ‘Yeah, we can’t let you continue.’ I was like, ‘No, I’m really good, please let me just wrestle.'”

On her return from injury:

“At the time I came back, I kind of thought okay, I’ll probably be a surprise for Rumble. It was like December, so I figured, okay, they’re probably gonna wait for Rumble, and I just didn’t want to wait that long. I was like I’ve already been sitting at home for 10 months. I don’t want to wait any longer. So that’s when I asked if I could do some stuff at NXT. They were immediately like, yeah, absolutely, and I think I started that week.”

On missed dream matches:

“Asuka was always a dream match of mine. I got to wrestle her on a bunch of live events, but never one on one on TV. So I would have loved to do something with her. Alexa Bliss I was always a huge fan of. I loved tagging with Charlotte. But I mean, more recently forming the group with Gigi and Tatum. I really loved working with those girls and I thought we would be the new chick DX. I was really in love with us.”

On her wedding and wrestling that night:

“That is something that I’m so grateful for that WWE let me do. So I got married in Vegas, and this was completely unplanned. We had been engaged for a few months, and we were planning a big wedding, and I got booked on a Vegas live event after the holidays. I turned to my husband, and I was like, ‘What if we just eloped in Vegas?’ He was like, ‘Yes! Absolutely, let’s do that.’ I’m so glad we did it, because it was so stress-free and so much fun. And then when we decided that we were gonna do that, I hit up Road Dogg. And I was like, ‘Hey, I’m getting married before the Vegas live event. Can I wrestle in my wedding dress and can we make it a whole thing?’ He was like, Absolutely. Road Dogg is so down for the fun stuff. So yeah, he was game on. That’s probably my favorite WWE memory.”

On hitting Baron Corbin with the tank:

“It actually took 30 takes. Corbin wanted it to be good. He was on a mission. So I was just like aiming, so ridiculous. It took so long. So he had to do that whole promo, and then boom. Then if it missed, then do that whole promo again and hit him. But even the last take he was not satisfied with. He just sold it really well. But I really appreciate that he cared so much that we got him in the balls that well.”

What is Shotzi grateful for?

“My community, my health and my creativity.”

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Why James Storm Never Signed With WWE, Beer Money, America’s Most Wanted, TNA Championship

in LATEST EPISODES on June 12, 2025 January 30, 2026

James Storm (@JamesStormBrand) is an actor and professional wrestler best known for his time in TNA. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles to discuss his legendary TNA career, his partnerships with Chris Harris and Bobby Roode, becoming World Champion, being a part of the infamous blindfold steel cage match and reverse battle royal, the train track segment with Mickie James, why his time in WWE didn’t turn into more, making the transition to acting, when he plans on retiring and more!

James Storm and Chris Van Vliet star in “The Worst Man”, which is out in the fall

Quote I’m thinking about: “Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.” ― John Lennon

On whether it is difficult paying his dues in another industry:

“Yeah, in a way it is, but also I had to learn to dumb it down a lot, especially in acting. Because in wrestling, you got to be loud and you got to make sure the people in the back row hear you, and that’s who you’re catering to. Whereas acting, you just have the camera and you have a microphone on you, so I had to be sure to reel it in a whole lot and just kind of tone it down.”

On how acting differs to cutting a wrestling promo:

“The funny thing is in wrestling, I’m “The Cowboy” James Storm, so it’s okay to have the southern accent and everything. Whereas in the movies, I’ve had to take dialect classes to kind of tone down the southern accent. But I’m learning now that a lot of these directors and movie people are going toward at least one character in their film with a southern accent, because it’s so desirable now, which is good for me.”

On his love of acting:

“I really wanted to find something that gives me that same adrenaline rush. Being in front of the camera, in front of five to ten thousand people to me now it’s the same as when I’m in front of five or ten people in a room. As soon as that director says action, it’s just something about being in front of that camera and that adrenaline rush. I think that’s what hurts a lot of wrestlers when they want to get out of wrestling, is they can’t find that thing that fills that desire of that adrenaline rush, because it is one of the craziest things ever. I tell people it’s a drug. Once you experience it, especially at a high level, it’s hard just to go to a nine-to-five job. It’s almost impossible.”

Is that why you’re still doing it?

“I think it is. It doesn’t matter if it’s in front of 30-50 people. When the music hits, it’s just something that kind of comes over you, and you just go out. To me, what I’ve learned and what Mr. Perfect taught me a long time ago. He goes, you’re going to learn as you get older in your career that it’s not about the wrestling moves, it’s about the emotions that you leave people with. Because people will remember that emotion that you left them with long after you’re gone. They won’t remember what moves you did in the match, but they will remember, oh man, it was awesome. That’s how I was as a kid when I went to the Nashville fairgrounds. My grandfather took me. I don’t remember anything else that night, but I remember Jerry Lawler picking up Tojo Yamamoto and let my grandfather hit him. I was seven years old, just the expression on my grandfather’s face, I’ll never forget it.”

So you’re still wrestling now?

“Well, yeah, I call it wrestling [laughs]. But I enjoy it because now I’m getting to help teach these young guys. I don’t teach them how to wrestle. I try to teach them how to work. That’s why I try to tell a lot of guys is WWE and AEW and all these other promotions, they have people that can do every move you can think of doing. What they’re really focusing on now is people that really know how to work and relate to a crowd and stuff.”

On his first break in wrestling being WCW:

“There was a guy named Bert Prentice that used to run in Nashville. I always tell everybody, I think he ran the best local indie promotion that’s ever been, because he had access to guys from OVW, and then also he had in with WCW as well. But also, when he was running Music City Wrestling, he had me, Chris Harris, AJ Styles would come up, David Young, Elix Skipper, and then also the Hardys would be there, Shane Helms, Shannon Moore, all these guys would come in. But then I was working, installing home security systems, and my boss came to him. He goes, ‘Hey, you might want to take this one, this guy’s a wrestler.’ I looked at it, and it said Ronald Harris on it. I was like, Huh? So I go to it and ring the doorbell, and Ron Harris opens the door. I’m like, oh man, it’s really him. So I go in and I install this alarm. But of course, after I get done, I do this dumb, rookie thing, ‘Hey, man, I’m training to be a pro wrestler too.’ He’s like, ‘Okay, kid. Hopefully we get to work together one day or whatever. It was three weeks later I wind up going up to WCW, and the first person I saw was Ron Harris, and he comes back, goes, ‘Alarm guy! You did it!’ So, yeah, that was kind of my big break. It was really cool. I remember going up there and I had to work Chavo, and everything was basically called in the back. I was not used to that, because in Nashville, we just call the finish, and then everything else was called out there. So you can’t see it in the match, but I actually had my spots written on my hand, because I was just like, there’s no way I’m gonna memorize all these lines, all these spots and stuff. But it winded up being a good match.”

On whether there was a possibility of signing with WWE after WCW closed:

“I heard rumblings about it, because they were also looking at AJ, because AJ was one of the guys that went up with us too, to WCW. It was me, Chris Harris, AJ, Cassidy Riley, and Air Paris, where Air Paris and AJ got signed as Air Raid at the time. Quick, funny story. So when the whole deal with me and this guy named Cassidy Riley, we were doing a paramedic gimmick on one of the WCW pay-per-views. It just happened to be the pay-per-view where Sid breaks his leg. So we’re sitting there, and we’re like, oh, that’s horrible. And the guys come back and start yelling at us, ‘Get out there! He broke his leg!’ We’re like, ‘We’re not real [paramedics]. I have no clue what I’m doing.’ They were just dog-cussing us, ‘Get the f out there! He broke his leg!’ Thank God the real paramedics finally came through. But that’s one of the stories I had there. But yeah, there were ramblings about it. But then TNA was starting up, and they were doing a dry run in Nashville at Bert Prentice’s show for their announcers. So Bert wanted to kind of get the best of best talent that he had to put on the show. It just so happens me and Chris Harris were working each other that night, and we actually got signed that night because of our match that we had at the Nashville fairgrounds for TNA. They had no clue what to do with us when they signed us as well.”

On an alternate timeline where he could have been working with WWE while at TNA:

“I mean, it would have been unbelievable, but that’s one of those things. Don’t ever ask what if? Just keep on moving.”

On Joe Hendry entering the Royal Rumble as TNA World Champion:

“I actually almost shed a tear. Because I was happy for Joe, but I was really happy for TNA. People can say whatever they want to say about oh, this was not a good look. No, it was a good look. It’s the biggest show of the year, and they have another company’s belt in shot.”

On wanting to be a tag team performer:

“I did, and it’s funny, because a lot of people want to be that big single star and have all the glory and stuff. But I grew up with the Rock N’ Roll Express and watching Demolition and The Road Warriors. So I always wanted to be a tag team wrestler, and there’s an art to it. If you can get two really good tag teams together, I think, especially with four guys, they can put on a way better match than just a singles match. But at that time in TNA, and a lot of times in WWE now, it seems like the tag teams are just a second thought. That was really good with Beer Money, we kind of brought tag team wrestling to the front because it was us, then the Machine Guns and LAX, and then you bring in Dudley Boyz, Team 3D as well, and it was just all these teams now coming together, and now we’re main eventing these pay-per -views and stuff.”

On being paired with Bobby Roode:

“We were coming to the end of our contracts, and I don’t think they really knew what to do with us. So Dutch, he was just like, ‘Just put them together. If anything, we fire them together.’ That’s how I got the Dutch was looking at it. So they put us together, and me and Bob was like, You know what? We’re gonna make the best of this. We’re gonna do what we can to it. The thing with Bobby is, whereas me and Chris had to rely on each other, me and Bobby was already kind of established, so we can just go out there and have fun and just act fools. So they had us as heels, and I made up some dumb merchandise that said Beer Money on it. So they slowly kept pushing the name Beer Money, but they were coming out with a toy line, so they didn’t want to put Beer Money on this toy line that was going to be in Walmart. Which I understand that.”

On where the name Beer Money came from:

“So we were at the Bell House in Orlando, and I’m sitting there, and so it’s like me and Eric and Bobby and somebody else. I’m sitting there, and I’m like, feeling around like, oh God. I said, Well, I’m out of beer money now. Me and Bobby go, let’s try it. Then I said, we got to come up with something so stupid that people will boo us every time we do it. So that’s why we came up with the Beer Money suplex. That is what actually made us over every time we set up for it and we do it, and we go ‘Beer!’ ‘Money!’ We knew we were over when we go to England and we’re facing the British Invasion, and we’re the babyfaces, we were supposed to be the heels, but we had this whole match set up, and when Nick and them come out, they just get booed out of the building. Nick goes, ‘All right, well, I guess you guys are babyfaces now, we’ll take the roles on the heel.’ That’s when we knew that we were over.”

On becoming TNA World Champion

“It was great. A lot of the stuff leading up to it kind of went off course or whatever. Because I beat him, and then the next week I lost it to Bobby, which is fine, because Bobby was going on this big heel run, and then I was supposed to beat him in Arizona in a hardcore match that we were having as well. So the night before he wrestles Kurt and loses, and they didn’t tell him until that day, I believe. They didn’t tell him that Kurt was going to keep the belt, and they didn’t tell me that I was winning the belt until about an hour before we were supposed to go out. So I had this huge match planned with Kurt. It was really cool, because he believed in me enough to put a match together, which was really cool. This is awesome. Then about an hour he came to me and goes, ‘Hey, man. My hamstring is messed up really bad. I can’t really…’ I was like, ‘Hey, man, no problem, we take it easy.’ He goes, ‘How about we do this instead? How about I go out there and just beat you up for a little bit? Then you kick me out of nowhere, and then you take the rest of the time to do you. You’ve earned this spot to go out and celebrate. You do whatever you want to do.’ So when I beat him, I roll over, and I said, thank you very much. He said, ‘Quit laying there, get up and celebrate.’ Yes, sir. So, I mean, it was really cool. I did a lot of driving with him and stuff, and just learned stuff from him. I always say I’ve been very fortunate, because I’ve been able to learn from Dusty Rhodes, Curt Hennig and Kurt Angle.”

On using the Superkick as his finisher:

“When I went to NXT the first time, they had me use a different finisher. Then my second match there, Hunter was like, ‘Hey, what do you want to use?’ I said, Well, my super kick. He goes, ‘Well, everybody uses a Super Kick.’ I looked at him, and I said, ‘Hey man, that’s fine. They knock people down with their Super Kick. I knock people out.’ He goes, ‘All right, you can use it.’ I got to use it in my second match, and then I was going to use it there going forward and everything. It’s fine if people want to use it as a spot, but because that makes mine look all that more devastating, because I actually beat people with mine, especially if you do it right and make it look good.”

On the blindfold steel cage match:

“Oh, man, me and Chris were in this big feud. I was supposed to have put his eye out and everything. So they’re like to even the field, you should have to see like he does, and be in a blindfold match. This isn’t 80s no more. That match is so hard to pull off, especially in those times, even today. I was just like all right, well if that’s what you want to do. Then I was like, Wait, this is inside of an electrified cage too? There’s so many gimmicks going on in here. But thank God the cage wasn’t on when we did it. But it wasn’t until like 30 minutes before our match started that they realized that they didn’t have the blindfolds, so they ran to somewhere and just got two black bags and just put them over our heads that didn’t have draw strings or anything, so they keep falling off. There’s a point in the match when I look at Chris and I said, ‘No, to hell with this, we’re taking it home.’ He’s like, really? I was like, yep. I think it was the beer bottle and for the finish or whatever. I was like, we’re going home. I got to the back, and to his credit, Vince Russo, he was standing right there, he knew it too, and I just lit into him. He goes, ‘I am so sorry, blah, blah, blah. I understand if you want to punch me.’ I said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to punch you. I want to.’ He goes, ‘To make it up, I’ll let you do any match that you want to do.’ And then that’s when we did the Texas death match.”

On getting in trouble during the Hogan/Bischoff era:

“I remember I got in trouble. I got fined. Of course, I got fined so many times, just because I did a promo where I was saying, ‘The days of someone coming out here and talking for 30 minutes and taking up time for the younger generation is over. These people are paying to see the people that have brought this company to the forefront’ and all this. I remember Bischoff calling me. He’s like, ‘Why would you say that?’ Blah, blah, blah. I’m like, ‘Well, you asked me to speak from the heart, this is what I believe. This is what all of us kind of built this company on, is priding ourselves going out there and working.’ Then when I start seeing Hogan not really plugging TNA, when he would do these talk shows and everything, he would talk about everything else, except for TNA wrestling, it’s like, that’s what they’re paying you all this money for? So that’s when I was just like, all right, this is not good.”

On why never signed with WWE:

“Man, it was a lot. Mostly had to do with my family. Had a little bit to do with money, which is not like they didn’t pay him a lot of money, so he’s not coming. It wasn’t like that at all. They gave me a contract, I went home and I got a call from Regal. He goes, ‘Hey, we definitely want to sign you.’ I was like, Oh, great. So I was going to sign the contract and all that stuff, and then he asked me, ‘Can you tighten up a little bit? Lose a little weight?’ I was like, Yeah. I busted my ass and I lost 20 pounds. I got in really good shape when I got back down there. Everybody’s like, Oh, my God, you look totally different. Because I always tell people, you give a man motivation, he’ll work his ass off if. So I did it, and then when I got down there, the contract had changed. They added 25 more dates, but the money didn’t move. I even told him TNA had offered me another contract to come back because they heard about me wanting to sign with WWE. I said, ‘Look, this is what TNA is offering me. I’m not trying to hold this over your head at all, because you don’t have to match this at all. I’m just saying this is what I’m willing to give up to come and work for this, but it has to be right.’ Because my wife, she wanted to have another child at the time, but she had to take the shots and all this stuff, so I was basically kind of giving that up as well, because I was going to be on the road a lot. We came to an agreement, and she was like, ‘Well, if they can just give you this, then you have my blessing to sign.’ Hunter is like, ‘I just can’t do it.’ I was just like, ‘All right, well, I’m sorry, my wife gave me permission not to sign, so I’m going home.’ Three days later, Canon Ceman called me. He goes, ‘Hey, man. Paul wants to know if he can call you.’ I was like, ‘What? Hunter?’ He goes yeah. I go, ‘He has my phone number. I just talked to him not too long ago.’ He goes, ‘Well, since you’re not signed, we had to go through the proper channels, and I had to make sure, you’re on a recorded line.’ I was like, whatever, yeah, he can call me. So he called me and I talked and he’s like, ‘Look, you’re not gonna be here long, because Vince loves characters and you know how to work, so you’ll probably be shipped off real quick.’ I was like, ‘Well, can you give what I was asking?’ And like I said, it was not much at all, and he’s like, ‘No, I just don’t have the authority to do that.’ I was like, ‘I’m sorry, man. I’m gonna have to say no.'”

Was that a tough decision?

“That was the hardest phone call I think I’ve ever had to get off the phone with a man. Usually I just hang up the phone. I was like, oh, man. Am I making the right decision? But in hindsight, I didn’t know at the time, but it was the right decision for me and my family at that time, because I was able to have my son that’s eight years old now, and everything. So I can’t imagine what if I would have taken that.”

On the Mickie James train angle:

“The funny thing was, a lot of people don’t know it, I actually had cops come to my house to make sure, they thought it was legit. My brother, who was a detective at the time, he called me. He goes, ‘Hey, man, did you kill somebody on TV?’ I was like, bro, it’s wrestling. He goes, ‘That’s what I try to tell him.’ But there was this cop that had just started on the beat with him, so he was messing with him. He had that guy come to my door and ring the doorbell and ask me about all this stuff, and my brother sitting in a car just laughing his butt off. So I had to bring the cop in and put the episode on and show him it’s part of a wrestling angle. I was trying to, me and Mickie and Nick, all three of us are trying to tell John this is not a good idea to murder somebody on TV. I came up with a plan of having a flash of me, this is what would happen if she wouldn’t agree with me, like, I would push her off and she would die, you know, but they didn’t like that idea. I was like, All right, well, I guess I’m pushing her.”

On his Elevation X match with Rhyno:

“I hate heights, and Rhyno didn’t like it either, and they wanted me to take this big bump. They wanted me to take the gore and basically him hit me and me just go right off of it and land onto the mat. I said no, that’s not going to happen. I said, I’ll do something where I’m hanging or something, and either I can go through a table or I can just hit the ground or something, but I’m not just taking a bump and just going backwards off of it, and I think they got kind of upset with me but I told them, I’m not doing it. And so we wound up setting up a table, and I wound up going through the table and everything.”

On his TNA Mount Rushmore:

“Jeff Jarrett. AJ Styles, of course. People can say, and this is just me talking. I hate to put myself on there, but as the tag team, because I always look at Mount Rushmore as like, there should be people from different parts of the company, not just like all singles wrestlers. I look at me as like, I helped carry the Tag Team division in TNA, especially during the startup years and everything. I’d put Jeff Hardy on there, because he came in very early. A lot of people say Kurt, but I’m looking at guys who helped build the company before the Kurts and Samoa Joe and all these other guys were in there.”

What is James Storm grateful for?

“My wife, my kids and wrestling fans.”

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Gene Snitsky: “It Wasn’t My Fault”, Punting A Baby On Raw, WWE, Lita, Royal Rumble

in LATEST EPISODES on June 10, 2025 January 30, 2026

Snitsky (@therealsnitsky) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss his memorable WWE debut angle with Kane and how it led to further appearances, punting a baby on Raw and how that has become part of his legacy, his shaved look in ECW, the foot fetish storyline, the brutal Paul London Royal Rumble elimination, his recent appearance on WWE Raw with Chelsea Green, what he is doing now, if he has stopped wrestling and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it” – Thomas Jefferson

On having an emergency landing on his way to the convention:

“I had an interesting trip, basically a two-hour flight from Philly to Indianapolis turned into a whole day of hoping that I make it to Indianapolis alive, because we had a fire emergency landing in Pittsburgh. That’s the last thing you really want to hear when you’re flying somewhere. I was actually watching Varsity Blues, the movie. I have my headphones on just chilling. I can see the stewardess doing these brace for impact things. I’m like, they don’t usually do that. So I pulled my earphone. They’re like, Oh, we may be having a crash landing and blah, blah, blah. I’m like, what? So, your mind starts racing, it was crazy, dude. Never in all my life I thought I’d be in that situation on a little two-hour flight. We literally took off from Philly, emergency landed in Pittsburgh. I texted my wife, she’s a mess.”

On what could have happened if he didn’t get injured playing football:

“Well hindsight is always 2020. I mean, I considered myself an elite athlete at the time. I was playing offensive tackle, I went to NFL combines, the whole nine yards. I was moving pretty good. I played a lot of basketball, so I always had good feet, and actually got a lot of Division One offers for basketball too. But I figured with my size, six-six, have a better chance of going pro football and pro basketball because I played in the Keystone State Games. I was a starting center for the Northeast region of Pennsylvania, believe it or not, as a six-six white guy. So I could hoop. I was always really good at basketball. Just came natural. I was always good at basketball and baseball and football, but I always wanted to be a professional athlete, so I was like, well I’ll stick with football. It’s my best chance. But I mean, not to sound arrogant or anything, but I could have probably went pro in all the sports, because I was pretty good. I just got inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.”

On getting to WWE:

“So like I said, I trained at the Wild Samoan person Training Center in Allentown. Pops, Afa, was my mentor. He brought me up to Wilkes Barre at the time for a house show, myself and another gentleman had a dark match. Tommy Suede, he was also training at the Samoans, and him and I had our dark match. That was October of 2003. May of 2004, Johnny Ace called me and he’s like, ‘Hey, we’re going to bring you in. We’re gonna have you move to Louisville…’ Blah, blah, blah. I was literally sitting in my underwear and I was like, Ah! I’m running around the house in my underwear. My mom’s like, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I’m like, ‘I just got signed!’ It’s like winning the lottery. It’s crazy. I can still vividly see it in my head, sitting there in my underwear on the phone with Johnny, and running down the steps and around the house. So then June, I moved to Louisville. Started Louisville as Mean Gene Mondo. I was Mike Mondo’s little brother, and we did a gimmick together. Then just one day, Fit Finley came down to OVW on a Wednesday and worked me in the ring. I wrestled probably 30 matches that day. One as a heel, as a baby, work the arm, work the shoulder, work the neck, every single scenario you could think of I had a match to show Fit what I could do. So Fit, I guess, apparently liked what he saw, went back to the office and gave me the thumbs up. That weekend, Howard, the awesome Howard Finkel, called me and told me I’d be traveling to Seattle. I was like, sweet. I didn’t know what I’d be doing. I had no idea. They just told me I needed to be at T,V so that’s what I did. I went to TV, hung out at catering, waited till somebody came to get me. Dean Malenko came over, and he’s like, ‘Vince needs you at the ring.’ I’m like, Okay. Go out, it’s kind of cool. So it’s me, Lita, Kane, Vince, the producers. We’re walking through this scenario, the match, and blah, blah, blah. ‘Then you’re going to hit him with a chair. He’s going on Lita, she’s going to miscarry.’ I’m not thinking anything of it. I’m happy to be there. I’m like, This is great.”

On whether the appearance was supposed to be a one-off:

“They never came out and told me that. But in the past tense, that’s what I had heard. But it probably was because the next week I’m at training and we’re doing our drills. Tommy Dreamer is like, ‘Hey, Vince just called. They’re wondering where you’re at.’ I think he’s ribbing me. Why the f*ck would Vince want to be calling looking for me like, that’s what I’m thinking. He’s like, ‘No, you got to get to Raw.’ I’m like, Yeah, okay, so I’m still doing [drills]. He’s finally come up to the ring. He’s like, ‘You have to go.’ I’m like, ‘Are you f*cking ribbing me?’ He’s like, ‘No, you got to get to the airport.’ I’m like, Okay. So I go. We’re staying at this hotel, I shot back to my room, got all my sh*t together, and I’m literally through the airport running. I’m soaked through my clothes. I get to the door, and they’re starting to close the door. I’m like, I gotta get on that flight! So I get on that flight, which I got all sweated for nothing because I ran there. Get on that flight, that flight’s delayed, so we’re sitting there. I’m soaked through my clothes. I’m like, I’m not going to make my connection, so I’m calling the office, ‘Hey, I don’t think I’m going to make my connection in Dallas.’ They’re like, ‘Okay, well, call us when you get there.’ I’m like, Alright, I get to Dallas. I call them, missed the connection. They’re like, take the shuttle over to the private jet area, they’re going to fly the WWE corporate jet to get you. I was like, sweet. I’m glad I missed the flight. Here comes the WWE jet.”

They sent the jet just for you?

“I don’t know if somebody got fired over that, but it was a very costly mistake for not getting my travel that week. But yeah, so I get on the WWE corporate jet, Dave Lagana was the agent they sent to get me. So he’s going over all the stuff we’re going to do, blah, blah, blah. So I ultimately get to Arizona, and I just do an interview with JR, and that’s kind of where the catch phrase started. Because he was like, ‘You’re in a ring, don’t you feel bad that Lita lost her baby?’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s not my fault she was in there. She shouldn’t have been in the ring.’ Literally, that’s just off the top of my head. [It wasn’t written?] No. And then that just took off. Stephanie came to me the next week. She’s like, ‘We’re gonna have you cut a promo every time before you do a match and always say “It’s not your fault.”‘ I’m like, okay. That’s literally how it started. It’s crazy. Now every day of my life, I get it at least 10 times a day. I wish I had $1 every time I heard it. Seriously, at the shop, people will come, ”It’s not my fault.’ So it just kind of took a life of its own.”

On punting a baby:

“Well, here’s the thing, going back to like I was saying about football and all that, I was actually an all area punter my junior year of high school. I averaged like 37 yards as a junior in high school, so I had always had the leg to do it. And ironically, all these years later, that’s one of the things I’m known for. It’s kind of funny.”

Did they know this when they were setting it up?

“No, like I said, I sat in catering and just waited for somebody to come and get me. Dean Malenko came and got me and said, they need you to ring for the first shot. But when we were doing a baby thing, Vince was there as well with that. A little bit of a funny story, we’re walking through it, Vince was like, ‘Then you’re going to kick the baby into the crowd.’ I’m like, Cool. I’m thinking to myself, I’m going to try to kick it as high as I could to hit the Tron thing up top. Then they give me the baby. I’m like, man, it’s gonna be kind of hard to do. Have you ever tried to kick a baby? It’s not easy.

You think it shouldn’t be that hard, but it’s actually pretty hard to kick a baby, though. But anyways, so in my head, I’m thinking I’m gonna whack this sh*t out of this thing. I’m gonna kick it as high as I can. And then Vince is like, ‘Whatever you do, don’t miss the baby. Make sure you kick it.’ I’m like, ‘Listen, Mr. McMahon, I was already a punter in high school. This is gonna be f*cking amazing.’ And he just looked at me and just left it at that. Then we went out. We did it in the whole spiel, and then back through the curtain, he gives me a big hug, he’s like, that was great. I’m like, I told you. I don’t have a confidence issue. I’m pretty confident in my ability, so I knew it was gonna be great.”

On whether the fan might still have the baby:

“If you watch the footage back, I’m kind of giving Lita the evil eye, and I kind of go like this. He threw it back at me, and it skimmed right over top my head, so he didn’t like it.”

On the baby punting being part of his legacy:

“I don’t really know how to respond to that. When I got into wrestling, I never in a million years would have thought that whole storyline, just being thrown into it, because I had never done a dark match. Nobody knew who I was. I was just there, and then all of a sudden I’m the biggest heel on the show. It’s crazy, literally that quick.”

On his foot fetish storyline:

“Well in real life, I like ladies’ feet. It’s funny because my wife, when we first got together, I was like, you gotta take your shoes off. I have to see your feet, because there will not be a second date if you have ugly feet. I get right to the point, there’s no beating around the bush. I’m not going to stay with somebody who has ugly feet.”

On how it made it to WWE TV:

“I went right to Vince, because they were like, come to us with ideas, come to us with storylines. I know Vince, he’s kind of off the wall. He’s a little wacky. So I was like, Yeah, I’m gonna tell him about the foot fetish and see if we can incorporate it in the characters. I was like, ‘Mr. McMahon, I got this idea.’ Told him my idea and in a second, he’s like, That’s great. We’ll do it. Literally, that quick. So that’s kind of how that started, just trying to be different, trying to stand out a little bit. Because at the time, it was just kind of like a revolving door. Guys were coming and going. I mean, I was there for five years, but I saw a lot of guys come and go. So just to differentiate, and the baby thing was kind of off the wall. So let’s keep it going. Then I did the tag team thing with Goldust for a while where, like all the oddities and all that kind of stuff, got the suck Mae Young’s toes at WrestleMania. She loved it.”

On his shaved look in ECW:

“It wasn’t really pitched. It’s kind of weird. I’m out at the ring, working out, and Vince was on the way over. I’m like, ‘Hey Mr. McMahon.’ And he’s like, ‘Hey, go home and shave all your hair off, even your eyebrows, and go over to the makeup lady and see if she could get something to make her teeth look nasty.’ I’m like, Okay. I wasn’t feeling it, but you don’t tell Vince McMahon no.”

There’s no explanation for this?

“No. I guess maybe because of the ECW thing coming up, and he knew they were going to be drafting me to the ECW, that’s the only thing I can think of. Because I got a whole new character. I got a new action figure, whole nine yards. So I was like I’ll go with it. But I literally had to dry paint the sh*t on my teeth every night.”

On the segment with Heidenreich:

“I don’t know. They came to me, you got this segment with Heidenreich. I’m like, sweet. Paul [Heyman] was with Heidenreich at the time, and we’re going towards the angle with me and him and Glenn and Mark and, I don’t even know, it just turned into this creepy homoerotic sh*t, but it got the point across. It did what we wanted to do. I didn’t think anything of it, but watching it back, I’m like, That’s kind of creepy, but that’s what we were going for so but it’s funny, because he’s like, ‘I like what you do to babies.’ I’m like, ‘I like your poetry.’ This is funny, though. And then the poem I did for Edge and Lita’s wedding, that was pretty good, too. [Do you still remember it?] Oh yeah, most of it. But another funny story with Vince, they get me this tuxedo to wear. So I’m like, Well I can’t just wear a tuxedo that’s too plain. So I rip the arms off it. They’re like, well, we have to clear it with Vince. I’m like, okay. So we go in, and it was a rental but he’s like, okay, so off with the sleeves. There goes the rentals. So I don’t know what that ended up costing the company, but it was pretty funny, because it was a rental tux and they cut the rental sleeves.”

On the Paul London Royal Rumble elimination:

“I dare say it’s the top elimination ever, in my opinion. Not because I was involved in it, but because just the crowd reaction, the bump. All things taken into consideration, I don’t think anything else really matches it. So Paul and I, he took me off to the side, I’m like, ‘Hey, what do you want to do?’ [He said] ‘Well, you know, this, this and this, let’s try this…’ and then it evolved into that. And he’s like, ‘Well, just clothesline me’, because I wanted to somehow to make it impactful. He’s like, ‘Why don’t you just clothesline me off the apron?’ I’m like, ‘Okay, well, how do you want to do it?’ He’s like, ‘Well, I’ll miss something, and then just hit me and I’ll flip off the apron.’ I’m like, ‘Sweet, but I’m going to have to clothesline you hard, pretty much in the face to get the momentum.’ Because if I was lower, he wouldn’t have room to flip. So I had to hit him high so he could get up and still rotate. So it’s almost like physics, I dare say. So I was like, ‘Well, it’s gonna be probably in the face or the throat area or the head.’ And he was like, fine. I f*cking crammed him, dude. I ain’t gonna lie, I hit him hard! But that f*cking bump. The crowd, they thought he was dead. It looked unplanned, that’s how vicious it looked as a fan watching it. Even watching it back, I still Ooh, because it’s like, if you slow it down and see where I hit him, I hit him square right where your nose meets your forehead, and I f*cking hit him. He took it like a champ. He’s awesome. Paul’s great. Another guy they could have done so much more with. I always loved working with Paul. But yeah, that was pretty awesome, even all these years later, looking back on it, because that was 2005, 20 years ago.”

On whether he is done wrestling:

“No, I still wrestle here and there. I just got stem cell shots in my knee though, on March 29. I’ve been dealing with a little bit of a meniscus issue. So I went down to the great people at Lifemed Institute in Maryland, and they gave me an injection with that and did some vitamin infusion with the wife. It’s freaking amazing, that stuff. I don’t know the science behind it but I’ve had the best freaking workouts the last few weeks since I went down there.”

On his recent cameo with Chelsea Green:

“It just happened. Daivari is one of my best friends. I traveled with him at WWE. He’s one of the road agents now. So he was like, ‘Hey, are you stopping by the Wilkes Barre show?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I wasn’t planning to, are you going to be there?’ He’s like, Yeah. I said, alright, we’ll take a ride up. So me and my wife took a ride up, and we’re just sitting and catering with Daivari, John Cohen comes up to me, he’s like, ‘Hey, they have an idea for a backstage segment with Chelsea Green.’ I was like, Oh, cool. I’ve known Chelsea forever, plus I think she’s awesome, the character is great. So I was like, hell yeah, I’ll do it. And then literally one take, and that was it, it was crazy. She’s just so good. It’s funny, just trying to stay in character is half the battle sometimes, because it was funny.”

On some fans thinking that the baby that was punted was real:

“There were a lot of people who thought that the baby was a real baby. I don’t want to by any means talk down about wrestling fans, but there is a small majority of them that see things on TV and whatever they see, they think is real. I’m telling you, as I’m sitting here right now with this amazing beard and ruggedly handsome good looks, I’m telling you, it’s crazy. I’m just like, this TV show is fake. We’re not kicking real babies.”

What is Gene Snitsky grateful for:

“My health, my wife and still having my mom.”

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Kacy Catanzaro On Her WWE Release, Katana Chance Name Change, Ninja Warrior, Rhea Ripley

in LATEST EPISODES on June 5, 2025 January 30, 2026

https://cvvtix.com – Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in LA and NYC with VIP Meet & Greet!

Kacy Catanzaro (@KacyCatanzaro) is a professional wrestler best known for her time in WWE as Katana Chance. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles to discuss her WWE release and what’s next, her rise in popularity after competing on American Ninja Warrior, having her first WWE matches against Raquel Rodriguez and Rhea Ripley, her viral Royal Rumble save, the back injury that nearly brought her pro wrestling career to an end, getting paired up with Kayden Carter, breaking her nose twice in the ring and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” — Tim Notke

On being in WWE for 8 years:

“It’s funny. I always say that there was something, I don’t know that I’ll be able to explain it well. But no matter how long I was in wrestling, I always felt like no matter what, I was the newer person there. Because I had never wrestled before, when I walked into the Performance Center, I’d never wrestled. No matter how long I was at the PC or in the company, I always felt like wherever I was I’m still the newer person here, even though it had been almost a decade that I worked there. It’s hard, I just could never shake that feeling.”

Was that a beginner’s mentality or having trouble picking it up?

“I think an in-between. Not so much trouble picking it up, as much as it was trouble feeling like I belonged there, I think. No matter how much work I put in, or I felt like I’m doing what I’m supposed to, I’ve been here, I’m putting the work in. In a room, I still always felt like I don’t know if I’m supposed to be here. I just always felt a little bit out of place, I guess. That might be a deeper thing to explain, that maybe I’m not sure how to. But yeah, I never fully felt like, okay, I belong here right now.”

On going into the PC with no wrestling experience and how things have changed:

“Yes, 1,000,000%. When I got to the Performance Center eight years ago, it was very rare. Just to give you an example of who I started with, who was in my class. I walked in with Candice LeRae. At that time, I think she had been wrestling for over 10 years. War Raiders was in my group. People who their entire life, for a decade, had already been wrestling, and then it was me. At the time, yes, there were obviously people who were home made at the Performance Center, but it was very, very rare. So I felt very out of place, and very much like, ‘Why is this person here?’ Because it’s also such a sacred thing, which I understand. When you know you want to be a wrestler your whole life, then you work really hard, specifically at wrestling to get there, I understand why it’s so sacred. With my journey being different, I felt like really, really stuck out in that time of how it was compared to now.”

On her first matches being against Raquel Rodriguez and Rhea Ripley:

“Yeah, on the Mae Young Classic, that was my first TV match. So that’s wild. Actually, I talk a lot about my first matches with Raquel, because she has such a special place in my heart, and she was my very first match on a live event as well. So my first match outside of practice was with her, and then my first match on TV for the Mae Young Classic was with her. So we always talk about how important that was to me, and how good she was to me, she didn’t have to be. So those matches always have, like, a very special place in my heart. And obviously, Rhea as well.”

On being a legend in American Ninja Warrior:

“I’m very, very grateful to have that. I feel like it’s something very special to me to have done that, and sometimes I kind of forget about it. I feel like when I’m going through some rougher times, like I said, it feels like different lives. So sometimes I forget about that, and it’s good to look back and be like, I put really hard work in and I made a difference. I feel like that’s my main goal to inspire people to make a difference, kind of that you can overcome anything. I’m a lot smaller than most people, so that was a huge thing with American Ninja Warrior and in wrestling as well. So I feel like having that little reminder sometimes is nice.”

On no longer being with WWE:

“I think at first I thought that I was in shock and not able to process it, because I feel like when you work there, there is a joke of you could literally be fired at any time. We’re nervous about it often. Not like I’m sitting there upset every day. But enough that someone will make a random joke every now and then like oh, something happened. Well, what if we get fired? It is in the back of your mind because it does happen, and you know how the business works. But I actually was very surprised. It wasn’t on my radar. Then as I was telling the story of kind of how it led up to it, at first I was like, Yeah, I really didn’t have any notice. Then as I told the story, I was like wait, maybe I could have taken some of those as signs that something could have been coming. But also things change so often. If every time something got pushed, or every time we didn’t travel I went into a spiral thinking that we were gonna get fired, I wouldn’t have enjoyed my time. So I feel like I was surprised. It was a shock, but I had been there for so many years that I think that’s normal. So now I’m just working on really letting myself process it and kind of feel everything, figure out how I feel. So I’m not really sure. I’m bummed because I know that I have a lot more potential that I could have shown that I didn’t get to. But if I think about it, I could really say that about anything I’ve done. There is no top, there’s always more you can do. So I think I will come to terms with that. It’s just you kind of have to grieve it, appreciate it, be grateful. Be okay that it’s sad and then be kind of excited for whatever’s gonna come next.”

On whether she still wants to wrestle:

“That’s a good question. I’m not sure. I’m gonna say I’m not sure, because it could go either way. I feel like most people, they know right away. The second it happens, they’re like, Okay, I’m doing this. I think part of it is because I didn’t wrestle beforehand. I never got those experiences that people who did are like, Okay, I’m gonna go back to that. I know that I wanna do that. For me, I feel like my whole adult life I’ve always really gone right from one challenge to the next. I did gymnastics for four years. I had a scholarship. I couldn’t really do anything else. I was really locked in. Right after I graduated, I went to American Ninja Warrior for five years. I was in contracts with them each season, which WWE took me right from there. I didn’t have any in between. I had to choose to leave, to go there. So eight years there, now I’m like, I really have never not been in a contract, and just thought what does Kacy want to do? And so I think that takes more than a week or two. I’m hoping it’s not just me that can’t figure it out, but I think it’s a really important question to ask myself and figure out. I know the core of things that I’m passionate about, but I think just what direction that’s gonna take me is gonna maybe take a little time.”

On signs that the release may have been coming:

“So I didn’t realize there were clues until I was explaining how the last few weeks went, and then I was like, Okay, maybe? So we got moved from Raw to SmackDown in the switch-ups. So it wasn’t like a draft, but people were getting moved around. I’m like, Okay, well you always kind of have to take both sides. Everything that happens can feel like it’s a bad thing, and then I just won’t survive that way. So then I always have to try and make it positive. So we got moved from Raw to SmackDown. Originally, you’re like oh man, Raw just got moved to Netflix. That’s really big and now they’re taking us off of it. Is that bad? But then people are like, well, there’s more time on SmackDown, we want more storylines for you guys. Cool, that’s believable. I love that. So we get to SmackDown, there’s a big pay-per-view coming up, so the stories are all kind of already happening for the pay-per-view for the next two weeks. So we’re like, okay, we’re not doing anything yet. Again, makes sense. That’s how things happen. That totally makes sense. So then the pay-per-view passes. Now it’s another month or so, we’re pitching stuff. We’re pitching all the angles, sending storylines in, trying to get in. We’re trying to fit into what’s already happening, trying to pitch off the wall stuff that could be cool and different, whatever. So as it gets closer, now we’re getting to Mania season. So now it’s like a month before WrestleMania. We’re like, okay, I know that if something that we’re doing isn’t in WrestleMania, anything can happen, because everything has to lead up to that. Times get changed and stories need more time or get changed. So we were supposed to be leading to this six-woman tag with me, Lacey [Kayden Carter] and Zelina against Chelsea, Piper and Alba. So we’re like, okay, cool, it’ll be some tag stuff, some single stuff. This will be great. They start having their singles matches, which is supposed to lead to a tag, which is supposed to lead this, whatever. Things keep changing where it just keeps getting pushed. So they had a singles. The next week was supposed to be the six woman, then it didn’t happen. We were like, Oh, well will there be a backstage? But then it didn’t happen. Zelina had something, and we’re like, Oh, are we gonna be there with her? And they were like, no, no, we’re just gonna do this first. Then it was the week of WrestleMania and it was supposed to happen, and then the day before it got pushed. We were like, Okay, again, it’s WrestleMania weekend. Of course something more important having to do with the show happened. Not very weird. Move on.

Now we’re post WrestleMania, and there was a charity event that I do often with someone who has worked with NXT and with WWE. It wasn’t a WWE event, but they would let us go there. We weren’t signing anything. It was just for a good cause. I’ve done it for years, and one of the NXT girls that was invited had messaged me and said something to the effect of I can’t do it, and they’ll let me know why soon. I was like, sounds weird, but people are weird. Who knows? My boyfriend says, I wonder if it’s because they’re gonna do releases. I was like, but that wouldn’t really make sense because it’s not a WWE event, so they wouldn’t care. It wasn’t being posted anywhere, it was just for a good cause. I’m like, that’s weird. Then the person doing the charity event messaged me and said another wrestler was like, Oh, I wonder if releases are happening. I’m like, Okay, two people is weird. I actually made a joke to my boyfriend when he said it. I was like, if I get released, will you still love me? You know how girls are crazy? And he was like yes, of course. But I only made that joke because I didn’t actually think that it was happening. Then another joke is, if you get a 203 number because it’s a Connecticut area code, you’re in trouble. We didn’t travel that week, another sign. But I was like, Okay, we don’t have a story yet. No big deal.

So I’m working out in my garage, and I get a phone call, and it’s not a 203 number so I ignore it because I’m working out. Then it calls again. You know how sometimes it’s like, might be this person? It called a second time, and I was like, Okay. I look and it said, might be so and so. I was like, oh, no. I knew right away. I picked up the phone, and I was like, hello? Then I was like, Oh, this is it. I’ve thought about that moment so many times that when it happened, I felt like I wasn’t in my body. I was on the phone answering and then when I hung up, I was like, I feel like I should have said more or asked more questions. I think I was just like, okay, okay, bye. It’s such a weird feeling. So at the moment, I had no idea. Then as I retell the story, I’m like I was trying not to be like, negative and nervous. But as I say it, I’m like, okay, these were probably signs.”

On her 2019 back injury:

“I don’t really ever talk about this, but there was a time back in 2019. I had started in 2018, I was about a year or so in. I had just done my first Royal Rumble in 2019, and I had a back injury from that. I was struggling with this injury. It was kind of the most serious injury I had had since being there. Also, the Performance Center was mentally very, very tough at that point for me. So there was a period where I was dealing with this injury and really like, can I come back from this? The injury wasn’t that serious that I wouldn’t be able to come back, but in my head, I was like do I really want to do this? And kind of having this crisis about it, is this something I’m going to continue to do? I was open about that with my job, and they were very supportive about it. They were like, We want you to heal, we want you to come back, and we want you to be here, it’s important to us. So when the big releases were happening in COVID, I was like, they’re gonna let me go. Because I wasn’t sure if I could do it. I didn’t know if I would be good enough, or if I could survive, or I was having these doubts, so I really thought they’re gonna let me go because they’re letting people go that wanted to be here and I didn’t know if I could. I’ll always be very grateful for that, that they believed in me and they stuck with me even when I was having these struggles. So those big releases are always very, very scary. So when it comes down to it, I’m so grateful to have survived so many of those. To think about it in a weird way that, yes, it’s sad. But also, again, trying to spin things and not live in the negative. Yes, I wish I had done more. I wish I had been able to show things, but I was with WWE for eight years, that is the dream. That is a huge accomplishment, something that a very small percentage of the world gets to say that they’re doing. So whenever I start thinking about that, I try to lean more towards I am just so grateful I was there and I did that, and it’s another section of my life story, if that makes sense.”

On the moment that changed things:

“I want to try to explain it correctly. I was struggling mentally, really struggling at the Performance Center, going back to what I said earlier, really feeling out of place, which just imagine if eight years later I feel that, how much I felt it one year in, and it being that different environment. So I really was struggling with that, and when I started to get physically better from this injury, I really had to make this choice of I either need to be all in and do this or not, I decided that I needed to change my mentality in order to succeed there. So with feeling out of place or feeling like I didn’t belong or I wasn’t good enough because I didn’t come from wrestling, I could either let that eat me up and essentially let me not accomplish this goal, or I can let let the feeling suck, feel that and not live in it and realize okay, I can have these insecurities, and this might be a rough road to go through, but I want to accomplish this, and I want to work hard enough to prove that I can do it, prove people wrong, prove myself wrong even, and go after it. I feel like once I told myself I was going to do this mental switch, I knew that if it didn’t work out, I would be okay that it didn’t work out, because then that meant that I really gave everything, and it would be okay if it wasn’t for me.”

On getting scouted by WWE:

“So it’s funny. After my American Ninja Warrior run, I don’t know if I’m gonna say this title correctly, but it was something like Sports Illustrated’s 50 fittest women athletes, something like that. They do a list, and I was on that list after American Ninja Warrior and WWE, I guess, had seen it and called me and asked me to be on Tough Enough.“

On Royal Rumble 2019:

“That was really, really cool. I had only been at the Performance Center for a year at that time, and there was about five or six of us from NXT that got to go and do the Royal Rumble. So that was my first really huge thing. I really wasn’t even doing NXT TV at the time. Honestly, I didn’t have much experience. So the Royal Rumble was, I remember, when my number got called and I walked out, I think I actually did a full spin. When I walked out, I looked around, and then I was like, Okay, you need to go. I almost forgot where I was. I was in such awe of the arena and how many people were there, and the excitement and the energy. I was like, oh my god, this is what people feel like. This is why people love this. I hadn’t had any really cool experiences yet, I was just grinding at the PC. So I was like, Oh my gosh, I get it, this is incredible, this feeling. I get what this feeling is now. So I feel like that was my first understanding of how huge it could be. It was really fun to be in it, to be in there with all the women and people I looked up to, legends and stuff like that.”

On her Royal Rumble save:

“I am so grateful for that moment. Because another thing that people will bring up is that was literally seven years ago, something like that. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing that I haven’t done anything that cool since, or was it just that cool, but people still will be like, Oh, yeah, your Rumble save was so cool. So I’m really grateful to at least have some really cool staple moments that people can kind of remember.

So I remember when it happened, I had to have a backup plan. If this doesn’t go perfect, my feet can’t touch. So how do I save this if that happens? So when I do it, I do a back roll to get up to kick up into a handstand. I had always said, okay, if I’m walking and I fall, I just have to fall into a roll where I land on my back and my feet still don’t touch so that I can shimmy around to something else and do it. Because that’s the other thing too about being in front of a big crowd. I could have done 1 million good handstands in my whole life, and it does not make me not nervous to go out in front of thousands and thousands of people and do a handstand and not screw it up. It’s one of my favourite moments.”

On getting paired with Kayden Carter:

“It’s crazy. On paper and in real life, we are complete opposites. Opposites attract; that’s us. We could not be more different. But when it comes to in the ring, immediately, we randomly just got put together on a live event because they just want more people to wrestle and get experience. So a random Florida live event, we got put together, and she had wrestled before that, so she had more experience, more of that mindset, and she would basically be like, okay, I’ve seen you do this thing. I can do this first, and then you can do that. Then we would try things, and randomly we were like, this is kind of cool. All right, what if we add this thing to it? It kind of just flowed naturally. The beauty about us being so different is she is more rebellious, and I’m more like, let’s rein us in. So it was the perfect combination of some of the stuff that we have done, when she said it originally, or had shown me originally, I would be like, I don’t know if we can do that, that’s crazy. Then she would be like, Okay, well, how can we make it work? Then I’d be like, okay, do we change how I’m landing? Do we change where the person is? Do we change where this is? It would be this amazing idea I wouldn’t think we could do, but she would have the confidence. Then I would be able to rein in a little bit, and then it would become what we’re doing.”

Like the kegstand?

“Yes, exactly like that. When we were talking about it, there, it was originally a different idea, without the spin. It was like a handstand, something and I remember being like, Can we do that? Also, I’m the one coming from the ceiling. How am I gonna land? Am I gonna get hurt? Am I gonna hurt them? How can we have more control of this? Then, when we added the spin, obviously, it’s me landing forward on somebody felt a lot safer for me, for them, in a normal splash, compared to coming down on my back, or blindly, whatever it might be. So all of these things that I’m so grateful that she had that confidence and that creative mind for this huge, amazing thing. Then, being able to adjust it, to make it actually work for us, it was amazing chemistry for a move like that.”

On breaking her nose for a second time:

“That one was worse. That night the doctor actually, three times was trying to put my nose back in place. It was crazy. I forget which way it was, but when I was walking up, they were like, Oh my God. I think I have a picture of it. I’m sure I have a picture of it. But also that one, I got cut on the outside of my nose too. So there was a lot more blood for that one, so you couldn’t really see how crooked it was. So yeah, that one was a lot worse. I was bleeding on the outside. They had to adjust it. Lacey’s not good with blood and stuff like that. So she was trying to support me and be in the doctor’s area with me. Then they went to adjust my nose and I was like, you can go, you don’t have to be here. I’m okay, you should leave because she isn’t good with blood and stuff like that. So they were just moving my nose and I was just like, okay. So they got it back really well, but it basically was when you put it back, sometimes the bones can be next to each other instead of exactly where they’re supposed to be. So it looks good enough. Whenever I’d say my nose is broken, people are like, oh, you can’t tell. I know I can tell, but most people are like, oh, you can’t tell. So now I basically have to decide if I want to fix it or not. Because it messes with your septum and your breathing and you’re sleeping and stuff. So I have to decide.”

What is Kacy grateful for?

“My health, people in my life and the opportunities to come.”

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Santino Marella Got Everyone To Break Character! Mispronouncing Names, Stone Cold, The Cobra

in LATEST EPISODES on June 3, 2025 January 30, 2026

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Santino Marella (@milanmiracle) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at ACW in Oshkosh, WI to discuss his favorite comedic moments and mispronunciations, how he became TNA’s Director of Authority and was able to keep his WWE name, working with his daughter Arianna Grace, the inspiration for the Santino walk, the Cobra battle with Mick Foley and Mr. Socko, a possible Hall of Fame induction and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” – Mark Twain

On his Italian accent not being real:

“I used to be Russian too. There were times in OVW, I would go out and I’d be in character as Boris Alexia the whole night, just talking to people, just in character to pop the guys. But there was one girl, because she liked Boris, she actually liked Boris. And then later on in the night, I was kind of speaking in my regular voice, she was so upset. She started liking that guy and realizing that person doesn’t exist. Who’s this jerk that’s left behind? So she was a little upset.”

On the differences between him and the Santino character:

“There’s probably a lot of Anthony in the character Santino. It’s funny, my wife says that I’m not funny, but she says Santino is funny, I’ll give you credit, but you’re not funny. I’m like, I am Santino. What are you talking about? So anyway, I guess there’s elements of me that are blown up in the character Santino.”

On his favourite catchphrases:

“‘Those are the bottom lines’ was a funny one. The reason it was funny is because Stone Cold put a spotlight on it and said, ‘It’s that’s the bottom line.’ We were off script too, and I was like, ‘Well, sometimes I have more than one thing to say.’ I saw him kind of bite his lip a little bit. So the things that were brought to light or that were focused on, remember those. But I still, to this day, I’m constantly trying to come up with [new ideas].”

On becoming TNA’s Director of Authority:

“Scott D’Amore kind of asked me if I was interested a few times, and it’s just timing wasn’t right. Then coming out of COVID, I’m like, you know what? I think it’s time. Everything kind of lined up, talked to my wife and we went back in. So anyway, I got a call from Robert Evans, who was one of the writers at the time, and he had this vision of the Director of Authority. We started talking about that FBI kind of in the beginning, I was wearing tactical pants, and I had like, an FBI jacket, which someone scooped up. I don’t know who it was. We had some TNA shows at Battle Arts back in the day, and during cleanup, someone scooped it. So, yeah, it was one of one. Then we switched to the tracksuits, which came in super handy, it’s one of our sponsors. But being able to wear a uniform on a weekly basis, it just saves so much decision-making. What am I going to wear? I have a uniform. I wear the tracksuit with the badge, it’s good for now.”

On his daughter Arianna Grace:

“She’s something special. She was identified from a young child as just exceptional with regards to her speech, her presence. Luckily, she turned out pretty too, because that’s kind of a you’re born with that or not, right? I mean, you can work on it, I guess. But she’s tall, she’s athletic. So when she finished her degree, we kind of, for the first time ever, we never talked about it before she finished university. And I was like, do you want to do this? She was like, you actually think I can do this? Of course, this is not rocket science. It just takes dedication and hard work, which anyone can do. You don’t have to be naturally gifted to be a hard worker and dedicated. So when you have these natural, raw abilities and this potential, and you apply. All she had to do, in my opinion, was be the hardest worker in the room, and she became the hardest worker in the room. So her first tryout, she was not ready, and she didn’t get hired. Then the switch went off, she packed up, moved to Orlando. She was training at multiple schools, busting her ass, got in great shape. And then when she received another tryout, she just blew them away. She was the talk of the tryout, and she got hired from that, she was just in shape, and this time she was ready. So it was no freebies. When you’re a second-generation talent, the idea of receiving a freebie is a horrible thing to be accused of. Some people will also understand that you’re going to be given an opportunity, but it’s up to you to capitalize on the opportunity. I remember talking with Cody when he was younger, that was one of the worst things you could say to him ever, was you’re only here because your dad. So he became super hard working to eliminate and remove the potential for someone to even say that. I think he’s done a great job, working so hard that no one could say that to him anymore.”

On his first comedy moment:

“I remember the exact moment, actually. The babyface Santino was around for a few months, I think, April, May, June, July. So somewhere in a few months in the summer. As you know, the WWE Universe does not like to be force-fed anything. They will spit it out. They were being force fed this new guy who was in the audience; he beat Chris Masters, and he beat Shelton Benjamin, and he pulled off a victory against this guy and that guy. They’re like, Yeah right. BS, don’t tell us to like this guy. Then I had a match with Umaga where he regained the Intercontinental Championship, and he’s murdering me. They were like, one more time, thumbs down, kill this guy. Then I guess they had the conversation where they said, okay, the audience is not kind of accepting this. Let’s turn him bad guy, I guess, and if that doesn’t work, maybe see you later, I don’t know. The moment I turned into a bad guy and complained with the accent, apparently Vince popped. He’s funny. He thought it was because as soon as I turned bad and I got the mic as a bad guy, had the mic every week, guest commentary in ring promos. So I popped the right guy, and I was given the ball. Michael Hayes said it once, ‘Every promo is like a first down, getting first down, first down, first down. Then you work up to getting in the ring with Stone Cold Steve Austin, he’s like, ‘You’ve been getting all these first downs. Can you cross the goal line now we’re watching?’ That was an awesome segment. I remember backstage, Vince looked at me, and he went like he just went up a level. And I was like, Oh, I know what that means, man. Those days were crazy, because it was just like when I debuted, it was, ‘Welcome to the team, now go home and pack your bags, you’re on the road now.’ I was on like 95% of live events. I remember coming home, taking my dirty laundry, washing machine, dryer, back in the bag, out the door, for like, years and years and years and years. It’s funny, when you look at some recognizable figures in wrestling and you’re like, yeah, they were on Raw for like, five years. I was on the road longer than that, I was in the company for 10 years. You don’t realize at the time, because you’re just so focused on what you’re doing. But yeah, I’m proud of the 10-year career there.”

On whether there was anyone he didn’t get to break character:

“Well, it’s funny, because some guys like, for example, Mark Henry backstage, spitting out his water laughing when he goes out there, he’s flicks that switch and he would not break character on TV. He is scary when he’s out there. He scared the hell out of me once in gorilla just by saying, ‘Hey, just so you know, when I go out there, I’m indestructible, protect yourself.’ I was like, Oh my God, what’s about to happen? Then he’s like, ‘I’m just messing with you, man.’ I’m like, don’t do that.”

On Santina:

“Santina was funny because it was only like three months, but there was so many memorable moments crammed into three months. It was supposed to be one night, but again, it tickled the funny bone of the right person, and it ended up lasting for three months. But I tell you what, I got a lot of respect for the makeup process that girls go through, it’s like an hour. The fake lashes are hard. It’s no joke, your face is burning from makeup and stuff. Yeah, they go through a lot.”

On how Santina was created:

“Well, the storyline with Beth Phoenix was that I was an insecure boyfriend. She was the alpha in the relationship, and I was desperately trying to show that men are better athletes. So by dressing up as a woman and winning the battle royal and then revealing, Ha, I’m a man, I just won the women’s battle royal, therefore men are better athletes. That was the idea. And then it was just executed so well that it stuck around for a while.”

On working with Beth Phoenix:

“We used to do little things that like when she’d flex, and I’d come around and bite her bicep like an apple, and she was the perfect [straight person]. You need the comedy guy and that straight person and stuff. She was excellent at the role, and then she’s an awesome wrestler too. She was a high-level collegiate wrestler. They used to wrestle boys and stuff. And just watching her in the gym, sometimes you’re like, she’s doing more than [me], squatting two plates for like, 20 or something, really legitimately strong, standing shoulder pressed a plate, really impressive lifts and then going out there and having great technical matches.”

On the pitch to do the splits:

“It was one of those things. I was a bad guy, and when you’re the bad guy, the jokes on you. So me trying to do it, and it backfiring; the egg was on me. Back then, it was a lot of Brian Gewirtz. When Santino was a bad guy, it was a lot of Brian Gewirtz, were kind of married there for a while, and he’s brilliant. He was one of the writers that really could visualize how I would deliver something and write for it. So some writers, they’ll try and write like, ‘I’m gonna go and fight you…’ and try and write as Santino. But he wouldn’t. He just, he’d write it normal and let me bring it to life. But he had a really good understanding of how I would bring it to life. So a lot of the golden stuff from Santino, when he was a bad guy, was all Brian Gewirtz.”

On the Santino walk:

“It was something from judo. We had a training camp one time and I think at a training camp, we were doing it as a part of a fun warm-up to try and do the speed walk and race without running, and I was good at it. So there’s actually a story where 1995, the summer my daughter was born, I worked at a warehouse, and there was four warehouses or factories that had this Family Day. There’s all these hot dogs, and you can throw a baseball and dunk your manager or whatever. Then the culmination was this big Olympic race walk event. I think I was 20 at the time, and someone said, ‘Yeah, there’s a big race walk event.’ I go, ‘I’m gonna win that for sure.’ Because I was at the peak of my athletic career. I was a young, 180-pound athlete that was like twisted steel. I just won national championships and all this stuff. Anyway, around that time, I was in really good shape, and they go, ‘No, no, you’re not gonna win. There’s this guy from Argentina. He wins every year. He’s a former pro soccer player.’ I’m like, what? I see the guy. Oh, damn. He looks like he has big legs, and he took it seriously. So there were two heats, I won my heat, and then he won his heat, and then it was the finals. It was me and him, and gathered around, but it was a square like baseball, running the bases, so to speak. I played baseball, so he was really tight to the line, and I was out a little bit. I knew I had to round the corner. Everyone’s like, move in, move in. Stay close. I’m like trust me, I got it. So anyway, he took the lead, but he took the corner wide because he was so tight. And I came on the inside, and I had the lead, and then I just had to, as I see him again, I wish I had mirrors. I kind of move over and, not let him pass, and then anyway, I won. I was a bad, bad sport. I was doing flips and cartwheels like I won the world championships. So I was telling someone that I won this race before, and they thought it was hilarious and I should incorporate it into the entrance. It was one of those things where I kind of jinxed myself, because Vince thought it was very funny. He wanted me to do two laps of the ring in my entrance. The ring is huge, and the second lap was always so awkward, because they saw it. I try and get away with one lap sometimes, but because it also ate up a lot of time, I wanted to have a match as well, but then I even tried to stop, and he said, no, no, no, do the race walk. Every time there’s an Olympics, there’s a clip of a race walk people like, oh, Santino inspired a generation. I wonder how fast I really am against those guys.”

On the cobra vs. Socko spot with Mick Foley:

“It was funny, because I kind of pitched the whole thing to him, and he was so giddy during my pitch, he was loving it. Anyway, I wanted to do the whole back into each other, a couple of gun fighters in the Wild West, and then kind of turn and then see each other, and kind of get ready. We didn’t time it out, but it took us the exact same amount of time to put our respective socks on, and then we kind of did that. It was perfect timing. Then we circled, there was other guys in the ring, but everyone just kind of got small. You can see Big Show just watching and enjoying it. And yeah, then we did the battle. We were supposed to do a little more. You know like in movies, wizards will have rays kind of hitting each other, they’ll go back. We were supposed to kind of do that across the ring but Cody jumped in a little early, and I was like, we had more planned, but anyway, it was still memorable, because people understood immediately what was happening. Oh, damn, It’s sock versus sock, and he’s the right guy. That was actually probably one of my most fun things.”

On the snake charmer segment:

“So I talked to a person, it was a foreign student from India, and he’s like every single person in India knows this clip. I mean, you’re with two famous Indian athletes, Jinder Mahal and The Great Khali. So just by their fame alone, everyone’s gonna have a look at it. Not that it’s cultural representation by any means. But, yeah, it was funny. There’s one part I’m actually proud of when I’m holding my own hand back from getting me, I thought the acting was good, it was serious, that’s one of those things. So sometimes I’ll go to a convention or something, and I’ll meet somebody, a father, and he goes, ‘Oh my son loves you.’ I’m like your son’s like seven, how? [He goes] ‘YouTube, TikTok, all your stuff’s on there, and they love you.’ And it’s just strange because my neck surgery was 11 years ago, and then for the last several years I was just running Battle Arts Academy, and we had our family business, that’s where I’ve been up until TNA. I was just a home body guy, so there wasn’t a lot of new material. But I guess it’s now to the point where it’s vintage. I had that realization recently. I’m not popular current, I’m popular vintage, and I’m okay with vintage. I guess I’m a little vintage these days. I’m in my 50s.”

On Santino’s reaction to the pitch:

“At first, I didn’t want it to be offensive. You know what I mean, culturally offensive. But it’s one of those things, when I speak to people from Indian culture, they’re not offended at all. So I was really happy with that. Because there was one time too, I think it was Jinder, where I was arguing with him and I was pretending to speak Indian, but I was just whatever kind of how it would sound to me. You see that sometimes online, how English sounds to foreigners, and actually kind of sounds like English, but they’re not really saying anything. I just didn’t want to be offensive to anybody, but it wasn’t. So I talked to people that they thought it was cool. So that helped me a lot, be cool with it myself.”

On a possible Hall of Fame induction:

“Well, it depends what you go to wrestling for. If you want macho tough guys, and some people just don’t like comedy, they want to see slobber knockers each and every match. It’s pretty polarized. I think the vast majority of people appreciate the comedy, but there are people that they have no place for comedy.”

On being able to keep the Santino Marella name in TNA:

“So that was actually almost bigger news than me appearing on TNA, was the fact that I was Santino Marella. So in 2021, I imagine the COVID confusion or whatever, there were people getting fired and hired, and it seemed like it was team Hunter and team Vince, and they were changing regimes or whatever. Somebody didn’t renew the trademark. So Scott D’Amore, as a habit, because if he’s getting a former WWE guy, he kind of checks the trademark to see if they’re available, because he has to get creative and come up with a name. If it’s not Fandango, it’s Dango or something that’s legally not going to be too close to the intellectual property. He checked, and all of a sudden he goes, damn, Santino Marella is available. So he bought it. It’s not as simple as you can just buy it and it’s yours. There’s a case that they created the character, they developed the character. It’s still on their library. I mean, there’s still tons of Santino stuff in the library. But when it’s library use, I think it’s not considered like current use, because it’s from a library. So they sent an email or a phone call to Scott, and they say, ‘Yeah, you’re using our intellectual property.’ And Scott’s like, ‘Actually, I own the trademark.’ So they’re like, ‘Let me get back to you.’ It’s kind of sitting there for a while. Then they filed an extension to the time they can appeal it, and then when Scott was no longer with TNA, Ariel [Shnerer], in hopes of having a good relationship with WWE, kind of just gave it back to them. So they own it, but I’m not sure if a part of the deal was we’ll give it back to you but can we use it? And we’ve been using it.”

On the cobra being a protected finisher:

“No, I think it’s where it kind of was originally in the roster. It wasn’t like super main event guys. The only person ever kicked out of it once with the sleeve was Daniel Bryan, and one person kicked out of it without the sleeve, and that was Sheamus, and that was it. So when you factor in all the live events, yeah, it’s like 99.9%. If I’ve done 1,000 cobras, two guys kicked out. I probably did 2,000 cobras, and two guys kicked out.”

What is Santino Marella grateful for?

“Family, health and where we live.”

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Omos On His WWE Absence, Brock Lesnar, AJ Styles, Bobby Lashley, Wrestling In Japan

in LATEST EPISODES on May 29, 2025 January 30, 2026

https://cvvtix.com – Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in LA and NYC with VIP Meet & Greet!

Omos (@TheGiantOmos) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles to discuss his time away from WWE TV, his recent work in Pro Wrestling NOAH, wrestling Bobby Lashley and Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania, being endorsed by The Undertaker, day-to-day challenges of being tall, setting the record straight on incorrect information and more!
Quote I’m thinking about: “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.” – Marcus Aurelius

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On the challenges of being his size:

“Shopping for clothes is difficult. Pretty much having to buy really expensive furniture so I don’t break it. So I’ve broken couches. I remember seeing my one of my best friends, Dennis. It is in Arizona, and before I got signed to WWE, I was living with him. I broke his bed because he gave me beds, and I slept on the bed for like four months, and I just broke it because it couldn’t hold me. So I have to make a constant effort to make sure that I invest in actually well-made furniture to sustain my size, because I will break it.”

On how many times he has been asked how tall he is:

“If I count it, I’ll be a multi-millionaire. I promise that people ask me every single day, multiple times a day, it never stops. It’s, ‘Do you play in the NBA? What do you do? How tall are you?’ I actually have fun with it. My wife hates it because she cringes at us. I go, ‘I’m not a basketball player, I’m an accountant.’ I go, ‘Yeah, what do you think? Just because I’m tall, you think I should play basketball?’ And they go, no no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I go, ‘I’m just joking.’ Just to lighten up the mood. But I love having fun.”

On when he had the big growth spurt:

“I was always a tall kid. I remember my primary school teacher used to call me tall man as a kid. By the time I was 11, I was already six foot. Then by the time between 11 and 13, I had this huge growth spurt. By the time I was 13 I was six seven.”

On when he realized he was not growing at a normal rate:

“Not until I got to college in the States. It took me years of playing basketball, and then the doctor realized that what’s going on with you is not normal.”

On what would have happened had the doctor not realized:

“I’d have been dead. So it’s kind of similar to what Andre The Giant had. It’s called acromegaly. I think Big Show has it as well. But mine is kind of unique, because I have acromegaly, I also have gigantism, just means that you just grow really, really tall, and I have what you call Partial Cushing’s disease. I don’t know how to explain, it’s kind of complicated, but I have all three combined, and it was the first time in endocrine history that they found a patient that has all three combined. So I’m a really, really rare case, to the point where they had a journal published about my case. Yes, it was a treat for endocrine doctors to say we have read about this in textbooks, but you’re the first person to admit that actually has this condition.”

Is there any pain?

“I have no pain, I’m pain-free. I’m great. The thing about it is once you keep on growing your heart, your organs keep on growing too. Then it’s like cardiac arrest and things of sort. It’s a protein; you probably heard about this in bodybuilding. It’s called IGF-1 [Insulin Growth Factor]. My body produces too many growth hormones, so I have to take a medication to stop my body from using the growth hormones so that I don’t get any bigger.”

On getting the condition diagnosed:

“I walk in and they pull out my MRI. They go, Hey, so we did the MRI on your brain. They go, you see this little dot right here, you have a pituitary tumor. We’re gonna take it out or one or two options. Either you’re gonna go blind or you’re gonna have a heart attack. Because my body was just producing so much growth hormones, it was making my heart enlarged. So they said, We need to get this fixed now. So that’s how I found out about that. I know it was a blessing. I was 18 years old, and it was just me and myself in college. My parents were back home in Nigeria. I’m like, this huge that has been put on me. I never expected anything like that to happen my entire life.”

On what car Omos drives:

“I drive a Honda Palisade, which sounds crazy, but it has a lot of leg room, and I recline, sit all the way back to drive it. I do need a bigger vehicle. I would acknowledge that. But for right now, it does the trick.”

On his passion for fragrances:

“This is embarrassing, and before I say this, I do acknowledge that I do have a problem [laughs]. I have about 350 bottles. I can wear one for every day of the year and not wear the same fragrance twice, it works.”

Do you not have your favorites?

“It’s hard, they’re all my babies. It’s something that I discovered. Everybody likes nice smells, but something I discovered I had a passion for when I went to Saudi Arabia, and it just kind of hit me out of nowhere, and I just fell down a rabbit hole. But I don’t have a favorite. It’s so hard because it all depends on how I’m feeling.”

On receiving advice from The Undertaker:

“I’ve been blessed from the first day. I remember the first time I met him. I was at NXT, this is when we were still filming at Full Sail. I’m walking to Gorilla in the back, and I see Hunter. Hunter goes, ‘Hey, I have a special surprise for you.’ He [Undertaker] just walks out, and I rarely get star-struck. I just go oh it’s The Undertaker! He goes, ‘Hey big fella’, and he just gave me a big hug. I was shocked. I was shook. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and from that day it just became like a bond. He’s pretty much like a, because he can’t be my dad, sorry Taker, but he’s been such a great influence on me, and I appreciate him. We talk quite often. He gives me advice. Whenever I’m trying to figure out a match or a spot, I always ask, What would Undertaker do? Because I do admire how he’s been able to transcend the business, because he has built one of those characters that, even after he passes, that character is going to be forever.”

On competing in Japan:

“What happened was I saw Tavion Heights of NXT and Josh Briggs go to Japan. I was just watching the videos and everything. Then, as they were doing shows in Japan, an interview came out with Great Muta, they asked him, Who would you love to have in Japan? The first name he mentions is me. I’m like, Oh, wow. That’s great. I didn’t think he would remember me, but he did. So I kind of threw the idea to a couple of guys about Japan. I remember seeing Road Dogg at the PC, ‘Hey, do you have a couple of minutes to chat? Not really busy right now, but I would love to go to Japan.’ He said, ‘You know what? Let me think about it.’ And then a couple months later, he was like, ‘Hey, you have an opportunity to go to Japan. Do you want to go?’ I was like, Yes! I want to go to Japan. To be honest, I am glad I did. I needed to go to Japan.”

On his style in Japan:

“I would say a little bit [different]. I took a lot of things that I learned while I was working with MVP. There were a lot of things that we talked about when we were on the road together, because he taught me a lot. I just took all that style. When I was there I called him, because he wrestled in Japan. I called him. I called Shelton Benjamin, and they go, ‘Hey, in Japan, you’re a heel, be a heel. They love it, be the nastiest heel.’ I’m like, Oh, really? So I really got to embrace that. And they loved it.”

On when he expects to be back in the ring:

“I don’t know. I’m just waiting. I’m kind of in a scenario where I’m kind of like a special attraction. Whenever that time comes, I’m ready.”

On the cage match with Bobby Lashley:

“Another fun thing about that match is that’s also one of my favorite matches, the cage match, because that was also my birthday. I think that was 2022, and I was sick as a dog that day. I was so sick. Oh, my God. I remember the couple days before we had the show in Wilkes-Barre. We had a dark match, and this is when we used to do the big man class. Shout out to Adam Pearce and Jamie Noble. We used to do big man class, had a little snuffle but I was fine. Then I catch my flight on Friday morning to Philadelphia, end of my flight, I don’t know what happened, whether it was atmospheric pressure, but I just start sweating balls and having a headache, and I just feel so horrible on the plane. I’m thinking, maybe it’s just the plane. I landed in Philadelphia, go to the bathroom, splash water on my face, and then I’m like I’m okay. I get my luggage, try to get a rental. I’m gonna call an Uber to the hotel, thinking to give myself a couple of hours, take a nap, I’ll be fine.

Every hour that I woke up that day, I got even more progressively sick. I had to call the doctor and say, ‘Hey, I’m here. I’m at the hotel, but I am so sick.’ I had a phlegm coughed up in the sink, and it was just like gunk of this colored mucus in the sink. They’re like, we’re gonna send you a COVID kid to test and make sure you don’t have COVID. Luckily, I didn’t. Spent the night in Wilkes-Barre, I felt better. Drove from Wilkes-Barre to lower Maryland, because my wife was doing a rotation at that time in medical school. I drove out there, when I joined her there, she drugged me up that whole weekend. Because we had this cage match, we had it advertised for the whole week, and it was my birthday. There’s no way in heck I was missing that match. So that whole weekend was just recovery, hydration, and drove to the show in Norfolk, Virginia. We drove that Sunday night, got there. On Monday morning, everybody goes, Are you okay? I’m like, Oh, I’m fine. I’m fine. I was like, 50% okay. I did the match, and something just happens to me. It just happened to me in the ring. I just performed and whatever you’re feeling just disappears. I felt amazing in the ring, Bob and I put on a great show. Everything was great. Then on the drive back, just felt sick again. I guess I got sick on the way back, because my wife drove halfway. She also felt sick. Then I drove the other half, and it was a miracle to make it back to her apartment that night. But yes, that’s the story of that day. So that deal, which sticks in my head.”

On whether there were concerns the cage would not break:

“Yes. I was like, please, break. Because if it doesn’t break, it is gonna be a sh*tty spot. So I said, Please, please, please. It was on my birthday. I said, you cannot mess this up. You have to throw this man through this cage with all your might. And I’m glad I did, because if you didn’t.”

On whether there were concerns the cage might break too early:

“I wasn’t thinking about that because I was so in the moment that I just forgot until we got to the spot. I was just in the match, and we’re just having fun, until we got to this spot, like, Okay, time for you to break. You better break!”

On whether there were concerns Brock Lesnar could not German suplex him:

“No, Brock, he’s a specimen. I wasn’t worried at all. People forget he’s a farm boy. He throws hay for a living. So him picking me up at 300-400 pounds. I knew he was gonna be able to do that. If Bobby can pick me up, I knew he could. That was my first time ever taking a suplex. Never taken it in training, never done it to PC, not from anyone. That’s the first time I ever took it in German suplex was during that match.”

You didn’t do it the day before?

“No. He’s such a great dude. Because I remember during rehearsals, he just goes, ‘Hey, how many Germans do you want to do?’ I’m like, ‘Brother, it’s you Brock. However much you want to give me, brother. You’re doing me a favor with this match. So however many Germans you want that makes you look good, we’re gonna do it.’ He goes, okay.”

On the F5:

“That F5 was easy. The Germans sucked. But for the first time in my entire life, I never felt someone hook me that way, and I could feel the muscles contract when he picked me up. For the first time I felt that oh sh*t, I can’t do anything.”

On being thrown through the announce table by 6 guys:

“That was Money in the Bank 2022, I believe. I had never been put through a table. I don’t know what that feels like. I remember during rehearsals, the guys picked me up. It was Sheamus, Sami, Drew, Matt Riddle, Austin Theory, Riddick Moss and Seth Rollins all pick me up and I was like, whoa, this is high. I said this really feels like taking my finish. Oh, wow. This is high. So they go, because they had a crash mat out. And they go, 1, 2, 3. Oh sh*t, this is gonna suck. I remember during the spot, during the actual match, and we did a spot, if you watch the video I’m just laying down there like this. I just close my eyes, and I’m just dreaming. All I hear is 1, 2, 3. It was the longest fall, the highest fall ever. I just saw my body going, and it kept on going. Okay, where’s the table? It kept on going and kept on going and kept on going and I hit a table. And I was like, Oh, this sucks, but okay, I’m here. It’s done. My part of the match is done for the night. But I was pretty high. I was like, wow, this is hot.”

On playing a ninja on TV:

“We shot at like 5 am, 6 am. They were shooting all night because they had all these spots they had to shoot. I remember The Viking Raiders running through the glass, and the glass exploded. Dawkins spearing Ivar through the glass, and it exploded and he had glass shards in his body he had to take out. We’re just off shooting. It was just so much fun. I remember pulling out the katana sword, because I’m a huge nerd, so you give me a sword I become a five-year-old kid. I had a blast. I was smiling cheek to cheek under the mask. I’m like, wait, I get to be a ninja on TV?! You’re telling me you’re going to give me a katana. Thank God it wasn’t sharpened!”

What is Omos grateful for?

“My health, my wife and life.”

Hornswoggle Is Hilarious! Little People’s Court, DX, Vince’s Son, WWE Legends Deal, The Rock

in LATEST EPISODES on May 27, 2025 January 30, 2026

https://cvvtix.com – Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in LA and NYC with VIP Meet & Greet!

Dylan Postl (@DylanPostl) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE as Hornswoggle. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Oshkosh, WI to discuss his WWE and overcoming the odds to make it as a professional wrestler, being under a WWE nostalgia deal, what happened when he met The Rock for the first time, cosplaying as AJ Styles in TNA, appearing at WWE World in his leprechaun gimmick and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “If nothing changes, then nothing changes.”

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On losing weight:

“I lost 38 pounds. My heaviest was 181 and when I weighed myself last I was 138.”

Could you work a full match right now?

“Chris, I have not worked a real match ever. I don’t work matches.”

We’ve all seen WeeLC:

“I’m never touching that again, and I had 19 other guys helping me with that as well. Obviously the most proud I’ve ever been in that match, and I’m very happy with what I can do. I didn’t want to be the guy biting ass and doing haha bullsh*t, and now I’m the guy doing haha bullsh*t. But it’s okay, because it pays the same. In reality, I don’t need to do 19 flips. When I got fired, my thing was I’m gonna be the indie guy, and I clearly found out quickly I can’t be the indie guy. My stature and my weight at that time just wasn’t meant to be. I’m okay with that. So now I’m back to biting asses and getting a reaction.”

On the WWE legends deal:

“The legends deal, man, it nostalgia. It’s a WWE nostalgia deal. They don’t call me a legend anymore.”

On how the call came:

“Legitimately, Landon and I were on our way to see Blink-182. I get the call, I literally had to pull over, and I just froze. You know me, you know how I view me through these interviews, a lot of people know how I view me. I don’t view myself as very great in wrestling. So to have that recognition is the ultimate. This is pretty f*cking awesome. It just makes me feel like I mattered in WWE with this now, that it wasn’t a got rid of me, released me, which is okay. No one deserves a job. That’s my thing. Whenever people get released, internet goes crazy about ‘How could they do this?’ No one in any workforce deserves a job. You’re lucky to have that, especially that kind of job. And so now to be back under a legends deal, it’s incredible. It’s just like the coolest thing ever.”

On doing WWE World in leprechaun gimmick:

“All these promoters wanted me to wear it. I’ve never worn it. I don’t want to be, nothing against him, I don’t want to be Dink. I don’t want to be these guys at the conventions, showing up in their stuff that doesn’t look right anymore. It looks disheveled. I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to do that. But for that, I had to. Almost cut the hair.

I did the signing at the World, and I didn’t think that would ever happen again, and so I needed to wear the suit. And like putting a suit on was emotional, because I felt home, literally, I felt home. For those three hours being treated incredibly by WWE, by Fanatics.”

On whether his son Landon has started training:

“He goes to our school. Professionally, I won’t train him until he’s 17. [Why 17?] Because our other classes start when they’re 17. One of the Joshes that you met today. Bearded, bigger Josh. He’s my business partner. I’ve known him since I was in third grade, best friends ever since. He’s the head trainer of our school with me, he made a good point to Landon and he goes, you’re gonna have enough of an uphill battle because of who your dad is. No matter what you can be the best out there, but everything’s gonna be the thought of it’s because it’s your dad. You need to already break those barriers. If we start training you early, it’s another thing they can hold against you and hold against us.”

On when he was being ok being himself:

“I’ve never been okay with it. Secretly, through counseling and therapy, I realize that even more. It’s okay, guys. LA Knight talked about it, it’s okay to go to counseling. It’s okay to go to therapy. I thought for the longest time it wasn’t, but it’s the best, being better with yourself and having that is the greatest thing ever. I love it. I don’t think I’ve ever accepted okayness. I’ve just accepted that it’s life, if that makes sense. There’s things that suck, having to kick a stool around my house, around my kitchen to get things, having to do that, just boarding a flight and having to ask the stewardess to get my bag from above or put it up there. That’s just life, though.”

On reaction from non-wrestling fans:

“Kids, obviously. When I go out, there’s two reactions, [gasps] or why does that baby have a beard kind of thing. You see in their minds he’s like me, but he’s not. It’s just life though. Landon, I’m just dad to him, obviously, and I’m just me. This is who I’ve always been. So he never saw me, obviously, differently, and he was very young when he [noticed], but his friends noticing me, how I am, and him just kind of saying, ‘Hey, that’s just my dad.'”

On issues with Peter Dinklage:

“F*ck you Peter Dinklage, piece of sh*t. F*cking hate him. He costed so many people in my community jobs with that Snow White bullsh*t, it p*sses me off.”

“I think he wanted to make a statement, and he thought he was making some cool, hip thing. But it wasn’t. When he did Elf, that check cashed just fine. Tyrion Lannister was a role for a little person. He cashed that check for all those years. I’m okay not going out for Brad Pitt’s role. Give me Grumpy or Happy or Sleepy. Major Disney remake? Yeah! Come on. Then you’re gonna have seven dwarves. Then there are extras, then there’s stunt doubles that are all gonna get paid. And he f*cked it.”

On little people’s court:

“So happy, man, there’s gonna be a whole segment for me again, insane. They’re going through that, that whole time, going from the Vince’s son stuff to that everything was just like, it’s crazy to me. I would have full segments just for me. Now I’m finally starting to be able to look back and go, whoa. It’s pretty cool.”

On the mini battle royal:

“Little Batista got kicked out of backstage because he was taking photos.”

Who was he taking photos of?

“We don’t need to talk about that. He got escorted out. I go, ‘Where’s little Batista?’ They go, ‘Oh he got asked very politely to leave the building.'”

On the first time he met The Rock:

“So I am in a suit, a legit suit, not my leprechaun outfit, with my gear bag, and I’m gonna meet him behind the curtain as he comes through. In my mind, best friends, I see my buddy Dwayne come back through, oh boy he we go! I say, ‘Hey man, thank you so much for coming back. Thanks for what you’re gonna do for WrestleMania and what you’re gonna do for the company, and just glad to have you back. Good to meet you. My name is Dylan.’ He extends his arm out, goes, ‘Did you have a good time tonight buddy?’ Taps me on the shoulder, leaves. I go, Oh no, he doesn’t realize I work here. I was on the show before that. I told Kofi, thinking he would have my back and support me. He supported me by texting 97 people immediately while driving because he couldn’t wait on it. Within 30 seconds, I had so many people message me. ‘Rock thought you were a Make-A-Wish kid, huh?’ Big Show called him out the next week about this, because it got to Big Show. Rock goes, ‘No. Yeah, I did, yeah, I did. I don’t watch the show.’ I approached him about it too and he said, ‘Yeah, Big Show already got on me about this.'”

On getting thrown into the cage by JBL:

“He threw me, and I landed right on the Shillelagh, which hurt the worst. Everything was okay, and it sucked, but landing that bump into the Shillelagh under me and going, Oh no. But then having to sell dead, it was weird, because I was like, I can’t sell. I can’t actively sell because I’m supposed to be just out of it. It’s nuts. It’s not the thing that that whole thing was, the original plan was Fit versus Vince at WrestleMania. That was the original idea, man.”

On when he realized he looked like AJ Styles with long hair:

“Never, not until I did a stand-up thing at a Conrad Thompson show. I did one of my evening with things, opened up for him, and someone posted a photo of me with the long hair and the goatee. I forget who even said it, but someone said, Mini AJ or AJ Swoggle, posted it, and then it took off. Orton tweeted about it. The Good Brothers, they loved it, so they pitched it to Scott D’Amore, of course, or Scott pitched it to them. I never saw it. I just never saw it at all. But then, as soon as they thought of the idea. I was like, Yep, let’s do it again. TV time. Fine by me.”

On his favourite WrestleMania memory:

“I always go back between 23, the bump from Ken, and 24. 24, that match was because of me. And that’s not an ego thing, it was written because of me, because of my role. It’s crazy. Having an entrance at WrestleMania and that was my first day back with WrestleMania. Insane. Love it.”

What is Hornswoggle grateful for?

“My son, my family and friendships.”

Mr. Kennedy: WWE’s Biggest “What If”, MITB, Brutal Undertaker Chair Shot, Training Tiffany Stratton

in LATEST EPISODES on May 22, 2025 January 30, 2026

DESCRIPTION:https://cvvtix.com – Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in LA and NYC with VIP Meet & Greet!

Ken Anderson (@mrkenanderson) is a professional wrestler previously signed to WWE and known by his ring name Mr. Kennedy. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to talking about his wrestling school “The Academy” and to discuss his WWE career highlights that included winning and losing the Money in the Bank briefcase, nearly being named Mr. McMahon’s illegitimate son and feuding with The Undertaker, his signature microphone entrance, why he never returned to WWE, winning the TNA World Championship, training Tiffany Stratton and more!

Give Ken a call: 507-772-2776

Quote I’m thinking about: “You can have results or excuses. Not both.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

Please support our sponsors!
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On how much longer he intends to wrestle:

“You know, it’s funny. When I was in TNA, I had a really bad attitude about the business. I had sort of soured on it, and somebody asked me in an interview, and I was like, ‘If I’m still doing this in five years, somebody shoot me.’ I kind of look back on that, and I just like, I can’t believe I said something like that. I don’t know how long, but I’m going to go until the wheels fall off. I mean, not like, ‘Hey, you should have retired 15 years ago…’ wheels fall off, but I still feel like I have some juice.”

On the first time he met Tiffany Stratton:

“So she was friends with Greg Gagne. Greg is a family friend, and Greg reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this girl, she’s a power lifter and she does gymnastics and stuff. She’s a super athlete, really good look, and I want to train her. Can we come?’ So she started coming and, right away, day one, she’s one of those people. I was saying earlier, we take our time to get to the flip bumps and stuff like that. But Alex Findley and Tiffany Stratton, day one, they’re doing perfect flip bumps, landing perfectly. Gable Steveson, show him how to get up, bump, and then get up a certain way. He did it. I said, get up this way, and he started getting up the wrong way. I said uh uh, then he reversed himself, back down, and got up perfectly the right way. But yeah, Tiffany, day one, there’s some stuff people just have instincts for. I think she’s one of those people. However, the funny thing was, I don’t mean this in a negative way, she didn’t have any charisma as far as she just did the work. She didn’t have the character stuff down. I have her first promo. I’ll have to ask her someday for her permission to put it out there, right? Because it’s not good.”

Rate it on a scale of 1 to 10:

“Zero [laughs]. And I think she would probably agree with me. Everybody’s first interview is terrible. But to see how far she has come is pretty awesome.”

On what Gable Steveson was missing:

“I don’t think that he loves the wrestling business. I mean, WWE has done the NIL thing for a while. I remember back when, I think when I was there, there was always these rumors that WWE is only taking guys that are six foot one or taller. Then for a while, they wouldn’t take anybody that had independent experience. I just think the guys who are successful love this.”

On whether he wanted to come back to WWE after being let go:

“I didn’t want to, I swear to God, I had no desire. I think that I never wanted to blow the bridge up completely. But I really had no desire. When I was at TNA, I was like, I’ll never go back there. I’ll never work for them again. Now it’s changed. I would definitely [go back] now.”

Was it the animosity?

“Yeah. And I think the animosity was, instead of looking at myself, I was looking at this person did this, and that person did that, and they screwed me. Then at some point I realized I played a hand, a huge hand, in all that.”

On when he realized that was the case:

“I don’t exactly know what it was. But it was like well, you know those guys who went to Vince and said, ‘Hey, we can’t work with this guy anymore.’ Had I been doing all the right things up until that point, that conversation would have gone differently. The fact was that that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Vince was tired of [it all]. There was a lot of negativity around things that I was doing, my attitude, and then that, like, get rid of him.”

On being one of the biggest what-ifs in wrestling:

“I guess there’s a ton of mistakes that were made along the way. And the one thing, I can’t go back, can’t change any of that. I can just move forward. And what I can do is hopefully show my students, hey, don’t do this. To some degree, we all think that about our kids too. I’m just gonna tell my kid not to do it, and he’s gonna listen to me, right? Don’t touch the stove. They gotta touch this stove at some point, but hopefully they don’t have to put their own hand on it.”

On missing out on becoming World Champion:

“So, I had won the briefcase, and they had me say on TV that I was going to cash it in next year at WrestleMania, and that was the plan. At the time, I don’t know if things have changed, but it’s literally week by week, the writing for the most part, because things change so rapidly. So it’s just kind of like, Hey, we’re thinking about doing this, but you never know what curveballs are going to be thrown at you. So then one night after SmackDown, I got a call from Michael Hayes. He said, ‘Vince needs to see you in his office.’ So I walked in and Vince and Stephanie laid out the scenario. ‘Hey, Taker’s hurt.’ I think he tore his biceps. He was the champion at the time. ‘He needs to have surgery. He needs to go away.’ Then they laid out the scenario for the next week on SmackDown. He was going to have a cage match with Mark Henry, or Batista or somebody like that. He was going to barely squeak out, somebody else was going to come out and do some more damage to him, and then I was going to come out and pick the bones, cash in the briefcase, cover him, 1 2 3. So then I remember that night going out with, nobody knew about this, except for a few people, and Michael Cole and Mark Carrano were the only two that knew. For some reason, I didn’t make it a habit, or I just generally didn’t hang out with these guys, but we went out to the bar that night, and they were kind of like toasting me. ‘Here’s to hard work kid.’ I just had this weird feeling. And then the next week, we did a double shot in Poughkeepsie on a house show on a Saturday. First show, I’m in an eight-man tag. Batista gives me a little clothesline, I went down, and I felt something pop in my tricep, and I rolled out to the floor, and it just started swelling up, right away. And I remember Finley standing there going, ‘That doesn’t look good.’ By the time I got downstairs, my arm was swollen, was starting to change colors, which is weird, because that usually takes a couple of days. Honswoggle drove me to the ER in I think it was Erie, Pennsylvania, then I went to the hotel room. Next day, Stephanie called me. She said, ‘Ken, you tore your tricep off the bone. You’re going to have to have surgery. You’re going to go away for nine months. We still need to get that title off of Taker, though, so we’re sending the jet to come pick you up. You’re going to come to Penn State. Edge is going to challenge you for your briefcase, and then he’s going to go on and do what you were supposed to do.’ Okay, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, whatever, that’s business. Flew there, got wrapped up. I couldn’t move my arm. It was kind of like, what can you do? Not much. So Edge beat me up, I think he jumped me on the ramp, rolled me in the ring, ding, ding, ding, spear, 1 2 3. So then the next day, I go down to Birmingham, Alabama, sitting on Doctor Andrews’ table, and he just feeling my arm, and he goes, ‘That’s not a tear.’ Excuse me? ‘No, I don’t think that’s a tear.’ Then he took another MRI. It was just a large hematoma. It was just a bunch of blood vessels that popped. So MVP says you were a misdiagnosis away from becoming World Champion.”

On becoming TNA World Champion:

“I’ve said this before. Like you just said, it’s not exactly the same, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t proud of that. At the end of the day, it’s a prop, if you don’t understand that, The Rock just put out the tweet and said it’s a complete work. It always is. It’s fiction. If you don’t understand that. So I didn’t really win anything, but at some point it’s like all these people felt that you could carry the [company].”

On always being able to catch the microphone in his entrance:

“I didn’t. There’s a really funny video, because they used to mess with me. They drop it real slow sometimes, or sometimes they just drop it. There’s one time where they dropped it fast and I missed it, the thing goes swinging. I just look up, there it is. I just knew where my mark was. It was one of those things too. I think for the most part, every day it was different in every ring, or in every arena. So I’d just get in there and check it and make sure. Or they’d come up and say, like, hey, it’s a little farther to the back today.”

On knowing Hornswoggle would be safe on that ladder bump:

“I didn’t [laughs]. I was hoping to. No, it was something that I had. So when I made my debut, it was supposed to be a dark match against Funaki. He was going to Super Kick me, 1 2 3, it was just going to be dark. Dave Lagana walks up. This is right after Dreamer called me and said, they want to see you. Vince walked by me. Dave walked by me. He goes, Hey, there’s a change. I immediately thought they cut the match. That’s cool, whatever. Then he was like, ‘We need to come up with a finisher for you, because you’re going over, and this is going to be televised now on Velocity, welcome aboard.’ So right away, Fit Finlay was our producer. And he’s like, what can you do? And I was like, I do the Finlay roll off the second rope. And Funaki [looked shocked]. I was like, ‘Please, if you just hold on to me, squeeze tight, I’ll take care of you. I’ll set you down gently, no problem. I promise.’ He trusted me, and when we came back through the curtain after doing it, he was like, Oh, I didn’t feel anything, was great. So I knew that I could do it safely, and I knew that I could. Hornswoggle is probably one of the heavier guys that I’ve done that too. I’m kidding! Then you’re in an awkward position trying to get him, scoop him up the other ladder. So we had to really walk through that a couple of times. Luckily, it’s WrestleMania. I’m sure it’s the same way now, but they would have a big ballroom with a couple of rings, crash pads, extra ladders and stuff like that, so you could go practice and try some things.”

On a stiff chair shot from The Undertaker:

“It didn’t hurt. I feel like WWE has erased that from their [history], you can only find that on YouTube. Every once in a while it gets scrubbed and taken down, because I’ve tried looking it up a few times, and it’s actually sometimes it’s kind of hard to find or to get a good copy of it.”

How did that not hurt?

“Because instead of holding both legs, you hold just one set of legs. Get your thumbs inside. Then when you hit it, it just opens up. It just kind of folds. It wasn’t bad. He was one of the lightest guys I’ve ever worked with on anything, nothing he ever did connected.”

On the exploding microphone with The Undertaker:

“Magic! No, there was a guy in WWE, that was his job, magic department. If you go backstage, it says magic. It was like he was in charge of anytime there was a special effect that something needed to explode or blow up. He was the guy that did it.”

It didn’t look safe:

“It was. The way he rigged it. He just said, as soon as you go to pull it back, we’re going to set it off. I think we tried it during the day. It was fine. It didn’t hurt.”

On the Signature Pharmacy scandal:

“I got home, I literally walked in my door and I got a call from Johnny. ‘Hey Vince needs to see you in Stanford this afternoon, just go to the airport. We don’t even have a flight booked for you. We’ll figure it all out. We’ll keep in touch with you.’ So I just jump back in the car and went right back to the airport. I’m like, here we go, this is it, big time, baby. Things are going to start changing. The car picks me up, takes me to Titan towers. And as I’m pulling in, I see Chavo and Funaki and a couple of other guys. ‘What are you guys doing here?’ ‘I don’t know. They told me I had to come.’ Then I think it was Chavo who said, ‘Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s good.’ I’m trying to think what it is. Then there was 10 of us, I think, sitting outside Vince’s office, one by one. We were like, whoever goes in, come out, smarten everybody up. Tell us what it is. Edge was the first guy to go in. He went and he was in there for about five minutes, and he came back out and he goes, ‘I can’t say anything. It’s not good.’ So then I was like, fourth, fifth, to go in, and that was the Signature Pharmacies thing. The thing was when they instituted the wellness policy, you get all these people, there was a lot of us that had been using PEDs for a long time, and you just suddenly go cold turkey. So there were people, you can see it if you watch video from then, people shrinking, shriveling up. We are still running that hard schedule too, four or five days a week, or doing overseas tours and stuff. It’s tough on your body, and it’s also tough when you go into this, especially with testosterone. You go from this synthetic testosterone to your body has shut down making testosterone on its own. So now your testosterone is depleted. So we asked what can we do? Hey, as long as you go and get a prescription, a doctor’s prescription, you’re good. Then all these wellness clinics around the country, so that’s what I did. That’s what a bunch of us did. So I went and I had blood work done. The doctor prescribed me these things, and I started taking them. I didn’t even fail a test. It was just because my name was attached to this thing, it was on ESPN, I remember. But the thing was, the problem was that because I explained that in the office to Vince. He’s like, ‘We instituted the wellness policy on this day. Why are you still taking this stuff?’ I explained it to him, and then he goes, ‘Yeah, but you can’t have an online pharmacy fill your [prescription].’ That was in the wellness policy. I was like, I didn’t know that. My doctor filled it, he was using an online pharmacy. So that was that.”

What is Mr. Kennedy grateful for?

“My wife, my kids and my health.”

Lyra Valkyria On Making WWE History, Complicated Becky Lynch Relationship, WrestleMania, Bayley

in LATEST EPISODES on May 20, 2025 January 30, 2026

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Lyra Valkyria (@Real_Valkyria) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE and the reigning Women’s Intercontinental Champion. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at St. Louis, MO to discuss growing up in Ireland and making it to WWE, being inspired by Becky Lynch and getting to wrestle The Man, becoming the first-ever Women’s Intercontinental Champion, tagging with Bayley, briefly being a double champion, the inspiration behind her entrance and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.” – Vince Lombardi

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On career setbacks:

“There’s been a lot of points in my career where it felt very out of the frying pan and into the fire. I feel like so far, I’ve never let myself down on that. But I suppose a point where I was on the cusp of something and then it all fell flat was when I tore my ACL in NXT UK. I was on the road to coming back to another match with Meiko Satomura, who was the NXT UK Women’s Champion at the time, and my whole world was who’s going to be the one to beat Meiko? The talk of the locker room, the talk of everything, she was the ultimate champion, the ultimate person you wanted to be in the ring with. That was everything, the NXT UK Women’s Championship. So then we were just coming back from COVID and wrestling in front of nobody. Actually, I heard Bayley tore her ACL, and this was right as the crowds were coming back. I was like that’s awful timing, how awful. I did it one week later, and there’s so much when I think about it. I did it from doing a sunset bomb from the corner, and I was at the show in Dublin where Seth Rollins did the same thing, where he tore his knee. So yeah, I saw his last match as the WWE Champion. If you told me back then that I was going to do the exact same thing, it’s pretty wild. But I feel like I was on the road there to possibly, maybe becoming the NXT UK Women’s Champion, or having that match with Meiko, that rematch that I never got, that I really wanted. But that’s the one thing in my career where I’m like, I wonder what if?”

Did you know it was torn?

“No, I didn’t even know what that meant. I’d never had any bad injuries. I know now you hear about a torn knee or something, it’s big. I didn’t know that. I’ll never forget it. I was on my way into town to meet my now fiancé. I remember I finished the match, and I remember they wanted to put me on crutches going into the airport, and I was like, No, I’m fine. I thought it was one of those things where I’d be fine in two weeks. It’ll be okay.”

Were you in pain?

“No, like, in the moment, it was really bad. But then after that, I really did just think, oh yeah, this will be fine. The surgery messed me up so much more than the injury, it was the surgery that killed me, that set me back. But the actual injury, I was like, ‘Do I even need surgery?’ So they were like, ‘You need a scan.’ I didn’t think I did. So I was like, Okay, we’ll do this, and I felt so confident that it was going to be fine. The fact that the referee did the X and we had to pause the match. I remember actually thinking when we did the scan, I hope there’s something there, just so I don’t look like it was nothing. But I had no idea how bad it was going to be. So I was in town about to meet my fiancé, and I get a phone call and they tell me that I have a torn ACL and I’m like, ‘Okay, what does that mean?’ They were like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be surgery.’ I’m like ‘Surgery?’ They were like, ‘Yeah, you’re going to be out for like nine months to a year.’ I couldn’t believe it. I remember I was standing in the corner shop, and I was just so shocked. There was tears rolling down my face, and I was like, I can’t be out for a year. Then I remember I was meeting my fiancé there, and I remember seeing him and like grabbing him by the shoulder as he was walking by, and he just sees me on the phone crying, and he turns around he doesn’t know what’s happened. It was so rough. But I’d say that was a big down point. But now I kind of just look at it and be like no, it was a great struggle. When you’re out, there’s nothing more you want than to get back. So it forces you to think about why you do this, what you want from this, and when you’re forced to be on the sidelines, it makes you appreciate everything so much more. It kind of just refreshes your work ethic and your drive.”

On possibly coming back from injury and facing Meiko Satomura:

“There was a big part of me that was hoping, maybe they’ll wait for me, maybe I’ll still come back and be the one to beat Meiko. Now I’m kind of wise enough to know that this does not wait for anyone. But yeah, I had a lot of ups and downs in waiting, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. I feel like that injury really helped me, kind of iron sharpens iron. I don’t know, it just made me tougher.”

On her inspiration:

“That was Becky. She was the first. When I saw NXT, the very first thing I saw was her Irish dancing debut. That was it. I was already a fan, but that was what set the ball rolling of she must have started somewhere, she didn’t just spawn over there. If she’s from Ireland, is there somewhere to do this here? That was what made me go down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of where is there to train in Ireland.”

On being one of the few from Ireland to make it in WWE:

“It’s crazy. But also, you look at how small Ireland is, and how many of us are on Raw right now. It’s crazy, I feel like we’re really good at producing the best.”

On why the Irish wrestlers are so successful:

“I feel like it’s just our approach to this, and how we see what happens between the ropes. We have this certain grit about us, we train on the mats. When I started, we didn’t have a ring, we were learning to bump on mats, that kind of thing. I don’t know, there’s just a very kind of, how bad do you want it? Don’t let anyone beside you do more push-ups than you. If you are going to get on the show, you have to earn your spot. You have to bring something to the table that no one else is. You have to be the best. We were very competitive, but also supportive. I feel like there’s two types of competitor. You can be nasty with your competition, or you can [be supportive]. I want you to do great so I can do better. When it’s supportive, you want to help each other, and it’s like, we all get better together by pushing each other and by trying to outdo each other, but it’s in a nice way. And I love that about wrestling.”

On being inspired by Becky Lynch:

“Honestly, I don’t think I went, I can go do that. It was one of those things where I was watching Raw super late, because it starts at 1 am and I was again, down the rabbit hole. Where can I go to do this? I was looking at who’s in the club? I was not very outgoing. I was very, very shy. So if I started something, I needed a friend to go with me and that kind of thing. I was never the one. I was the quiet friend, I think. I was always a bit awkward, but this was the one thing that I was like, if I go, I’ll just do it. I even considered giving a fake name so that if it goes really badly, no one has to know about it, and my friends would never find out anything like that. It must have been 3 am, and I was on my phone looking it up, I kind of just went, I’m just going to do this. It was actually a Saturday night, and I was up watching wrestling, and I went I’m just going to go tomorrow. Because if I put down my phone right now, go to sleep, and I say, maybe I’ll do this next week. I won’t. It was just one of those freak things that I was like, just get up and go, and it turned my whole life around. That one little decision to just try something really did change my life. Because it sounds like it’s just something to say, but it really did. I decided that day that good or bad, that’s what I’m gonna do. So yeah, that one decision to try something changed everything.”

You remember that first day?

“I don’t remember the session very well. I remember the pain the next day, and I remember running around in a circle with the few guys that were outside. I met my fiancé that very first day as well. He was the first person I ever met. Shook my hand outside the gym.”

On now working with Becky Lynch in WWE:

“It’s just crazy, she’s the one that broke all the glass ceilings, the one that did it all. But she didn’t just do it and succeed; she went and did things that no one ever thought possible. So I have a crazy level of respect for that. Because once someone does something, there’s all these studies about the 4-minute mile, the human capability, how much they can go, right? But then once one person broke that. And then one person broke it, and then when that one person broke it, it was broken by the next person and the next person and the next person. It’s almost like you just need that one person to show you that it’s possible. Then suddenly, it just opens up the floodgates and suddenly there’s no limit. So to have a woman from my tiny country of Ireland to have gone that far, I really feel like if she can, then why not me?”

On winning the Women’s Intercontinental Championship:

“[It’s brought me] A lot of confidence, it’s a big responsibility, and there’s a lot of pressure that comes with it. But I think I’m kind of in control once I get in the ring, that’s where I’m like, no matter what outside noise there is, I’m completely in control of what I do here. So that’s kind of where my power is. No one can take that away.”

On when she first heard about winning the title:

“I never was a part of that conversation. I just find out on Mondays what I’m doing. I found out the day of. I was never a part of the decision or the conversation. I just showed up to work.”

How did it feel when you were told that?

“Amazing. I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t believe it. But things don’t hit me when I think they’re going to. I always say that it never hits me in the moment. It hit me when I was driving home and taking my bags out of the car on the Tuesday. The title is just sitting in my bag, the zip opens, and I’m like, Oh yeah, that’s the Intercontinental Championship. I won that. I brought that home. That’s when it hits me.”

On becoming a double champion:

“I was tag team champions with Becky. It’s funny, when you look at JD McDonough, he always says his dream was to be tag champions with Balor. They did that. And, yeah, however short-lived it was, I was a double champion.”

On the meaning behind her entrance:

“So on the Independents I wrestled as Valkyrie. That’s not Marvel character-based, not bird-based. It’s actually from my favorite book, which is written by an Irish author. I discovered it when I was 12 years old. The main character was 12, living in Dublin, starts this whole new secret life, she has to take on a name to start this new life, and she calls herself Valkyrie. So I started that, and until I went to WWE, I never used the kind of imagery that’s associated with the Valkyrie at all. So then I was like okay, well I should probably use that. So I got the kind of Valkyrie-looking gear for NXT UK, and then when I was moving across, I had to change my name, and I actually contacted the author of that book. So his name’s Derek Landy, and he’s Irish, and he suggested this character called the Morrigan. I was actually a little bit familiar with it. It’s like the Irish Valkyrie from Irish mythology. Finn Balor and his demon character also drew from Irish mythology and stuff. The Morrigan basically transforms into a raven or crow and hovers over the battlefield and decides who’s going to win a battle. So I was like, that’s really cool. I went down that rabbit hole, and it’s just a very cool female warrior character who transforms into a raven. I just thought that was very cool. It was related to the Valkyrie, so it’s still tied to my book and my favorite stuff, and I love mythologies. So yeah, that’s where it all comes from.”

On Becky Lynch replacing Bayley at WrestleMania:

“It came at the expense of Bayley, which is a bit sad because we clicked so well as a tag team. So it was genuinely hard to have my Mania moment come at an expense. Becky is a big part of the reason I started wrestling. But it was the era of the four horsewomen in NXT. It wasn’t just Becky; Bayley was a massive influence as well. So it did kind of taint how great it was knowing it was coming at her expense.”

On the moment being bittersweet:

“It’s hard to talk about or to because there’s so much good, but there’s so much, I don’t know, it’s just tough. [There’s a lot of history with Bayley]. Quick history. We only tagged for a couple of weeks, but we hit it off so well outside of the ring. She’s very easy to chat to and get along with, and she’s just so personable. You meet Bayley and you feel like you’ve known her your whole life. I introduced her to my fiancé, and he was like, I haven’t met her before, have I? And I was like, No. And he was like, I feel like I have just from talking to her there.”

On the Nia Jax spot in the Queen of the Ring Tournament:

“[Laughs] She exploded my ribs.”

Did you really break your ribs?

“No, that was fine. I was okay. It was tough. The Samoan drops were tougher, yeah, honestly, but rough match. She’s a beast.”

On where things go from here:

“Well, I feel like it just keeps going up, because that’s the only way it’s gone so far. I feel like for me to say where it goes next and what my next possibility is, it almost feels like I’m creating my own ceiling, because so much has happened that I didn’t even think was possible. So I’m just gonna keep rolling with the punches and seeing what happens. Because this [Women’s Intercontinental Championship] didn’t exist a year ago. When Becky came down to NXT, I didn’t think that was ever possible. No, she’s on Raw. There was a time when it was unusual for people on Raw or SmackDown to come down to NXT, or it didn’t happen. So I just didn’t think that was a possibility. I never in my life thought that I would beat Becky Lynch for the NXT Women’s Championship. Just didn’t even cross my mind as a possibility.”

What is Lyra Valkyria grateful for?

“My fiancé, the opportunities and all the friends I made.”

Matt Cardona On Chelsea Green, Possible WWE Return, Adam Copeland Match, Chris Jericho, John Cena

in LATEST EPISODES on May 15, 2025 January 30, 2026

https://cvvtix.com – Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in LA and NYC with VIP Meet & Greet!

Matt Cardona (@TheMattCardona) is a professional wrestler previously signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his post-WWE career 5 years on from the release, why a return has not happened yet, his matches in AEW and ROH against Adam Copeland and Chris Jericho respectively and why they never led to more, advice for released wrestlers, whether he is interested in returning as Zack Ryder, being married to Chelsea Green and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “It’s better to be consistently good than occasionally great.” – Nick Bare

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On some fans potentially not being aware of his work in WWE:

“On the flip side, there are fans that have no idea what I’m doing now. I’m at WrestleCon, [fans say], ‘Where you been, Zack?’ Well, all over the world for the past five years. But I don’t blame them, because times have changed, but I was the biggest wrestling fan growing up. I didn’t watch indie wrestling. It was different then, there was no internet, there was no streaming stuff. So I get some people just watch WWE, and that’s fine.”

On how many people ask him for Zack Ryder autographs:

“I think it’s like 75% Matt, 25% Zack, I get it. Zack Ryder set me up for Matt Cardona. I have no problem signing a Zack Ryder 8 by 10 or an action figure. That Intercontinental Title picture, that 8 by 10, I made thousands of dollars off that, so I’m grateful for it.”

On what was missing from his WWE run that he has now:

“Man, I would have loved the opportunity to show the different side, the heel side, if you will. But in WWE, you could pitch all day, they’re not necessarily going to do it. On the independents, you can do whatever you want. So I organically turned heel, so to speak, on the Indies, and I’m so comfortable in that role. I love that the fans hate me. Now I think they’re starting to love to hate me, which is fine too, because they’re still buying my merch. But I’ve said this a million times. I needed to get fired to find myself. So I don’t even want to say blessing in disguise. It was just a blessing. I needed to get fired to find myself.”

On some fans at independent shows not knowing who he is:

“Absolutely, I learned that from William Regal a long time ago. Every time you walk through the curtain, you have to pretend that they don’t know who you are. I tell it to guys and girls on the indies all the time, you can’t think oh, they watch that cell phone promo you cut. You need to reintroduce yourself and tell that story in the ring. For me, it’s just so easy because I’m this chicken sh*t heel. It’s as simple as ding, ding, ding, we’re about to lock up, I just roll out of the ring. It’s just easy stuff like that that I feel like these bad guys now, they don’t want to be uncool. I have no problem being uncool. There’s other things I can do throughout the match, or even just subtle things on the entrance. Some things could be very cheap, like for instance, putting out your hand for a high five, taking it away. I mean, ripping up a sign, like, that’s kind of easy. It’s just right in front of you stuff, but you got to be smart. Every crowd’s different.”

On being The Complete Matt Cardona:

“So I was The Indie God, The Death Match King, and then I tore my pec, which sucked. There’s no good time to get injured, but that certainly was not a good time to get injured. I was about to, as crazy as it sounds, celebrate my four years of being released from WWE. I filmed this whole hype video, and I got hurt the Saturday before. I’m like, sh*t, just tore my pec. I knew I’d be fine work-wise, because people bring me in to cut promos. I ended up being the General Manager of GCW, so I was fine, money-wise. But being honest, I can’t just come back wearing that crown or The Indie God hat again. I needed a fresh coat of paint, so to speak. So I was just thinking of all these ideas and it just hit me, The Complete. It means so many things, like The Total Package, Lex Luger. I can do it all. I looked the part. I wrestled the part, I talked the part. Or The Complete, everything that led to this point in my career, whether it be the Major Brothers or the YouTube Broski stuff, or winning the IC title, or getting fired, then the death match King the indie got everything wrapped into one is The Complete Matt Cardona.”

On whether he feels complete:

“No, I’m always grateful, but I’m never satisfied, if that makes sense. Of course, if it ended today, I’m very grateful for what happened for my career, 21 plus years, getting paid to live my dream. But I have a lot more goals that I want to accomplish.”

On his advice for released WWE stars:

“I’m paraphrasing it, but it was you have three options, right? You can one, fade into obscurity, feel bad for yourself, have a pity party, never be seen again, or be delusional with your prices and never get booked again. Or you can coast off your WWE name. And I don’t just mean your literal name, I mean the fact that you were in WWE just coast off that. Do a couple of indies here and there, some autograph signings, and you probably do that forever. Or the one I chose, work your ass off, reinvent yourself. Have a lot of f*cking fun and make a lot of f*cking money, and you have three options you choose. It’s not the third one’s not easy, but it’s possible.”

On what option most choose:

“I think history shows that they fall into number two, just coasting. And that’s unfortunate. It’s not easy out there on the independents, especially because a lot of these guys and girls don’t know what it’s like to do the independents. I didn’t, I had to just dive in head first, and I had to teach myself. Of course, I stole things from Cody, from Drew McIntyre, the guys who had left and had made their names even bigger. But then I created my own blueprint.”

On possibly finding a way back to WWE or AEW:

“I’ve said this a million times. When I got released, it wasn’t like, what can I do to get back to WWE or get to AEW? [It was] What can I do to prove myself right? And, oh my God, even saying that again and again and again, for five years, I’ve been saying that I don’t want to prove people wrong, I want to prove myself right and my fans right. It makes me sick to say because I feel like I’ve said it so many times, but it’s the truth. I feel like I have. But man, like, what else do we need to do to get back there?”

On being surprised that he hasn’t returned:

“Honestly? Yeah. But obviously I’m missing something, I don’t know what it is. Listen, people say to me all the time, especially since we just had WrestleMania, WrestleCon. Thousands of people, probably every other fan, if not every fan. ‘When are you coming back?’ Well, it’s not up to me. Or at the WrestleMania Hotel. Thanks, Chelsea for letting me stay in a hotel room for free. Saved me some money. Great hotel. Great Steakhouse, too. But so many people from the office or other wrestling, ‘Hey, man, when are you coming back?’ It’s like, I don’t know. I’ve reached out many times. I shouldn’t say many, a few times, every couple months when something cool happens or I have something to say, hey, look what I’m doing. There’s been no offer. Everything’s very nice, professional, but there’s no offer. And you know what, it is what it is, I’m gonna keep working my ass off.”

On a possible Royal Rumble return as Zack Ryder:

“I’ve had gear ready every single year. So this is the truth. So I always have gear. I’m always ready. I always have gear where the trunks are the same, but the knee pads are interchangeable, the ZR or an MC.”

On not being opposed to returning as Zack Ryder:

“It’s not my first choice. I think Zack Ryder is dead, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. Zack Ryder set me up for Matt Cardona. But I mean, obviously WWE thought Zack Ryder was dead. They fired me five years ago. And my Matt Cardona name. I feel like I’ve done these interviews for five years. And again, this is like how many times have I said this? But I don’t care how you define success, money, accolades, happiness, this is the most successful I’ve ever been in my career as Matt Cardona, but it’s because Zack Ryder and WWE set me up for that.”

On his internet videos and whether there was any issues from WWE:

“I’m never going to be one of those guys that say they buried me for doing this or that. I always want to blame myself. So during that time, did it? Listen, I went from the beginning of the year, 2011, nobody. Started a YouTube show, end of the year, I’m the US Champion, teaming with Cena on Raw, The Rock returns. They’re chanted for me over The Rock. The next year, get pushed off the stage in a wheelchair by Kane. Is that being buried? I don’t want to cop out and say that I could have knocked on Vince McMahon’s door and said, ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’ I didn’t do that. I just take all accountability for what happened. I like to just blame myself and move on. Then I kind of floated for a couple of years, and I was always ready anytime they threw me a bone. I capitalized, IC Title WrestleMania, that was after the YouTube run. Then back to doing nothing. Then me and Hawkins with the tag team titles at Mania in New York, New Jersey. Well, it was the pre-show, but I still counted this Mania. It was technically Mania. We got the plaque. There’s a plaque with the canvas and all that. Then I just floated again until I got fired. But I was always ready, always pitching ideas, always being proactive. But it is what it is. There’s so many moving parts in WWE. There’s so many characters. It’s a TV show. Not every character on the TV show could be featured, just how it is.”

On wrestling Adam Copeland in AEW:

“Career highlight for sure. You know, having that match with Adam, it was a match I never thought would happen. WrestleMania 24 is my first WrestleMania, and I run in the main event, me and Hawkins. We’re the Edge Heads. We help Edge, not successfully, Undertaker choke slams us. We’re in the main event of WrestleMania, and this delusional, naive kid saying, ‘Well, next year WrestleMania, it’s gonna be Edge Heads explode. Hawkins, there’s Ryder versus Edge…’ No, that didn’t happen. Hawkins and Ryder were lumberjacks in the Tag Team pre-show match. Then Adam eventually gets the unfortunate career-ending injury, he retires. Then he comes back and I’m in WWE, but then I get fired, and then he leaves and goes to AEW. Well, this match could actually happen now, because AEW, the forbidden door, they’re always bringing people in. So he was doing the Cope open, and I just shot him a text saying basically, ‘Hey man, if you ever need an opponent, just please consider me.’ He said something like, ‘Yeah, I think this story is coming to an end, but if we ever do it again, I’ll keep you in mind.’ I totally forgot about it. Couple months later, got the call. ‘Can you show up Saturday?’ I had to cancel my match with Ultimo Dragon. But yes, I was there and it was, it was an absolute dream match.”

On wrestling Chris Jericho:

“So then I go away for a couple of months, and then I got a call, ‘Hey, you interested in working Chris Jericho at the Hammerstein Ballroom?’ Yeah, let me think about it. Duh! Again, one of my childhood idols, he was on my birthday cake, but I was ninth grade. I love Chris. As a performer, I look up to Chris. So to wrestle Chris, we had a whole program, and for Ring of Honor, had to do it. Another dream match.”

Why didn’t that turn into more?

“Again, I don’t know. Dave Meltzer reported that I got offered a contract, but I did not, so I don’t know what happened.”

On whether he would accept an AEW contract:

“If it made sense. I don’t want to be anywhere just to be a guy on the roster. And I know there’s no guarantees in pro wrestling, but I need like intent, like we see you doing this, or we envision you being here. I don’t want to just collect a check. Been there, done that.”

On being a blueprint for wrestlers getting over:

“I say this all the time. When someone comes up and they ask for [advice], like, I just started wrestling, do you have any advice? Yeah, don’t quit. That’s it. Because it’s not over until you quit. When you quit, then it’s over. Right now, do I wish I was somewhere else, maybe? But it’s like, I’m not there yet. I haven’t achieved everything I want yet. It’s not over until I quit. When I say it’s over, then I never achieved that thing. But I’m not throwing in the towel yet.”

On how much longer he intends to wrestle:

“Until the wheels fall off. I love it. Listen, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in. I feel like I’m not missing a beat. Do I do the most acrobatic, technical stuff? No. But I’m the same wrestler I was when I was 18. I’m still moving the same. Of course I’ve grown and gotten better and stuff like that. But I feel like I’m at the top of my game in the ring. I don’t care who I’m in the ring with. I feel like I bring out the best in them. This is gonna sound ridiculous, but when Jericho and I were having that little AEW thing, he compared me to Bret Hart. I was like, that’s pretty ridiculous, but I’m like, you know what? That’s a great compliment, because I feel like Bret Hart could have a match with anybody and could adapt to anyone’s style. Listen I’m not saying I’m Bret Hart, cause I know this is gonna turn into Matt Corona says he’s as good as Bret Hart. No, I don’t think I’m as good as Bret Hart, the best there ever is. But I do feel like I can adapt to any style, whether it be a high flyer or a death match guy, or just anybody. I can have a great match with anybody, and I feel like that’s one of my best qualities.”

What is Matt Cardona grateful for?

“Chelsea Green, my family and my career.”

Joe Hendry On WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, Randy Orton, Becoming TNA World Champion

in LATEST EPISODES on May 13, 2025 January 30, 2026

Joe Hendry (@joehendry) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA and the reigning World Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his unbelievable year since their last interview that has included a surprise spot in the Royal Rumble and facing Randy Orton at WrestleMania 41, winning the TNA World Championship and his goals as champion, career-altering advice from John Cena, Triple H’s comments at the press conference, his catchy theme song and more!

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On his NXT debut that took place shortly after the last interview with Chris Van Vliet:

“So we had two flights booked, because we suspected it was going to go down for a couple of days. But when the interview took place, I did not know. When the phone went back on, I knew. The timing is crazy. So I got on the plane to Orlando, and yes, I had the appearance the next day. Obviously, you have a dream outcome for how you want it to go, but I could never have expected the response that it got, and I have a theory as to why it got the response that it did. So it actually became WWE’s most watched video on X, it was 21-22 million views, something like that. It was an insane amount. It was the most-watched video. I think the reason is because of this. So in TNA, my music will play for a certain amount of time, and then I’ll walk to the ring. Whenever I see signs, I’ll point. I’ll get up. I’ll do my hand waving, I’ll get in. I’ll do the spin around and hold. In NXT they wanted to try this thing where they load you in and it’s the same. So you’re there right at the start. Is what I did for Mania as well, right? So it’s ‘Say his name and he appears, I believe in Joe Hendry’, and then you do the spin around. Now the timing is slightly different. So, usually I know exactly what I’m going to do at each point. I had not figured in that I would have an additional 30 seconds that I didn’t know what to do with. So I actually just reacted organically. I was just looking around. I was like, damn, all this work that I put in over the years, it was just such a validating moment. I was just looking around, and it was very real. I think it’s that real moment that people could feel. I see it in the comments, and I think when wrestling has those moments of you’re creating something, but you have those really organic moments. I think when the two come together that people really like that.”

On how his theme song got over after 5 years:

“Because in Ring of Honor, I had this song. The audio file is the exact same, but when I do the turn, it’s almost like the difference between the British Office and the American Office. I had this discussion the other day that it’s like wrestling is theater, and it needs to be larger than life. I was really more focused on the nuance before of what I thought was funny. Whereas it’s like with wrestling, you have to be larger than life. So this became that sort of thing. So I think making that transition, and also what I learned at TNA about character development. I learned then that making everything bigger and just learning who and what Joe Hendry was as a character, I allowed that to come out visually in the second entrance video that I had done. And I think by doing that, it just tipped it over the edge.”

On everything that has happened over the past year:

“There have been moments where I’ve gone, okay, we’ve either splintered off into a parallel universe, or I’ve died. It’s getting scary now, I’m saying things, and every one of them is happening. It’s really scary. It’s hard for me to sit here and say that [manifestation] is not a real thing. Honestly, it’s very hard for me to do that, because I’m at a point where everything that I’m thinking about that would be fun, and not just fun for me, but fun for the fans and a really cool moment, it seems impossible. I remember I had a conversation with my friend George, he always brings this up. We did the Rumble, and he’s going, ‘So what do you think next?’ And I’m like, I still think I can do it. This is like a couple of weeks out from Mania. He’s like, ‘I don’t know, buddy. You’ve had the Rumble, you’ve had this…’ I’m like, ‘I still think I can do it. I still think I can be on Mania.’ And somehow it happened.”

On thinking he could face Randy Orton after Kevin Owens was injured:

“No, I honestly didn’t think that at the time. Sometimes, again, I know there was a lot of chatter about when Jey Uso said he needed a tag team partner. The difficulty is sometimes, because you’re so busy, I’ll just see things on Twitter, or I’ll see a clip of the show, and I’ll just tweet the meme out there. Sometimes you go, hahaha, and you’re going, Oh God, this is caught on like wildfire. It’s getting an insane amount of likes to the point where it’s almost like people think it’s a spoiler, and I’m just kind of messing around. That’s one thing I’ve learned that before the first time we spoke, the social media game is very much you can just throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. Whereas now there are actually very real consequences if I tweet even my face at the wrong time. So for example, and again, I actually didn’t know the severity of Kevin Owens’ injury. I just saw the clip of the RKO to Aldis, and I kind of heard something about he might not be doing it. Then there’s that thing there. I thought, well, I’ll tweet at my face now. And actually, I took that down because when I understood the full context, because I was like this is not the appropriate time. So there’s things that where you’ll see a little thing, and then there was the moment with Jey, where I tweeted it because I didn’t really think I would have been in serious consideration. And then you tweet and go, well, actually, I just ruined this for myself.”

Well, Raw was in Scotland:

“Yes. Well, the scariest one, if you ever tweet with emotion and not with logic, that’s when these problems happen. I don’t know why. I was just having a day when a fan said, ‘You know what, Joe Hendry’s really falling off.’ For some reason, I just thought, you know what? And I was kind of joking at this point. I had no idea that I was going to be selected to go into the Rumble, and I tweeted out, ‘Let’s see how well this tweet ages in about four months.’ Because I was like, it’s between three and five months. So I’ll just say that. Hahaha. This tweet goes crazy. And there was a moment again I had this conversation with friends and family where I said to myself, if I’m not in the Rumble because of this, I need to just accept that I made a mistake, and I need to own it. There was a moment where I thought to myself, I may have cost myself an opportunity.”

On the tweet implying that he was going to win the World Championship:

“That’s that’s another thing as well, because it’s like, I see things online where people are like, Oh, well, he just talks about WWE stuff, and it’s not true at all. I spend most of my interview time talking about TNA wrestling, but a lot of the WWE stuff will go viral. So it’s this game where I have to talk about exciting possibilities at WWE, but also need to represent the championship. So for me, this title reign is about doing big business for TNA. That’s my goal. There are certain title reigns that will be remembered for certain things. When Josh Alexander was champ, it was about classic match after classic match after classic match. If you bought a ticket to TNA wrestling, you know you were getting a five-star banger. With me, it’s about me with this championship. When people look at my reign, they will see business; that’s what I wanted to do. And every decision that I’ve made has been about what is going to be best for business. I know a lot of people had a lot of things to say about certain decisions that I’ve made. So for example, people who are in the industry understand how great it is for business for to me wrestle Randy Orton. Whereas other people, they’re going to have thoughts on it. But I understand. It took me zero seconds to decide whether that’s what I want to do. I was like, I’m there. Let’s do it.”

On some fans believing that Joe Hendry was squashed by Randy Orton:

“The thing is, one, it was back and forth, so I got offense in. It’s Randy Orton’s 20th WrestleMania. It’s also Randy Orton. The thing is, I did the spin around. So it’s like me being the Joe Hendry character, the RKO is one hit kill. And in that show the feedback that I got was exactly what it was supposed to be. And let’s be honest, the next how many days later, we had the biggest show TNA has ever had in 10 years, we had a higher attendance at Slammiversary. So we were past 4,000. I understand what this is, and my job is to put asses in seats for TNA wrestling.”

On fans feeling that the TNA World Championship was devalued:

“I think that in wrestling, everything has to be a story. So, in the movie, does Rocky win every single match? I mean, the story is Joe Hendry lost to Randy Orton. How is the champion going to recover from this? You know who else lost quickly at WrestleMania? John Cena to The Undertaker. You know who else lost quickly at WrestleMania? Triple H. People have lost quickly at WrestleMania and these are the stories that we’re telling. When John Cena lost to The Undertaker, it was what is the path from here? And that’s what I’ve really learned from watching John Cena is that just make everything a story. Everything is a story. So it’s just about, okay, where do I go from here as champion? It added more weight and drama to the triple threat that we had, because it was me, it was Frankie [Kazarian], and it was Ethan Page, and it’s like the partnership’s so strong. All three outcomes were completely within the realms of possibility, and nobody knew what was going to happen that night. Not even we knew what was going to happen that night right up until the wire. So that’s when it’s exciting, when anything can happen.”

On being backstage after WrestleMania 41:

“I can’t believe this is real. So after that happened, I got to the back and I spoke with Randy. I spoke with CM Punk. Spoke with Cody. Then as I’m walking, I had this little room, which we should talk about, we gotta give credit. This was a military operation to get me into the building. We’ll come back to that. But I was walking from this little room I had. I was just walking past. And again, this is when life doesn’t feel real, who could have timed this? So I’m walking back. You actually saw this in the backstage footage. I had a nice conversation with Michael Cole. I had a wonderful, quick conversation with Stephanie McMahon as well. Then I was walking to the back, and because I just watched the rest of Mania with William Regal, actually, which was very cool, because he was someone I met really early on in my career and he helped me advance my understanding of what this game is way quicker than I would have had we not had that. He talked to me for two hours when I just started to go, this is what this game is. Ultimately, the big message was that pro wrestling is about building trust with the audience, trust with your peers, trust with your colleagues, trust with management. It’s about building trust with those stakeholders. But anyway, I digress. So I’m walking back from there, and at the same moment the match has just finished, John is walking back with his WWE Championship. He’s literally just become the greatest of all time. It’s now a fact he’s the greatest of all time. He’s walking back, and this is how awesome John is. Sees me, once he came out of Gorilla, immediately walks over to me.”

Had you ever met him before?

“Yes. We’d had conversations. He gave me advice at the Rumble, and as he said on Pat McAfee, I did my very best to implement that advice. He said that he feels I’m going to be a major player in this industry. Praise doesn’t come higher. So he came up to me, and there’s two camera crews. They’re filming this interaction. I’m like, I can’t believe the timing that this is happening. He’s just won the championship. I say, ‘John, congrats.’ He didn’t even want to talk about the fact that he just became the greatest. He wanted to give me advice, that’s who John is, right? He just said to me, ‘I told you exactly what you needed to do at the Rumble. You’ve taken it on board. You’ve done it. You had a good performance at the Rumble. You were brilliant tonight.’ Then John walks off. I hope they release this footage one day, I turned to the camera and I go, can a day get any better than this? AJ Styles walks into shot and he says, ‘If you’d have told me that the TNA World Champion would walk out at WrestleMania, I wouldn’t have believed it. Congrats, man. It’s nuts.’ I can’t tell you how fortunate I am to be living the life that I am. I’ve almost got no words for it. The gratitude that I feel on a daily basis for this journey, I have to say I really have to take a moment to talk about how great TNA and WWE have been, because at any point they could have gone, nah. TNA and WWE have been so good to me to allow me to have these moments, because this has huge benefit for me. We could come up with a million reasons why either TNA or WWE would say, not this time, but they have been unbelievable with letting me have these moments. I just feel like I really do feel huge gratitude to both companies in the way that they’ve worked together to create cool moments for me and the fans, and just those moment, those moments that I’ve had, like with Triple H and getting that feedback and the words of advice that he gives, like, that’s I know how busy he is and how important those moments are. I’m very grateful for it.”

On becoming Randy Orton’s WrestleMania opponent:

“So I heard Triple H say recently, and I don’t want to misquote, but this is what I heard him say. I heard him say that revealing things before they happen is ruining the surprise, saying how it was done afterwards is almost like just the intrigue of how that happened. So with respect for that, he’s talked about conversations we’ve had. So I will say I found out about a week before and Triple H called me personally. And I thought, because I was at WWE World. That’s one of the reasons it was so well hidden, because I was already booked for WWE World. So there was no shock or surprise with me being around the company. I thought I was going to be getting a promo there, maybe presenting a Slammy, something like that. And so he said, can you talk? Phone goes, and very quickly we got to, ‘So I’m sure you’re aware that Randy needs an opponent…’ And I’m in the airport, I did not think that’s what the call was going to be, and I said yes immediately.”

On the surprise being kept a secret:

“I couldn’t tell anybody. So I think that there were two people on the side of TNA that knew, and I had to sit on this for a week. That’s pretty tough. But I thought that you know how wrestling is. You’re never the champion until, it’s not when the ref’s hand goes down, because Chris Jericho won the title once and then un-won it the same night. So it’s like, you’ve won the title, you’re back at the hotel, or you’re on the plane and you’re out there, we got the belt. Okay, now I’m the champion. And with this sort of thing, it’s like, so we had that conversation. But anything can happen between then and WrestleMania. So at that point, I was trying not to get too high or too low. It’s just there. I’m just going to work. The schedule was insane. So I had a 12-hour media day for TNA. The next day I had media in the morning, the TNA show all day, and then the meet and greet after. Then, I believe the next day, I had WrestleCon in the morning and afternoon, Westside gun show at night, I had WWE World in the middle as well on the Saturday of WrestleMania, I might be missing out on a day or whatever, but it was crazy. Then on the day of WrestleMania, I had WrestleCon in the morning, WWE World until I think 1-3, something like that, or we got me to the arena, sort of three, four. And then it was pretty quickly I was in gear and on and on the way there. So it was like there was no time to think, which was the best thing for me. I just couldn’t overthink it. So that was one of the best things about it, but I didn’t think it was real until the night before, when it came to putting the whole thing together. And I thought, Okay, now this has to be happening.”

On working with Randy Orton:

“So I don’t how far I want to pull back the curtain on that one, for a couple of reasons, but this is what I’ll say. Randy was unbelievable to work with, unbelievable. WWE has been unbelievable. TNA has been unbelievable. The way I’ve been treated, I could not have asked for better. Randy was just the coolest guy when it came to this and we clicked immediately. Because I don’t want to speak for him, but I felt like I understood the assignment, and I just really strongly felt that that visual of putting our two characters together, the spin and the RKO combining, to me, was the viral moment. So I think I was in the mindset of having a bit more experience, going back to John Cena’s advice, I wasn’t thinking so much about my moment. I was thinking about the moment for the show and for the business, and I think John giving me that advice at the Rumble helped me to have a bit of a shift there.”

What was the specific advice?

“So I remember going up to John and again, this is how this is how cool John is. So I said, ‘Hey, it’s great to ask your advice sometime.’ This is Rumble, where he’s got a huge spot here. He’s like, ‘Well, why don’t we go talk right now, and you can ask me anything you ever wanted to ask me.’ I was like, All right. So I was like, ‘What am I going to ask you that’s going to yield the greatest return? I’m in there with Roman. How do I take what I’ve got and make the most of it? How do I make it more?’ John said this on Pat McAfee, so you know I’m not kind of peeling back the curtain here, beyond what’s out there. He said, ‘You don’t.’ He paused, and he explained to me, and he was 100% correct. The viral moment at the Rumble for me was the entrance, looking around, coming in and hitting my moves on Miz and then being eliminated by a Roman. After Roman comes in, that’s his moment. So it’s like, what John was trying to say is it’s like your moment is coming out there, and now you’re a cog in a bigger machine. It’s not about you getting what you can out of this moment with Roman, it’s like, how do you prop up Roman’s moment? That kind of taught me to instead of think selfishly about these moments. If I hadn’t had that conversation with John, I don’t know that I’d have been thinking about the best way to do the RKO. It’s like that got me thinking about it from that perspective. I really feel like me and Randy were just on this same page. He was awesome. I can’t tell you how thankful I am to have all the moments that I’ve had.”

How did they sneak you into the building?

“Sorry, I did not answer that question. Alright. So we got me in a car at WWE World, I had to change in the car, not into my wrestling gear. We did that at the building, but I had to change in the car. I got the most generic hoodie possible. So it was like, Las Vegas hoodie or whatever. I had a COVID mask. I had sunglasses. I looked ridiculous. It was covered head to toe. Honestly, I wasn’t even in the betting odds. There was an “other” category where you would have to manually put in Joe Hendry, that’s how secretive this was. It was not one of the standard options. There were about 10 options, and I was in “other.””

On Nick Aldis being the odds on favourite:

“On that topic, this is how cool Nick is. Nick came down to help with this moment. So he invested his time to give input about what we could do. So the fact that Nick gave his time to help that moment, that’s how cool Nick is.”

On using his real name in wrestling:

“You know, I’ve had this conversation a couple of times recently. For many years, I regretted using my real name. But now, I think it’s because it’s also me, that people are so interested in what I’m what I’m doing, because it’s like they’re seeing someone living their dream in real time. Which is, I think again, like I said earlier about when I made the entrance in NXT, that was Joe Hendry the person, that 30 seconds was Joe Hendry the person having that moment, and I think when that comes through, that’s the beauty of wrestling. It’s when stories that you tell and reality intertwine, and you’re not really sure where one begins and the other ends.”

On the story behind say his name:

“I don’t know. I just remember when I wrote the song I wanted it to be as literal as possible. So I wanted it to be I will tell the audience when to clap, I’ll tell them when to wave their hands, and I will explain that if you are to say my name, you will be rewarded with me appearing.”

On whether the John Cena match is still possible:

“Of course it’s possible. The real question is do I think it will happen? Yes.”

Why?

“I mean, my track record’s looking pretty good, but I can’t tell you. I can’t explain it. I just feel it in my heart, to be honest with you. I just would be lying if I sat here and said I didn’t think it would happen.”

On Triple H saying Joe Hendry would be at many more WrestleManias:

“He did say that to me backstage, exactly as he said it in the press conference is what he said to me. This is what I really like about my interactions with Triple H. He’s an awesome guy, he’s just a cool guy, and for him to take that moment to come over when he’s producing WrestleMania, to come over, because that moment is for me, is for nobody else, for him to give me that moment, very busy, to go, Hey, listen, you’ll be here again, but this is the fun one. He knows what he’s doing, and in a way, him telling me that takes all the nerves away, doesn’t it? It allows you to go out there and be free and enjoy the moment. And he did that at Rumble as well, because it could be an overwhelming moment for people. I have no idea why I was so calm at WrestleMania. I do suspect it’s because I ran it through so many times in my head over the last year, and part of that is because he took the time to have that conversation with me.”

On possibly relocating to the USA:

“Certainly. I was kind of thinking about it last year as well. But I think we’re at the point now where I’ve been home for one full day, the time before I was home for two full days. I love Scotland. I love it. But I need to have a place here.”

What is Joe Hendry grateful for?

“Friendships, that I know what I need to do and the time I have with my parents.”

Indi Hartwell On WWE Release, Joining TNA, Becoming NXT Women’s Champion, Mercedes Moné

in LATEST EPISODES on May 8, 2025 January 30, 2026

Indi Hartwell (@indi_hartwell) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss signing with TNA and being in the crowd at Rebellion, her WWE release happening during SmackDown, keeping her WWE name, the Dexter Lumis romance storyline, winning the NXT Women’s Championship in a ladder match, wrestling in Australia, finally getting a match with Mercedes Mone and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw

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On signing with TNA:

“I have. I’ve been wanting to cross the line. Finally did it. I think that partnership came about after I had already left. I was on the main roster. I was gone from NXT, which would have been cool if I could have done stuff as part of NXT with TNA. But now I’m with TNA, so we’ll see what happens. I’m sure I’ll be mixing it up with some of the NXT people.”

On how things have been since her release:

“It’s been up and down, like a roller coaster. I remember the first week after I got released, I just felt really grateful. This is how my emotions went first week, I was just super grateful for what I had, I like to saturate my mind with gratitude, and that helps me keep perspective. So first week I was really grateful. Second week, I kind of got frustrated and mad. Third week, I kind of got sad. Then after that, I felt fine. Now it’s been like five months, I think six months almost. Yeah, I’ve been feeling really excited, because there’s just so much to do.”

On whether she anticipated the WWE release:

“I didn’t honestly feel like it was coming, especially when it happened. So my whole time at WWE, I was always scared of getting released. Add another factor to it is that I’m an international, so people don’t really understand visas, green cards. But that was something that was always in the back of my mind, being scared of being fired. But it wasn’t till my last two weeks at WWE I finally felt comfortable. I finally felt like, yeah, I’m part of the roster. I did the Netflix shoot and then I got released. I have my green card. Shout out to WWE, because they did it for me and they paid for it. This was a few years ago. I’m super grateful. I know a lot of people have to worry about that. I saw what Steph De’Lander went through when she got released. It’s something that Americans don’t really understand the whole visa thing, but I’m good.”

On being released but her match airing on tape delay:

“It was weird. Fun fact, I missed the call when they called me to release me, so I made the call to get fired. I had a text message. I didn’t see I had a missed call, and then I had a text message saying, ‘Hey, it’s blah, blah from TR, can you call us back?’ So I called back, I thought it was like for a completely different topic. I had lost my voice as well, so when I called back, I was like, ‘Hey, sorry, I lost my voice, haha.’ They’re like, ‘Oh, we’re calling with some unfortunate news.’ I was so confused, because I wanted to say, What do you mean? I’m on the show tonight. My match was taped last week. I’m on the show tonight.”

On some fans not knowing the show was pre-taped:

“People didn’t know that SmackDown was taped the week before, so they thought that I got released, and then had to go out that night and wrestle. That would be crazy.”

On being able to keep the name Indi Hartwell:

“I just asked. Well, this is how it went. So I’ve had this name my whole wrestling career. When I started at NXT, when you start wrestling on live events, they make you wrestle under your real name. So I wrestled under my real name for a bit, and then I think I had a dark match at NXT. I just asked Road Dogg, ‘Can I be Indi Hartwell for this?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll ask. Why not?’ Then they let me be Indi Hartwell for the dark match and then it kind of just kept going. Then I got on TV with it. I got my action figure with that name. I got in the game with that name. Then I think it was when NXT 2.0 started. They went through that whole weird thing of you can’t have your real name, and you also can’t have a name that we don’t own. So they gave me the option to change my name or sell it to them. So I sold it to them, and then it was always in the back of my mind, if I get released, what name am I going to be? That’s a big deal to me. So then when I got the call that I was being released, they said, ‘Okay, yeah, we’re releasing you.’ I said, ‘Okay, cool. So I sold my name to the company. Is there any way I can get that back?’ Then we got it all figured out. I got the rights and stuff to it. I’m very lucky.”

On where the name Indi Hartwell came from:

“I used the porn star method. Do you know who Iggy Azalea is? So this was before I started wrestling. I’m a big fan of her, and that’s how she got her name. So then me and my friend were just coming up with our porn star name, and it was like your dog name plus your street name, I think. Indi Hartwell was my friend’s dog name and street name. Then years later, when it came time for me to wrestle, the promoter was like, What name do you want to be? And I was like, I don’t know, Indi Hartwell? It’s a good name, isn’t it? There’s no other Indi’s in wrestling that I know of, but also the whole like Indi Harwell, indi wrestling, I’m Indi Wrestling. So it all worked out very well.”

On whether she is still married to Dexter Lumis:

“It’s complicated. Not wearing the ring. Everyone asked me that, like all these signings that I’ve done recently, they’re like, are you still with Dexter? I’m like, oh, it’s complicated.”

On how her romance with Dexter Lumis began:

“I think it was supposed to be a one-off thing. I think it started with Johnny was having a match with Dexter, and they had me ringside. We just had this moment where we looked at each other, and I think I backed up, and I hit the ring post. That’s something that I did in rehearsal, like as a joke, which a lot of things I would do as a joke, and they’d be like, Oh, do that on TV. So we did it, and it got really good reactions. So then every week, the creative was something with me and Dexter, and I didn’t know what it was going to turn into, honestly.”

On discovering wrestling:

“I think I went to a local grocery store and I saw a poster for local wrestling. I was like, oh my God, other wrestling exists. So then I begged my dad to take me for ages, and he wouldn’t, because my parents aren’t the biggest fans of wrestling. They didn’t really want me to be into it, I guess because it’s dangerous. So then my dad started taking me to these local shows, and that’s when I realized okay, becoming a wrestler is a possibility in Australia. But it wasn’t until I saw the Bayley and Sasha Banks match NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn in 2015. I remember watching that match being like, Oh, my God, these girls are amazing. I want to do that. I can do that. I know I can do that. Then I opened a new tab on my laptop and just signed up for wrestling school.”

On getting on WWE’s radar:

“I was really lucky. I had a try-out really early on. So I started wrestling in 2016. Later that year, NXT came for a tour in Australia, and my trainer at the time, he helped me put together a resume. The resume was nothing I had, like, 10 matches maybe. So I sent the resume off, and they invited me to the try-out. This was the try-out that Rhea got signed from. Everyone calls it the Rhea try-out because they weren’t looking at anyone else, they were only looking at her. But I thought that I was going to get signed, I was that confident. Obviously I didn’t get signed from that, but I was able to stay in contact with them. The guy at the time, Canyon Ceman, he was the recruiter. So I remember after the try-out, I emailed them being like, thank you. They said, ‘Thanks, but we’re not going to hire you, you need more experience. Check back in six months.’ So then six months to the day, I put it in my calendar, I think I went to America, China, did some indies, and then six months to the day I emailed again. I said, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve done.’ They said, ‘Okay, check back in a year with us.’ So then I go back out, do all this travel around, train, get exposure, experience. Then a year to the day, I email again, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve done. Here’s promo, pics, matches.’ They said, ‘Okay, get back to us in six months.’ So it was kind of just like, go away. And I just knew one day that a no would turn into a yes.”

On getting signed to WWE:

“What eventually got me signed was like an indie show that I did somewhere in New York for Mania Week in 2019. Canyon and Regal were in the crowd. I came back from my match and I had an email from them saying that they were going to sign me. Was crazy. Same night. I got back to my phone after the match, and on my lock screen, I have the screenshot of it, and it said, ‘Regal and I saw you work tonight. There’s an opportunity for you. We’ll connect after Mania.’ Because it was the week before WrestleMania. And at the time, I think it was Mae Young Classic, they were going to maybe do a third one. He said, ‘And just to be clear, it’s more than Mae Young Classic.’ I was like, Oh my God. Then I got home like a few weeks later, I got a call one night and they told me that they were going to sign me.”

On her NXT Women’s Championship win coming out of nowhere:

“It did happen out of nowhere. I was shocked. Everyone was shocked. Because this is how it happened. I wasn’t really being used on TV at the time. I think I was on Level Up, and then I wasn’t even booked in the ladder match. It was like a week before, two weeks before I lost my qualifying match. I just really wanted to be at Mania week, because everyone wants to be at Mania week. So I remember I saw Coach Bloom in the gym, and I asked him, ‘Hey, is there any way I can help with the try-out, just so I can be there?’ He was like, ‘Do you have new gear for LA?’ And I was like, No. He’s like, ‘Well, I would get gear if I were you.’ Then the next week I had a last chance qualifying match, I got into the match, and I was like, Oh, cool. That’s amazing. But then they didn’t tell us the ending of the match till the night before, and so we couldn’t put together an ending to this match. That was p*ssing us all off, we can’t even plan this. Then Shawn Michaels pulled us all aside in the hotel, and I’m just eating an apple because he’s probably going to say that Roxanne’s going to win it. So I was eating an apple, and he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, okay, the winner’s going to be Indi.’ Everyone was shocked, even Sarah Amato. Everyone was like, What the hell, Indi is winning it? I was very surprised. What’s crazy is I could have had my family there because it was in LA. So it was just like a short, 15-hour flight. But unfortunately, that didn’t happen. But it was a cool moment.”

On why they didn’t do more with the title reign:

“I think getting hurt kind of ruined everything with that. But everything happens for a reason. So I think everything happened how it was supposed to.”

Did you know you were hurt?

“Oh yeah. I thought my ankle was like shattered inside my boot. I just remember laying there being like, I’m never getting called up. Then I looked and there was a doctor next to me. Then they took me to the back, and then Roxy and Tiffany had to call the match on the fly. I was on the medical table, taking off my boot, and I was like, no, no, I can go back out, because I felt bad for them having to do that. Also, I didn’t want my title reign to end like that, so I hobbled my way back out there and finished the match.”

On there not being plans for her call-up:

“I don’t really know what the plan was. I think they were going to do stuff with The Way, because we had a few segments together. Then the next week the segment would get cut from the show, put on Raw Talk. Then the next week, it would get cut completely. Then I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t feel like I was in a position to ask many questions. I was just happy to be there.”

On working with Becky Lynch:

“My anxiety was through the roof that day. I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous for a match, but she was amazing to work with. I’m so grateful that she spoke up and asked to work with me and I think Tegan and Xia Li, so she helped us a bunch. That was one of my only singles matches on the main roster, because I was in the tag team. So yeah, I learned a lot from her and I just feel grateful that I got to work with her.”

On having doubts after her release:

“Well, first of all, I had to think do I even want to keep wrestling? Because I remember the night that I got released, Bayley called me. She’s like, ‘Oh, now you can have your dream match with Mercedes.’ I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t even know if I want to wrestle.’ But then I snapped out of it and I was like, I’m only 28, I feel like I have so much more to do in wrestling. So I just had to get my brain right.”

Why did you want to stop?

“Not from being released. I think just maybe the past year or two of not really getting to do much, it kind of, I don’t know, rips away your enthusiasm for it, or your love for it, or your confidence, especially confidence. That’s the main thing for me, I’ve just got to get my confidence back up and remember who I was.”

On getting the Mercedes Mone match:

“That did wonders for the old confidence as well. After that match, I was like, Oh my gosh, I love wrestling. I love this. It was just such a good experience. Getting to work her, she is amazing, she’s doing amazing stuff right now, I’m just like, blessed. Also, that match wasn’t even supposed to happen, supposed to be a six-man tag match. Then the night before, I saw in her story, she posted the match graphic of me and her. So I responded. I was like, ‘Oh, we’re wrestling? This is happening?’ I didn’t know, was supposed to be a tag match. But I think things got changed around. But no one told me. I just find out things either by watching it on TV or just seeing it online. It was a nice surprise. It was good. So I had because I found out the night before, I didn’t really have time to, like, freak out about it, which was good. Everything went so smooth.”

On having a theme song by Downstait:

“Downstait are the best. Also, shout out to Chelsea Green, because she’s the one that made that happen for me. I think the day after I got released, or maybe that night, she put me in a group chat with Zack [Call], the lead singer, and she connected us. I don’t know if they reached out to her to reach out to me, but she put us together. Like I said, at that time, I didn’t know if I wanted to keep wrestling, so I said to them, ‘Hey, I’m not sure right now, I’ll get back to you.’ So then a few weeks later, I was like, Okay, let’s do it. It was such a cool experience, getting to work with them and getting to collaborate, give them some ideas and see what they came up with. Because they’re incredible.”

On a potential WWE return:

“It’s not my intention right now to sign with TNA so I can go back to NXT. I went to TNA because TNA is a company I grew up watching. I’m genuinely a huge fan of TNA, and I feel like that’s where I can thrive the most. But like I mentioned before, I’m only 28 so I do feel like there is a path back to WWE someday, I’m not closing the door on that. All my friends are still there, and there’s a lot that I didn’t get to do, so it’s definitely something that I can see happening.”

What is Indi Hartwell grateful for?

“My girlfriend and my family, my health and my green card.”