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Michelle McCool (@McCoolMichelleL) is a retired professional wrestler known for her time in WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Austin, TX to discuss getting into the WWE by entering the Diva Search, being a part of the Divas Era and having to fight for airtime, the controversial “Piggy James” segments with Mickie James, forming a tag team with Layla and the broken Women’s Championship, how she first met The Undertaker and started dating, her surprise entry in the 2023 Women’s Royal Rumble, if she thinks a Hall of Fame induction will happen one day and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Every man has two lives, and the second starts when he realizes he has just one.” – Confucius

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On still being able to go in the ring:

“I feel like I could, my mind tells me I can. Sometimes I’m like I can’t believe it’s been 20 years, which is crazy to say, but I am 44 now. But I do feel like I could, I mean, at least for a very short amount of time.”

On being a surprise entrant in the 2023 Royal Rumble:

“Yeah, that was fun. That was interesting. I’ve told the story before. They called me on very short notice. I think it was eight, nine days. Asked me if I wanted to do it, and I was like, Oh shoot. I mean, yes, I’ll work out. But I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times, ring shape is a whole different ball game. I think I was in for a few minutes. I think at one point, it’s kind of in a corner with it was either Piper or Naomi. I was like give me a second y’all, I’m tired. But, yeah, that was super fun. I knew I was going to be there with the kids watching, and my dad was there, and it was something different. I mean, they said I could wrestle in my sweatpants and Uggs. I should have been doing it my entire career. I was like I am in. Honestly, it was a thing where Mark and I talked, our daughter was kind of struggling, she’s a perfectionist, and if she can’t do something on the first try, she gets so mad. So it was a kind of a lesson. I said, You know what? I’m just gonna let her know this is something that mommy is kind of a little bit terrified to do on such short notice. I don’t know if I’m ready to do it, but you know what, we can be scared and brave at the same time and go out and do it. So it was kind of a lesson I was trying to build in for her. Don’t really know that she got that, she’s just loves WWE period. Not even sure she was cheering for me. But that was part of the reasoning as well.”

On her daughter wanting to wrestle:

“She has been obsessed as long as I can remember. I mean, she was probably three or four watching something. Even Mark turned to me. He’s like, Oh no, she gets it. She asked this question, like, why would they do that? Or this doesn’t make sense or wow, that looked really good. And we’re like, oh gosh, she gets it. She loves it.”

On being recognised at airports:

“Oh my gosh, they’re awful. I joke that I’m married and so I could wear whatever heels I wanted to, and occasional security jumps at the airport. People recognizing we were traveling on the road all the time. But man, it’s crazy. People just don’t have boundaries. It’s like, you appreciate and love the fans. You hear it from even the superstars today, but when you’re getting chased or followed and your kids are around, especially, it’s just like, Dude, come on.”

On being discovered by WWE:

“Not until honest to goodness I got the call for the Diva Search, because I come from such a small town in Florida, and it’s kind of one of those deals where nobody ever leaves. There have been some great athletes that have come out of that town, but everybody just kind of comes back, and you just always think that’s just what you do. So I never really thought, hey, this is what I’m going to do. But in 2004 when they had the Diva Search, I was watching it, and a friend said, there’s your chance, but you won’t do it. I was like, Oh, I hate being told that I won’t or I can’t. Also hate failing. So I’m not going to tell you I’m trying, but I did. I filled out the papers. I went to this local park, had a friend take pictures, didn’t tell him what for, sent them in and I got a call. I was too nervous to answer it at the time, I was actually with my parents, so I just sent it the voicemail. Got the voicemail that they were asking me to come. And I was like this can’t be true. So called him back and went to New York, this huge cattle call, and everybody had these portfolios that their agents are sent. I’m like, Oh my gosh. I don’t even know what fake eyelashes are. I have these pictures I took in the park, where am I right now?”

On if it could have been a career:

“I still was like not that it wouldn’t or couldn’t, because I trusted in my abilities, but it just seemed too far-fetched. It just seemed like, oh, here it is. This is fun. But especially after I got cut, I didn’t think I was gonna get called back to go train at Deep South. So while it was within reach, I don’t know that I ever thought, can this really happen to me? Little me from Palatka, Florida, this teeny, tiny town nobody’s heard of. But here we are.”

On developing her character:

“Well, it took a while. I think if you watched the first several years of my career, I wasn’t super comfortable speaking on the microphone or doing promos. But once I realized you’ve got nothing [to lose], I mean, you have everything to lose, yes, but the more comfortable you can go out there and just act as if nobody’s there, it becomes a lot easier. And when Layla and I got paired together game over, we just had fun.”

On fighting for airtime and having short matches:

“That was the hard part during my era. When you hear about the Attitude Era, you hear about the Divas era, which we were kind of like a forgotten era. We were kind of like the in between, which for a while I was frustrated with that, but then I was like, there’s nothing we did all we could with what we had, and I’m grateful for that, but it was hard to tell a story. They started giving Layla and I more and more time, which was nice, more and more freedom, which was nice, also led to a lot of other people not liking that, because that’s the wrestling business, which made that difficult as well, because you have to have somebody to work. But it was hard. It was a struggle.”

On being in the first women’s tables match:

“I was proud of that Tables match. It was not only the first, it was fun. Earlier in the day we were walking up the ramp, and I remember somebody saying you know, the table is fine, it’s gonna break. There’s two of them, right? There’s Layla and Michelle, yeah, no problem. That sucker did not break. Table would not put us over. They didn’t like us either. So we hit and I’m like, oh gosh. Now look back up, Natty, climb back up. And it couldn’t have turned off better with her going back up for the second time. But yeah, that was a big moment.”

On having to re-do matches:

“There was one point where Victoria and I had a match. We came backstage, getting changed, and they came back and said, Hey, y’all need to come back out and do your match again. We’re like, What do you mean come back out and do our match again? They’re like, your punches and kicks look better than the guys. We’re like, Wait a minute. We have to go redo our match because our punches look too good? That doesn’t sound like an us problem. Chris Jericho at the time, he stood up for us, and he said if the guy’s punches don’t look as good, that is not the girl’s fault. That’s not their fault. Regardless, we had to go out there and re-do our match, and there was a period of about three or four weeks that girls couldn’t punch or kick.”

On the Piggy James storyline:

“I give credit to this day, and I said this to somebody the other day, and I said it to her. But the whole Piggy James storyline, me at heart hated it, just because of what it was. You’re bullying somebody, supposedly that they’re supposedly overweight, and that has never been me. Every week I’d go up to her, ‘Mickie, I’m so sorry. This is what they want us to say.’ Complete professional. Not once did she try to change things, which often girls did. Not once. She’s like, ‘No, it’s good. It’s cool.’ She knew that took two to tango. She knew what her role was. She knew what our role was, and she really, I think, put us on the map with that storyline.”

On where the pitch came from:

“I don’t remember the original pitch. A lot of times back then, things started with personal digs at somebody, or maybe somebody got in trouble and they wanted to make fun. I don’t know what it was, but it just came out of the blue. Layla and I were stupid. We acted dumb together, we said silly things, we had a lot of fun. But when that storyline came about, I was like oh, this is just mean. But it did get us over and I give all the credit in the world to Mickie for that. She easily could have said, ‘Guys, this is too much, too far, I’m not doing it.’ She was already over, but she didn’t [object]. She knew how the business worked, and it got her more over, and she helped us.”

On the split Women’s Championship:

“That was, I want to say that was Batista’s idea. We were backstage, and he’s like, Well, what If y’all cut it in half like the best friend necklaces? Our minds went there, and we’re like, that’d be great. And I don’t think anybody else thought it was a great idea. Like, come on, guys, that was fun. Yeah, that was fun.”

On retiring from wrestling:

“I don’t think I told anybody other than Mark and Layla. She knew it was coming. I wanted to enjoy it. It was hard because we were still fighting for that last match, or that last build-up to the last match, and it just, I don’t know if I ever got true closure, because it’s like I didn’t really want to leave, but I didn’t want to hate something I loved my entire life and still love to this day. So it was a tough decision, but I had to just try to find the good. Always try to find the good. I have some very dear friends to this day that I take from the business.” 

On dating The Undertaker affecting things professionally:

“I just know that I wasn’t the only one dating guys around there and I definitely didn’t see that from anybody else. [Did it feel personal?] Not so much personal to me, but because he is the top [guy], he is the benchmark for everybody. So I think people looked at that differently, he has whatever pull he wants is what people think. You can ask him, and I actually am so stubborn, I don’t ever need any type of help to fight any battle, to fight a storyline, to pitch a storyline, I can look in the mirror and just say that’s never happened. Now, there was one time a little incident happened with a guy, and I had to beg him not to say something, even though this guy was calling Mark and wanting to talk to him and apologize and everything else, which he didn’t answer. He may sweat it out for several weeks, it’s good now. I was good, totally fine now, but I mean, just point being that’s my nature, that’s my character, that’s how I’ve always been my entire life to a fault. I don’t need help from anybody. I can figure this out. I can chuck them through and get something done. But, you know, there were writers that literally threw up their papers. ‘If she wasn’t the Undertaker’s girlfriend…’ I will turn my cheek a million times, but also stand up for myself. And there are a few times I can remember, like a handful, where I’d already talked to somebody earlier in the day and they had treated me one way. And then, of course, they see me and Mark together, and I have to say, Guess what? I didn’t change from 10 minutes ago. So treat me the same way you treated me when he wasn’t standing here.” 

On a possible Hall of Fame induction: 

“I don’t know. I get that question all the time. I mean, it would be an honor. I don’t know, not my call. Don’t even whose call it is, but I have no idea. I would hope Laycool would go in, and everybody always asks. I mean, that would be an honor to go in as Michelle McCool, obviously. But think Laycool is what put Michelle McCool really on the map. And I’ll never take that for granted, but she just disassociated from wrestling for quite some time, and I respected that. Would I give anything to have a LayCool reunion at a Rumble? Yeah.”

On knowing The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak would end:

“I did. I think he told me early in the afternoon, when they made that decision I was hot. Why? That doesn’t make sense! And of course, he’s like his business. That’s his call. I knew that it had been pitched that Edge break the streak years prior. But Adam said No, there’s no rhyme or reason that I need to break The Streak, that The Streak needs to be broken, that I want to have any part of that. And he didn’t mad respect, but, yeah, not a good night.” 

What is Michelle McCool grateful for?

“My health, for family and for nature.”

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Carlito (@Litocolon279) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the first-ever INSIGHT LIVE in Indianapolis, IN to discuss the vignettes that built up to his WWE debut, beating John Cena in his first-ever match, the infamous John Cena stabbing storyline, sharing the ring with Roddy Piper and Steve Austin at WrestleMania, how the Backstabber became his finisher, returning to the company at Backlash in Puerto Rico, being a part of The Judgment Day, the right technique to spit an apple and more! Plus, Carlito takes questions from the audience.

Quote I’m thinking about: “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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On what he was told his gimmick would be:

“They said the gimmick would be just he’s a cool kind of laid-back guy. That’s all they gave me. Well, it’s kind of how it is with wrestling. They’ll give you certain guidelines or whatever. Then it’s up to you to kind of make that character, or end up not making that character.”

On the apple spitting technique:

“There’s actually a technique of spitting that people haven’t realized. You have to get the right amount of chew, because if you don’t chew it enough, when you spit it at someone, it’ll just be like big blocks and it’ll fall off. If you chew it too much, then it just gets too gooey and it won’t spray enough. But if you get it just right the way I do, you get that nice spray that just sticks all over their face and gets in the shirt and their hair. Lovely.”

On not being proud of some apple spits:

“There’s a couple that I’m ashamed, not ashamed of, but there’s a couple of people, especially some females that I remember. Maybe that’s why there’s no vignettes, because I look a lot of them now and nowadays you’re like, Oh, we couldn’t get away with that nowadays. The one I did with Maria, you guys know, right? That one wouldn’t fly today. And for those who don’t know, you’ll look it up somewhere. But, yeah, that wouldn’t fly these days.”

On his storylines with Trish Stratus and Torrie Wilson:

“The thing was that I felt it was a contradiction to what the Carlito character is. Because if think about it, he was always talking about being cool and whatever but he was actually not cool. And then he is always the type of guy that brags about getting all these girls, but then women can’t stand him. Then all of a sudden they start putting him with women. It’s like well you kind of just throwing the whole Carlito thing away. He’s the guy that talks a lot of s***. But people understand Carlito is a heel. He’s likable but he’s a heel at heart. He’s not a good guy. I don’t see what redeemable qualities he has. I know people seem to love him, whatever. But that’s the problem. They thought, Oh, the people like him. Yeah, they like him. But they like him because he’s a certain way, and he’s a bad guy. There’s nothing good about Carlito.”

On the pop he got at Backlash 2023:

“I wasn’t [surprised], just because they’d been wanting to see me back with WWE for years, Something that they always wanted. It was like a perfect storm being in Puerto Rico, a big pay-per-view in Puerto Rico and the world’s biggest star with Bad Bunny. Everybody was kind of hoping that I would show up.”

On when his music hit:

“Well, they didn’t hit it right. Because it starts with the spit and ‘I split the face…’ It just went straight to my music. But luckily people still knew it was my music, and got the reaction it did.”

On his return at the 2021 Royal Rumble with no fans:

“It’s like Mania, it’s one of the big events, it is tradition. When I returned there wasn’t a live crowd. It was the big screens or whatever. So now I kind of just enjoy seeing that big crowd, and it’s a unique experience. It’s a big thing. I was not signed. It was like a one-off. I did one and then went back to doing my thing. I did the Raw after that.”

On Carlito’s Cabana:

“I think my first month that I started I got injured. I dislocated my left shoulder, so they wanted to keep me on TV somehow. So they just thought, Okay, we’ll do a talking segment with him. And then was great for me, because I could just go out there and act the fool, which is perfect for me. I don’t mind that at all. There was no plan, just something to keep you on TV. Well because I was just about a month in, I just beaten Cena. So they didn’t want that to go to waste, I guess.”

On beating John Cena in his debut match:

“It was great. I first thought that Cena had pranked me because as soon as I got there he was the nicest guy to me. Went over everything with me, one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. Then we get in the ring, the bell rang, and he kicked me in the stomach so hard, that’s like, oh, okay I see what’s going on here. But that’s just the way he worked. And I think that’s what he said. He’s a strong boy, he hits hard.”

On the backstage segment with Ric Flair:

“I get a lot of flack for it. Apparently he was shooting on me or something. People around me were like Oh, you didn’t feel it? I didn’t see it that way but okay. But I mean, yeah, it was cool. It was cool because I tagged with him for a little bit too. So it was cool having a storyline with and I just saw him.”

On how much longer he hopes to wrestle:

“For a little bit, yeah. I still feel like I have a little bit left in the tank. Undisputed champ? That’s a long way away, we’ll see. I think I got a few more years in me. Not many, but a few.

Would you wrestle into your 50s?

“That’s probably not gonna happen. No. Probably not. Mentally, I think. But my body’s probably [no going to make it]. I’ve been dealing with some injuries so not bumping has helped. But, yeah, like I said, there’s still a little bit left in the tank.”

On being in the ring with Roddy Piper and Steve Austin at WrestleMania 21:

“That was one of those moments you could say that, okay, I’m in here with Piper who I’d known since I was a little kid. And then Austin, I never really met him but of course I knew of him, how big it was. So I knew it was a cool little spot even, because I still couldn’t wrestle. I still can’t wrestle now [laughs], but back then I couldn’t actually wrestle because I had that shoulder issue. So it was cool to have a nice little spot at WrestleMania 21 with two of the biggest stars of all time.”

On what it was like being out there with Piper and Austin:

“I didn’t get nervous, It was one of the things like I can hang with these people. So I never got nervous about having to wrestle Shawn Michaels or something, I’d show that I could hang with them. I didn’t get nervous or whatever. I’m gonna show him that I can hang with him.” 

On how the backstabber became his finisher:

“That’s back to John Cena again. I remember I used to do that move, and he said man, that’s a finisher. You should do it as a finisher. I was like, Yeah, but the guy lands on top of me and I’m taking his weight. I mean, if I got to do this, luckily I don’t win a lot, so I don’t have to worry about that. But it was his idea. ‘You should do it as a finisher.’ All right, I’ll try it out. And then, yeah, so thanks to him that I stuck with it.”

On the stabbing John Cena storyline:

“I don’t know what the official story is nowadays, they changed it over the years. Apparently, I was at the club and he got stabbed. I don’t think it was me that stabbed him, or my my buddy Jesus. I don’t think it was Jesus, or maybe it was, I don’t know. All I know is it wasn’t me. I think somebody at the club [did it]. Luckily, he made a movie during that time too. So we’re lucky he didn’t get stabbed that badly.”

What is Carlito grateful for?

“My health, my family and all the fans.”

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto & Las Vegas with VIP Meet & Greet!

Penta (@penta_zero_miedo) is a professional wrestler currently signed with WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss his recent debut match against Chad Gable on WWE Raw and the emotional promo he cut after the match, the positive fan reaction to his debut, the origin of “Cero Miedo” and his mask, being compared to Rey Mysterio, future WWE dream matches, if WWE was always the goal, his matches in Lucha Underground and more!

Quote I’m thinking about:  “Passion is the oxygen of the soul.” — Bill Butler
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[Quotes have been edited for clarity]

On his family being at Raw for his WWE debut:

“Man, it’s like I have mixed feelings and emotions. Because I win the match, my first match in WWE, my family was in the first row, and my little daughter crying. It’s like wow, it’s too much emotion at the same time for me. But when I go back to the locker room, everyone clapped me. I speak with Rey Mysterio and Triple H. It’s for one moment I am thinking I wanted this 20 years ago.” 

On if he was concerned fans may not know who he was:

“To be honest. The cero miedo knows only the Lucha move, or the Lucha gimmick. Now it is the lifestyle. Because I know a lot of people in different parts, told me ‘Penta thanks for the cero miedo. I conquered the cancer.’ Different things about how you’ve inspired all this. When I hear this is like, Okay, I know what the responsibility on my shoulders is. I need to improve every day, my body, my mind, my heart, my soul, everything, because I know a lot of people, I inspire a lot of people. Cero miedo, this phrase is like lifestyle, now is the lifestyle I start with me and now everyone.”

On the origin of Cero Miedo:

“The truth is, I love the Corridos. In Mexican music is the Corridos. In Mexico, there are the Los Buitres De Culiacan Sinaloa is the name of the band. And a lot of songs say, ‘Cero miedo mi compa’, in English is like no fear my friend, something like that. But I started [hearing it], okay, I like it. I like it. In my first interview in Triple A in Mexico. I need to do the promo and it is like how do I finish it? ‘Cero miedo!’ Just like my reaction was the ‘Cero miedo!’ Okay. After that, everyone [said to me] ‘Hey, cero miedo!’ is like, okay. I got it. I improved the cero miedo. Just the hands, you know, the T-shirts and everything. But the truth is cero miedo comes from the Corridos in Mexico.”

On if WWE was always the goal:

“Of course. It is the best company in the world.”

On if there were any doubts about getting to WWE:

“No. I never doubted myself, my talent, my energy, my passion for this sport. Yeah, I think this is the best for me to be here.”

On the meaning behind the mask:

“The mask represents, after my culture, represents the dragon for me, it is like my God. The black color is my best color for me, because I think the black is serious, black is more fancy for me. I love it. So this style, ninja style, because I love the ninjas too, it’s like a couple of things about my real personality. This is the mask of Penta. The stars, for the ninjas too. But the most important thing in my mask is the dragons.”

On the first time he saw Rey Mysterio:

“I don’t remember what year, but Rey Mysterio would go to Mexico for a meet and greet. But brother it is five blocks long for the line to see Rey Mysterio in Mexico City. Me and my brother are in the line for two hours, three hours, when somebody say, hey, Rey Mysterio is going to leave. Me and my brother running behind the car. I want a picture with that, with him, but never. My brother is crying in this moment because my brother is six years younger than me. So after that, my brother is crying, ‘Hey, I want to see Rey.’ I say ‘Maybe one day, no worry.’ Because I’m older, no worry. But my first time with Rey Mysterio was, I remember in PWG, in LA, Battle of Los Angeles, the tournament. Konnan came with Rey Mysterio to the show. I remember that I was in the locker room I see Rey. I go Rey! He speaks Spanish too. This is my first time, it was amazing and magic for me. I never forget that.” 

On Lucha Underground:

“Lucha Underground was a crazy thing. So, some things there was crazy. For example, my match with Chelsea Green, Iyo Sky, Kairi Sane, Rey Mysterio, Ricochet, Mill Muertes. The most violent was with Vampiro, Ultimo Lucha Cero Miedo. This match was a turning point in my career too, because Vampiro is a legend. Fire, trash can, everything, tables. Was crazy.”

On being compared to Rey Mysterio: 

“I have the best answer for that, it is the truth. I don’t want to be the next Rey Mysterio. I want to be the first Penta El Zero Miedo in WWE. Because Rey Mysterio has my respect. Rey Mysterio is the legend, Rey Mysterio is my role model, but I want to be the first Penta because my style is very different. My style in the ring is different to Rey Mysterio’s. Rey Mysterio inspired me, of course. But I don’t wanna say I am like he is.” 

On WWE dream matches:

“I have a few names. But the truth is, no matter who is in the ring, no matter what he won, I want to win everything in WWE. John Cena, Punk, Cody, Seth Rollins, The Tribal Chief, Fatu, Bron Breakker. A lot of wrestlers I want for Penta. For example with CM Punk I had one match, he won, I need revenge. The rematch with him, with Cody too. But for me, a special dream match is Penta versus John Cena or Penta versus Finn Balor.”

On his pyro-filled entrance:

“This entrance is 100% a Triple H idea, thank you for that. I feel very special, because the fire for me is very important. I like it. The dragons have a fire. When I feel it behind me, the fires I feel, the power I feel, the more energy [I have]. I wanna destroy somebody there. This is the truth brother. But when I see on the TV my entrance it is like, wow. I feel like a big star. A really big star.”

On if he prefers tag team or singles wrestling:

“I really enjoy both. When I team with my brother it’s very special because he is my real brother. For me, he is the best wrestler in the world. When I am in the corner and my brother is in the ring, I enjoy every move. When he gives me the tag, oh, it’s my turn. But when I am by myself in the ring, Penta is more like Shakespeare. It’s like, okay, this is Shakespeare. I love the crowd. I enjoy both. But if I need to choose something, it’s difficult. I’ll say both.”

On his brother Rey Fenix:

“I love my brother. I love everything about my brother.”

On if they would work together or as singles stars:

“Both is fine for me. I don’t know. [Maybe against each other?] Yeah, a lot of times in Mexico, every weekend, against each other. But now here is different. Now I am focused on myself. Now I am focused on the Royal Rumble. I am focused on WrestleMania. I am focused on everything here. When my brother has the opportunity with me, it’s okay. But now I am focused on myself.”

On the Penta match everyone should watch:

“I have maybe three or four matches. One definitely Penta versus Vampiro. The second one, Penta versus Fenix in Japan and Lucha Bros vs. Young Bucks. The number four, Penta versus Kenny Omega.”

On seeing fans wear his mask in the crowd:

“This was a big surprise for me. Actually last night somebody told me how many masks WWE have sold. It is a big number. I can’t say what the number is, but I can only say it is a big number. I feel so proud. I feel now, in my mind, let’s go. I can’t stop. I need to grow every day.” 

On if he was overwhelmed by the positive fan response:

“Yeah, but for me I stay relaxed. I’m staying focused on my career. I stay focused on my new goals, my next goals. So I know social media is talking about me, everyone talking about me or interviewing me. But no, I stay in focus on what is my real target now in WWE, I focus every day. I improve, I say before my body, my spirit, my mind, because I know this is for me to be the big star here in WWE.”

What is Penta grateful for?

“My family, my career and my future.”

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Chris Jericho (@chrisjerichofozzy) is a professional wrestler currently signed with AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his legendary professional wrestling career, how he feels about the state of professional wrestling in the modern era, being in the business for 35 years, his thoughts on the “Please retire” chants from the fans, why competition is good in wrestling, John Cena’s year-long retirement tour and if he has thought about retirement, what he is most proud of since the start of AEW, the catchphrases that worked and those that didn’t, the Dinner Debonair segment with MJF and how it was nearly changed at the last second and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “You only have one life, so you should live it as beautifully as you can.” – Eddie Van Halen

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On being murdered by Art the Clown in Terrifier 3:

“I mean, it was very much a closed, secret script. So what I got, you’re looking at your two pages, there was basically the three or four pages of my scene and that was it. So I didn’t know where it was in the movie. I didn’t know what happened before it or afterwards, but they were really keeping it tight to make sure that none of the detailed plot points got out. So I didn’t know anything about the movie until I saw it in the theater. It’s a hell of a death, it’s pretty cool. Back in the old days they would do a mold of your face with putty or whatever it was. Now they do it with a digital kind of wand, the same way they do action figures in wrestling. So they kind of took a scan of my face and then I get on set, and there’s this bust of my face screaming, but it’s got skin tones, and it like really looks just like me. So we do the scene, and there’s two of them. The faceless chick puts her hand in my mouth and Art the Clown puts his hand here and there’s blood coming out. It’s cut, then they put my rubber face and ripped the jaw off, the skin stretching, and it’s like this looks just like me and I’m standing right off behind the camera watching this going I’m right here guys, this is f*cking terrible. It’s surreal to watch your own face get ripped apart, but that’s just the modern technology. They made it look exactly like me.”

On his extended break from wrestling in the mid-2000s:

 “It was weird because it was two and a half years, and I was really burned out on what wrestling was. [It was] 2005 so I’ve been doing it for 15 years. Then around that time we find out that we’re having twins and suddenly, oh my gosh, I need a job. So I did a lot of signings. I did a lot of different stuff. I was working for GTV, if you remember that channel, I can’t remember what the name of the show was, not the Daily Show, something along those lines. I was kind of picking up as many gigs as I could. VH1 was really big at the time, and so I was really hustling. But it was weird, because it’s not like I really missed wrestling. It’s like I really like pizza, but if you have too much pizza, you’re done. You got me a large pizza, you have three pieces, I’m full, and you kind of push it away, and I was really was full on wrestling, shall we say. I didn’t really watch wrestling. I kind of followed along with reading the sheets or reading the internet, but I didn’t watch anything. Once again, kind of gave me a real, new perspective. I studied acting. I was spending a lot of time in LA working on that process of it, doing the groundlings like I said. So I wasn’t wrestling, per se, but I was really working on the skills that I feel made me the biggest I’d ever been at the time in 2008 when I returned. I mean, I returned in 07 but 08 when the suit and tie Jericho came out with the Shawn Michaels feud and The Big Show pairing. The reason why those worked so well is because I had learned a lot about the process of acting and the process of living in the moment, which is basically what improv is, and having both of those skills kind of really honed in helped me a lot from that point forward.”

On how he feels about wrestling now:

“Yeah it’s pretty crazy, 34 years, and listen, I always laugh when people will say do you still love it? If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it. I’m not doing it for money at this point. It’s the creative fulfilment, there’s a challenge. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t demand to be on every show every week. My boss books me for shows because of what I bring to the table, and still enjoying it and still really working on how can we make things better, how can we do more storylines, and what can I do this week that was different from last week. So yeah I do love wrestling still, especially now. I think probably from a financial standpoint, as a business, I think wrestling is the biggest it’s ever been. Maybe not from a complete ratings standpoint, but things have changed. Ratings don’t mean as much as they used to, and selling tickets in buildings don’t mean as much as they used to, because there’s so much money in television alone, and that’s never been that way before. It’s just ridiculous amounts of money towards the companies now, because of the popularity and because of the ratings that wrestling draws.”

On how the business has changed:

“It’s interesting. In a lot of ways, fans’ perceptions of what a good match is a little different than it was. I think a lot of people think a good match, the proverbial banger is your five-star, Madison Square Garden, Tokyo Dome main event type of thing, and that’s great. But wrestling is still about reactions, about stories and about good guys and bad guys. So I know 25 years ago, you could do a lot less, and have people think it’s an amazing match. Whereas now you can do the exact same thing, have the crowd react exactly the way they did, but kind of your critics and pundits will say well that was a terrible match. There are a lot more opinions now because of social media and a lot more stock put in those opinions. So you’re having people that watch the show as a fan, maybe they watch every show and that’s amazing. But their opinions still, I mean, even though it’s important, it’s not law, it’s not written from the heavens, and a lot of people entertain that. To me, I still look at it as what does the crowd in the arena do? What kind of a rating did you draw? And not worry so much about critics, because that’s fine. Critics are always critics. The Beatles were hated when they were a band by the time 67 ran around. So you take it all with a grain of salt. I just think now everybody has so much more access and has so much more of a say, and then a lot of people read that and take that say as gospel, and it’s really not.” 

Do you read that? Do you pay attention? 

“I go through phases. I’m not that guy, ‘I’ll never read the internet.’ Of course I do. You have to have a really thick skin to read the internet, because people are really mean, they’re very mean and they’re very angry. I used to say if you’re gonna read the comments, then you have to take when people say you’re the greatest wrestler that ever lived with as much of a grain of salt as people say f*ck off and die and never be on TV again. Go away. Both are very extreme opinions, one way or the other, but both really don’t mean a lot. So yeah, I don’t read them as much, especially Twitter. I’m done with Twitter, there’s no reason for me to be on that anymore. It’s just so negative and it’s just like why waste your time on it? I mean, there has to be some positivity somewhere. So, yeah, I do read, but not as much as I did, and I definitely don’t put stock in it as much as I used to maybe 15 years ago or 10 years ago or something.”

On the fan perception to The Jericho Vortex:

“It’s funny how I’ve become kind of public enemy number one as a heel, by the way. Isn’t that kind of the idea? Aren’t you supposed to be public enemy number one as a heel? Aren’t you supposed to not like somebody’s character when that character is a heel? Maybe I’m actually smarter than everyone and I’m manipulating people to what I want them to do. ‘Well, f*ck off, just retire already.’ It’s like, okay, doesn’t that make you mad? Because what I look at is the ratings, and nine times out of 10 my segments always go up, and there’s still some of the biggest ones on the show. So that tells me that whatever it is that I’m doing is working. But I do have a target on my back for that, and that’s once again kind of the idea, I am a bad guy on the show. So, yeah it’s public opinion, and it goes in cycles. And when you’ve been in the business as long as I have, especially at the top level, that makes people mad. I always love the concept of the Jericho Vortex and how anybody that works with me gets dragged down. Name one. Name one person that got dragged down from working with me. Maybe afterwards they didn’t go higher, but that’s not up to me. I’m not in charge of booking the entire company. All I can do is influence the storylines that I work on. But everybody that I can think of who worked with me certainly went to a higher level. I did a year with MJF and look where he’s at, Danny Garcia, Sammy Guevara, Daddy Magic last week comes off of commentary and gets a big pop. Who do you think put him in that position? All of those guys. I mean, I think Big Bill and Bryan Keith have grown by leaps and bounds from working here with me. I’m not going to go through the entire cast of characters, but I definitely know what my intentions are, and it’s not to bury anybody. It’s to build as many people as I can and give them experience so they can learn how to start shouldering things on their own.”

On if he chooses his opponents:

“I don’t choose anything. I might have a suggestion, but most of the time it’s Tony coming up with who he wants me to work with. I know for example with Mark Briscoe, both of us wanted to work with each other, and knew we could have some great matches. I loved working with Mark and what a great kind of mini-feud, or I guess it was a feud. It was a couple of months long. So that was something that we both wanted to do and suggested to Tony. But most of the time, I mean, this whole thing that started working with Rated FTR, that was Tony’s idea. So yeah, I still work for my boss, and I have never once as far as I can remember in the six years I’ve been in AEW ever said no to something. I might not like something, but I got to try and do my best to make it work or maybe come up with something that maybe is a better idea as long as the boss likes it. If the boss wants to do he wants to do then that’s my job. So that’s what we do.” 

On the “Please Retire” chants:

“I mean, it’s one of those things. When they were really at their peak, of course I’m always thinking. Okay, I can make a t-shirt out of that. I can make a whole angle out of this. But it kind of went away, they kind of stopped. Plus, I was really good at being able to shut people down. Like New York, please retire. I take the mic and say, I know why you want me to retire. Because you want me to go pitch for the New York Yankees so they could possibly win a World Series, but that’s not going to happen. Boo! And then they stop. It’s something that Seinfeld said years ago, or any great stand-up comedian, I’ve got the mic. You can’t heckle somebody when the guy has the louder voice. So, yeah, the please retire was a good one. That was fun.”

Do you take it personally?

“No, I don’t take it personally. Nobody who really knows me that says that stuff. And probably, if I saw them on the street they’d probably say hi. Whenever I do a convention or something like that, my lines are down the street. That’s not from an egotistical standpoint, but I’ve been doing this a long time, and a lot of people have great memories from the different eras that I’ve been in. I’m the Rolling Stones on the Steel Wheel Tour, when all the critics are saying it’s the steel wheelchairs tour, Stones need to retire, they’re done. Well Mick was 47 years old, and that was 1989. I saw him four times last summer at 81 years old and they’re still one of the best bands in the business. So if I’m in kind of my Steel Wheels Rolling Stones period, I told you this last time was on. If I died tomorrow or tonight, there would be a huge like, oh my gosh! But right now it’s not that way, and that’s okay. This is a job where the idea is to elicit emotions, positive, negative, anything in between. When you sign up for it, you have to understand that people are going to respond. Now all of us wish that you could just walk down the street and have people throw a parade for you at all times and throw confetti and will their firstborn sons to you. It’s not that way, especially now. I mean, society has kind of gone the way that they did when I first got to WCW, where they hated all the babyfaces just because you were a babyface. Hated a young Chris Jericho because they loved the nWo. So this blonde-haired, good-looking guy who was like throwing himself in the crowd because he had nothing to do was getting booed out of the building, and now I’m getting booed out of the building or getting chanted at as a bad guy. Isn’t that the point? Please tell me if I’m wrong.”

On John Cena’s year-long retirement tour:

“It’s weird for me. I don’t know if I want that much pomp and circumstance. Obviously, I’m not sure if that’s John’s idea or if it’s the company’s idea. The big retirement match, that’s a lot of pressure, you put a lot of pressure on yourself like Sting with his last one. It was so good, but imagine if it wasn’t. Or imagine like Flair and Shawn, that was a great match. But then Flair was like, I gotta want to come back. So it’s like a rock and roll band, why put that sort of stamp on it? “This is the retirement tour.” And then you decide to come back, or you decide that you don’t want to come back, and it’s not the official retirement tour. So to me, I just kind of go with the flow and see where I am. But once again, I do not have the ego that would demand an official retirement tour or retirement match. But if it’s something that I found to be interesting, that I thought would be good and fun and cool, which is the same way judge everything, then maybe I would do it.”

On competition in wrestling: 

“So in the early 70s, Bobby Hall, who was the number one player in the NHL, left to go to the WHA which was an upstart league that paid him $1 million to join their league, which was a phenomenal amount at the time. What happened was all of the players in the NHL got a huge raise to stay because they didn’t want to lose anybody else to the WHA. I know this because my dad was one of them. Ted Irvine went from 35 grand a year to 100 grand a year just because of Bobby Hall and the WHA. So ipso facto, Chris Jericho is the Bobby Hall of wrestling. Because the moment I left to go to AEW, suddenly the entire salary structure changed. For years working in WWE Vince’s magic number was a million dollars a year. Nobody gets more than that, guaranteed. You might make more if you’re working on top and with the pay-per-view bonuses and all that sort, merch and everything like that, but the number on the paper that was the max was a million dollars a year. Now, opening match guys are getting a million dollars a year, and top guys are getting 30, $40 million a year. Not all of them, but a few, 15 million, 20 million. So I don’t think that ever would have happened had there not been AEW to scare the WWE cognizant into paying people more. So that’s good for all of us. It’s good for the guys and once again with all this money that’s being made from the television companies, the companies can afford it. So it’s just good for everyone, good for the fans to have an alternative. And if you’re running a race and someone’s right behind you, breathing down your neck, you run faster. If you’re ahead by 10 lengths, you run slower. That’s just the way it goes. So it’s always good to have high-level competition.”

On a catchphrase that didn’t work:

“Razzle Dazzle was one. I thought that would be a great catchphrase, razzle-dazzle. Razzle Dazzle. [When did you try razzle dazzle?] Very smart to know when it’s not working. Maybe I don’t remember the exact year, but once or twice I tried it and did not get the reaction that I thought.”

On the catchphrase he was most surprised by:

“You just made the list. It is one that to this day people still talk about, and you never know what’s gonna get over and what’s not. But to see that one, whereas to this day, people still keep saying ‘Put me on the list.’ Yeah, you just don’t know what’s gonna work. It’s just like being in a band. You don’t know what song is gonna be a hit song, and what songs not. You can put all your your faith into this, and it just doesn’t work. And then you put no faith into that, but you start seeing the signs in the crowd and realizing that people are popping and all these things, and it’s like, wow, you really got something special here. Same with the high guys. It’s like, I stopped doing it because it was getting a babyface reaction. But that’s something you think, and you put it in your cap, and you go from there, people just like to be involved in the show.”

On Dinner Debonair:

“So when we had the idea to do some stuff together, Max and I, which ended up being 366 days. That’s how long that program was, from the first moment to the last moment, which I take great pride in. It was a great year. We did a lot of killer stuff. I think at one point Max had just seen the Elton John movie. He wanted to do some kind of fantasy sequence to maybe Tiny Dancer. I was like well let me see what we can get because I was like, I don’t know if I want to do Tiny Dancer. I’m not sure. Somehow we came up with the idea of doing the wacky singing duo, and somehow Me and My Shadow was involved. I don’t know whose idea that was, but we could get that, we could get that song. So then Tony was like, I don’t want a fantasy sequence, just make it a real sequence. So we’re like okay, and I think it was just we can both sing and dance. Let’s do something stand backish, shall we say? We filmed that, this is another thing about pandemic-era AEW, we filmed all that stuff in hours, which would take weeks if you were doing it on a Hollywood set. I think the Dinner Debonair took us five hours to film with all the dance routine and choreography and all that sort of stuff, learning the choreography and creating the choreography on the spot, all of that stuff. The crazy thing was we did that and we used “Me and My Shadow”, and about two hours before we went to air we got a call that you can’t use this version of “Me and My Shadow.” And it’s like, why? We’ve got the rights to it. The publishers, for some reason had a problem with this one version. Maybe they didn’t like the drummer or the oboe player on the track, whatever it was, ‘If you use this track, we will sue you.’ Two hours before we call this guy Mikey Ruckus, who’s a music guy for AEW, can you do this in an hour? He does it. Then he has to match the music to the finished dance. Then you have to download, you have to load the video into the truck, which means you can’t just take it and put it on. It has to be loaded into the system, which takes time. We literally had that thing loaded and ready literally 15 minutes before it aired, to the point where Tony was like, You guys are gonna have to do this live in Jacksonville, in Daily’s Place, in the ring. How? There’s no dancers, there’s no nothing. So that’s how sometimes, how close things are to being disastrous.”

What is Chris Jericho grateful for?

“My family, that I have been able to travel the world and I have been able to entertain.”

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Danhausen (@DanhausenAD) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his rise in popularity on the independent scene, his debut on AEW Dynamite, cursing William Regal and what happens when someone is cursed, being out of action with a torn pec, not being on TV in 2024, breaking character for interviews, how he comes up with nicknames for wrestlers and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” – Robert Frost

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On being recognised out of make-up:

“If it’s a wrestling event, yes. I’ve been actually recognized once at a GNC, this is gonna sound like a lie. I walked in, the guy said hello and I went, hello, then he went, Danhausen! And I went, what? And he goes, I recognize the voice. I was so caught off guard.” 

On if he thinks his real voice sounds like Danhausen:

“I don’t. I think there’s hints of it there, especially now. It’s kind of like The Simpsons effect, sort of where Dan Castellaneta sounded much different in the earlier episodes, where he was doing the voice, and now I feel like he probably just sounds more like himself doing the voice. So it’s probably morphed a little bit into just being me. But he’s like, Oh no, I study voice acting, and it was like he knew instantly, it was crazy. I didn’t have a full sentence with him or anything, which is hello, he had to have been a wrestling fan, obviously. But yeah, it was just weird.” 

On if he still enjoys being Danhausen:

“I enjoy doing it still, yeah, I feel like it could very easily not be fun or be turned into something that’s a chore, and sometimes it is. Then I just have to remember old jobs that I had and where I go I just have to put on makeup and make someone smile, that’s so much nicer. I don’t want to say nicer, because I used to be a nursing assistant, do 12-hour shifts. They were very hard. Usually they were long. I’ve done 12 days in a row of that stuff, and I try to remember those where I go this is much, much, much more lax and easier, and I don’t have to clean up puke or bodily fluids. So I’m like this is good. That was rewarding, but this is also rewarding.”

On the make-up:

“That came from my dad, because Halloween was very big in our house. He would do my makeup every single year. I’d be a zombie with glass out of my head. But he sent me to school like this, first and second grade, probably third grade he’d do full makeup on me, send me to school and they’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s a it’s a little extreme, don’t you think?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m a zombie, my dad did my makeup.’ But he worked in haunted houses as I was growing up. So he’s super artistic. He’d paint comic book stores and things like that. He painted the Hulk and Spawn and everything on the walls. He’d make my costumes. We did a Kane one year where he took a Jason mask and he painted it and melted it and used like, hot glue and stuff, because I don’t think they were selling Kane masks at the time. So he took a sweat suit and pleather and made me the red and black Kane suit. So there’s a photo of that somewhere. It’s been posted somewhere on Twitter and probably Instagram and everything. But there’s that. There’s the zombie, this Dracula, that slowly just has always been in the back of my head. So that’s always been there of wanting to do that, like the horror character, or including the horror stuff into it, but not knowing how, because it’s usually not great. There’s a few examples where it is, but generally it’s always kind of you’re either the tough guy or you’re the horror character or whatever. So, yeah, that eventually got there.” 

On his make-up staying on compared to Sting:

“So I think he uses acrylic, which is like normal painting. I use wolf makeup, which is a theater-based, water-based makeup. I think it’s just a higher quality so it doesn’t come off. But if it’s like sauna hot in the arena or wherever we’re at in the hall or the gym, or wherever I’m at that week it will get sweaty underneath and then the moment someone puts me in a headlock, it’s just off. But only in that section, though, it’s not draining down my face.” 

On when the popularity started to build:

“So I was scheduled to wrestle Effy, and that was when he was also getting some notoriety, because we did Florida indies together. When we first started at Fest Wrestling, we wrestled I think, every single show for some reason, which was 2015 or something. But we had Black Label Pro, and we were supposed to have an eight-minute match or something. And they’re like sorry guys, people went long you have, I think it was four minutes. And we’re like, okay, and that’s where I did the teeth for the first time. Because I was like well if I could do this weird stuff that I kind of want to experiment with, Effy is the guy to do that with. So that’s what I did, I used them like thumbtacks for that match and I just poured them out. I think we did a superplex as the finish on the teeth. Yeah I took that four minutes or five minutes, whatever it was, and we got a little bit of buzz off of that, because people were like teeth, that’s weird. Then I just rolled with it and kept putting out stuff and more and more and more. I try to tell this to people who are coming up and who have had some success. I’m like you have to just continue with that momentum no matter what, just roll with it, keep it going up as much as humanly possible because you don’t know when it’s gonna end.” 

On debuting in AEW while injured:

“So I was signed with the broken leg. I’d been talking to them a little bit, I would say, within the last week or two before that. Then I showed up because I think I messaged Brody [King], and I was like, ‘Hey, you’re kind of close. I’m just sitting at home with a broken leg, am I able to come just say hello to people?’ And he goes, ‘Wow, I’ll ask.’ I think that was just, yeah, that’s fine. Then just, you know, you go through the motion, you sign up, just so they know who you are and everything. I was there, I think that was the day where Cody asked, and he goes, ‘Hey, are you doing something tonight?’ I’m not dressed as Danhausen at this point. I’m just probably in one of my boots or something. I was like, I mean, I always have my stuff, just in case, but I got a broken leg, and I don’t work here so I don’t know. He goes,’ All right. Well, let me know. We’ll get you something if you’re not.’ I was like, Oh, wow. So I think Cody was going to do something with the Sammy Guevara match, which I think wound up being his last match for the TNT title. So I think they were gonna pull me out on a ladder if the thing with Orange and Adam Cole didn’t happen, he was just gonna figure out a way to get me in his match to get me on and I was like well that’s awesome. But we wound up doing the Adam Cole Orange Cassidy spot, which was similar, but same thing. All that I could really do was I could curse him. I can’t really do anything. I can’t run, I can kind of hobble around.”

On cursing William Regal:

“I wish I had been able to do more with him on screen because he was also a guy I took a lot of my facial expressions from. I don’t know why people don’t [realize]. He’s one of the best comedic wrestlers wherever he was, all of that stuff with Tajiri, he’s just making faces constantly. The match with The Big Show, I see the clip all the time now where he hits him with the brass knuckles and The Big Show falls back and then falls on him, just things like that. He’s a great straight man but he’s also plays a great comedic heel. Same thing with Christian. I remember I was in the gym and Christian walked in. I usually don’t want to bother people, but I was like hey, can I ask you something? You don’t usually, I don’t think, get asked about this specifically, but you are a great comedic heel who also could just win matches. I think that’s the key is you have to be taken seriously when it’s time to be taken seriously. He was Tag Team Champions while he was wearing giant sunglasses and hats and kazoos and doing five second poses. But also he was a legitimate Tag Team Champion at the time, him and Edge. Stone Cold Steve Austin is kind of in that same category, put a tiny cowboy hat on. He’s swimming in milk. Yes, Stone Cold Steve Austin is like a badass wrestler. But also he is swimming in milk and beer and doing comedy things all of the time and it’s amazing. Same thing with The Rock.”

On what connects with him:

“I think just being authentically weird. I throw in these little bits of Conan [O’Brien] and The Simpsons, but I make it my own thing. Pee Wee [Herman] and obviously, there’s some stuff where I just do it. But I think they go, Oh, I liked that as a kid, this guy’s doing all that weird stuff that I liked as a kid. Or it’s very similar so I’m connected to that now. Or the horror movie stuff you got the horror fans, because they go, Oh, his makeup looks like it’s inspired by The Exorcist. Well, it is. So then they go well now I like you. There’s even just stuff where they’ll make connections that aren’t necessarily there, but that’s fine, because they’re connecting to something with me, and that makes them happy.” 

On what happens when Danhausen curses someone:

“Hopefully it works. Hopefully they’re superstitious enough to where something happens to work for them. [Have you cursed MJF?] Not on screen, I stole a scarf off screen that was at a comic con. I may have at New York Comic Con done something I don’t think I’ve cursed him though, I agree it probably needs to be done. He does deserve it.”

On how he tore his pec:

“It’s The Ass Boys finishing move, which is the pop up flat liner. When I come down, I landed a little bit more like this, instead of this. So the way that I came down Colton lifts me, and then it’s like a reverse Rock Bottom, for people who don’t maybe know. Austin is a thick boy, his chest is thick. So I don’t know if it’s a combination of me coming down half in a push-up position, but also ricocheting off of Austin while ricocheting off of this side of Colton. So I think it just landed weird, because obviously a bunch of people have taken this move and they’re fine. But yeah, I’d come down and I think I watched it, and it went like this, and then this part snapped off. I didn’t know I tore my pec, because I thought, when you tear your pec it’s like Cody. I didn’t as far as I knew, I had gone to the back, and we thought it was just a shoulder thing, because they tested my strength and all that. They’re like, yeah, it doesn’t seem like you did anything serious to it, because you’re able to do a bunch of presses and pushing, and it was fine. I was like, Oh yeah, I think it just jammed my shoulder. Then the next morning, I woke up, and I think this whole piece was missing, but I hadn’t noticed probably because it was swollen at the time, or something like, from immediately happening. Luckily, that was the finish of the match.”

On not being on AEW TV in 2024:

“I did the Halloween segments. I was like, I want to do something fun for Halloween. I didn’t come back from this probably, I think it was fine in October, but it was still kind of like give it another month. So I was like, well we could air these Halloween 3 style, annoying commercials until I come back and I was like, cool, and then it kind of just didn’t happen. So I think that kind of sucked the air out of the return a little bit, in my opinion, at least for me, it did. It was built for Halloween, and then I could have came back the next week, and I just didn’t. Then it took a little bit more time, and then I think I did come back on Thanksgiving, so it’s like three or four weeks later, but I come out and I want to wrestle. Because I don’t know if non-wrestlers might not know this wrestling hurts, but it also hurts less if you do it more. So your body gets callous to it I guess. So if you’re wrestling once every couple months, or once every other month, or whatever it is, it sucks every single time. It feels like the first time of going to wrestling school, where it’s the worst. Then also your body is more susceptible to getting injured because you’re not used to that weird getting slammed or weird movements or whatever it is. So I’d prefer to wrestle at least once a week, whether it be a dark match or whatever, just let me go out there for the crowd, do something. So that way, if you need before TV, I’m fine, I’m ready to go. Then it’s not like, oh sh*t I haven’t wrestled in three months, all of a sudden, I have to wrestle. I’m not in ring shape anymore. I don’t have a wrestling ring near where I live at all.” 

So that’s why you’ve been taking a lot of indie bookings?

“Yes, just keeps me sharp. It keeps me, I don’t wanna say creative, because there is still some creative lull in indies because you’re not doing storylines, generally. So, it is just more so matches. So I have to have my creativity outlet be the promos that I do leading up to those, and then figuring out ways to do the match different, have fun with the crowd and try to make them participate in everything. But yeah, that’s why I do two to three a week so I can stay in ring shape and not, knock on wood, get injured. Because again, it’s like a weird middle ground you have to hit. Because if you’re doing it too much, you’ll probably get injured because your body is getting destroyed. But also, if you don’t do it enough, your body is not used to it, so then it’s more susceptible to getting destroyed.” 

On fans wondering if he was still with AEW:

“Well for a long time I was there I just wasn’t doing anything, if you don’t have anything for me, that’s fine, but I feel like we need to find something for me. [So you’d just be backstage?] Not for all of 2024. At some point, there’s you can just stay home. I’m like, okay, cool. That’s great, because I appreciate that, because then I’m not just getting brought out to like, whatever. Then they were letting me do the Indies and doing the conventions and it just helps me again, stay sharp, which is in turn for them. Also, still, I always looked at that as I’m still representing the company in a way, because I’m on these shows. So that’s better than me just not being seen on the show. I’m still at a convention with Sting, or whatever, taking pictures with Sting and posting pictures of Sting, doing that. All I can say was, when people were like, Oh, when you coming back? and I go, I don’t know you should ask. Because the more people are vocal, maybe the more there’s the chance of I got something.” 

On breaking character in the last interview:

“It’s like, what are you gonna do? We live in a world, I do it [stay in character] probably more than most people, then every once in a while I think it’s important to do something like this to remind people this is a real person, just every once in a while. I don’t do it constantly. I don’t do it weekly, we did the interview four years ago. I did Conan. Someone was like, why didn’t you do the make-up? Because I’m not blowing that by showing up in makeup and not telling them. Because that’s how that would have had to go. They did a screening process before, which I didn’t know. That’s what it was where I met with one of the producers, and they didn’t tell me what it was for, then they had told me the day before you’re gonna be on Zoom with Conan. I was like well I could show up in character, but also that risks getting kicked off and them going, we didn’t agree to this. This is weird. So I was just like, No, I will just be me, and then hopefully I’ll get another opportunity with him at some point to do a skit or something with Conan.” 

On coming up with nicknames for wrestlers:

“Chris Jericho has the Judas song, so he’s Chris Judas. Pepsi Phil, he’s got the Pepsi logo tattooed on him. I think some people call him Phil, and I do. At the time I think it was a thing of you don’t call him Phil. If you don’t know him, don’t call him Phil. And there’s like always Pepsi Phil and I thought it was funny. So as an annoying idiot I’d call him Pepsi Phil. Trying to think of who else there was, obviously The Ass Boys. Billy Ass, that one’s, self-explanatory. That’s his last name. What other names was there? Rock The Dwayne Johnson. Which, I swear, I don’t know it’s in my head. It’s some type of Mandela Effect. I swear someone on the news accidentally called him that. I was at work, and I just happened to [catch it]. I was like did they just call him Rock the Dwayne Johnson on accident on air? I can’t confirm if that actually happened or not, because it was just one of those things that was there and gone. And I was like well I’m gonna call him that.”

On dream matches:

“I think me with I think a six man with me and The Outrunners would be fun. I think I could do something fun with those guys. I would still really, really like for The Ass Boys to fully embrace the ass and team with me. I would love to do something with “Timeless” Toni Storm. I know she’s retired, who knows? I think that would have been a fun because I used to do the 1920s Danhausen black-and-white version for old wrestling. I was like, that could easily just either whether it’s me teaming with someone else to fight her and someone else, or me teaming with her to fight someone. I really, really wish I could have teamed with Darby and Sting. It almost happened. I think there was, like a hint of it, and then it just didn’t.”

What is Danhausen grateful for?

“My wife, my best friends and my family.”

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Jordynne Grace (@JordynneGrace) is a professional wrestler previously signed to TNA. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to talk about her time in TNA,  why she chose to let her contract expire, being the TNA Knockouts Champion, becoming a free agent, what’s next for her in wrestling, her surprise appearance in the WWE Royal Rumble and follow-up appearances on NXT, her powerlifting records and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.” – Nelson Mandela

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On shifting from powerlifting to bodybuilding workouts:

“Yes, powerlifting was just really hurting my body. Just lifting constant heavy weights all the time really messes with your joints, it turns out, and doing that on top of wrestling is just really difficult, so I just had to kind of nix that all together. [So when did that shift happen?] I want to say 2021 probably, right after the pandemic happened, something like that.”

On getting jacked:

“Well I felt like I had to because I have to stand out somehow, right? This is my messed-up mentality about stuff. I feel like there was nothing unique or special about me. I don’t represent a community. I didn’t look a certain type of way. I was just this chubby white girl and you didn’t see anything when I walked in a room. But I feel like if someone has big arms and they walk into a room, it doesn’t matter if they’re four foot tall, you’re gonna be like, okay, they’re dedicated. They do something.”

On her Royal Rumble appearance:

“Honestly, I expected to come out there and no one was gonna know who I was. It was my first time being in WWE at all, so I didn’t expect people to know who I was. I didn’t know the crossover, what exactly it was between TNA and WWE.” 

On first being told about the Royal Rumble:

“The first I ever heard of it was when Scott [D’Amore] called me, literally the week before, and asked if I wanted to do the Rumble like that was any question at all. But that was the first time I ever heard about it and then after that, it just kind of snowballed from there. I thought he was joking. I had just gotten home from the tapings actually, from the TNA tapings. I was like, I just don’t understand why you’re calling to rib me, you could do this over text, I don’t get it. He was like no, they want to use you for the Rumble. And I was just like, it was mind-blowing.”

On her thoughts before entering the Royal Rumble:

“I mean, I don’t want to think about all that, because I was already nervous enough as it is and I wanted to concentrate 100% on my performance. If there was any time to make a statement and to seize an opportunity, that was going to be it. So I knew I had to nail it 100% especially because I was representing TNA. If I do badly, I feel like that reflects negatively on TNA. [You were booked so strong though]. I was, and I had a really cool elimination.”

On if conversations after the Royal Rumble for more WWE dates:

“I mean, not with me. The only time that I knew about these things was when they were already talked about within the two companies and set in motion. They were being booked by Ariel, who’s the head of TNA and then Shawn, who’s obviously Shawn [Michaels]. I wasn’t asked, I was basically told Oh, you’re gonna go do this for these amount of dates. I was just like, I mean, obviously I’m not going to say no.”

On her surprise NXT debut:

“Then that was the big surprise. It was not leaked at all for who the surprise opponent was going to be. They had me come at 7 pm, snuck me into a room and put a Do Not Enter sign on the door. It was wild. Yeah, they kept the surprise really well. Roxanne didn’t even know. Because she had been asking, I guess, who’s it going to be, and no one would tell her. Then they were going to tell her right before we went out and she was just like you know what, I don’t even care anymore. Just let me have a natural reaction out there. So she went out to the ring, did her promo, and then that was her natural reaction.”

On 2025:

“It’s a crazy crossroads for me right now, because I honestly have no idea what’s going to happen. Obviously, I feel like people think they know what I’m going to do more than I actually know what I’m gonna do, and I think all doors are open. As people are watching this right now my contract has already expired, and I don’t know, maybe you already actually know where I am. But as of right now, I have no idea. I could stay in TNA. I could go anywhere else, who knows? You might see me in CMLL. I have no idea, it just all depends and there’s a million different factors. I have six dogs. I don’t want to leave home where I’m at right now. It’s really hard to find a house anywhere for six dogs. I don’t know if you knew that or not. Very difficult.”

On why she let her contract expire:

“I’ve been at TNA for a very long time, since 2018, and I’ve never let my contract expire before. I’ve always just re-signed. I don’t know if it was just the uncertainty of not knowing what was going to happen next, or I was just scared that no one was going to want me. But I feel like now I’m more confident. I had an amazing 2024 and I think it’s time. I’ve done so much in TNA. I’ve done pretty much all there is to do and I feel like if there was ever a time to move forward, it’ll be right now.”

On if she would have stayed with TNA if Scott D’Amore didn’t leave:

“Well when he left, I was very emotional when he left, like a lot of other people, because it was just so out of the blue. We found out on a Zoom call, it was very corporate, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But at the time, I was just like, You know what? I only really signed here because I had faith in Scott that he was gonna do good things for me and good things for the company. He’s the one that kind of set in motion the whole rebirth of TNA and I told them I wanted my contract to be cut, basically. So it was supposed to be until October of this year, and I was like I want to get out in January of this year. I mean, kudos to them. They heard me and they let me. So I’m very lucky for that. But I think probably I’d still be at TNA.”

On if she asked Scott Steiner’s permission to use the siren in her entrance:

“No, I didn’t ask permission. But it’s not the exact same siren, so I think I kind of got away with that. Yeah, I didn’t ask permission and no, I don’t say [Holla if you hear me]. But I did wear the chain mail one time when I did a triple threat match with him, Petey and me, and I wore the chain mail.” 

On her best match:

“Okay, I would say Bound for Glory. 2022 me versus Masha Slamovich for the TNA Knockouts world title. That was up until recently the best match I’ve ever had. I loved that match. We beat the sh*t out of each other, and honestly, we’ve done it a few times since then and have topped that match, I think. But that was the match where I probably felt like I reached my peak at that point.”

On the Iron Woman match against Deonna Purrazzo:

“That was in front of nobody. That was an awesome match. I just don’t think I had gone through my transformation yet, so that’s why I would say I don’t think people should start with that match. But if they want to go back and dive into the history of Jordynne Grace I would start there, so they can kind of see how I transformed over the years.”

Who has hit Jordynne Grace the hardest?

“Masha has knocked me out before. Legit she’s hit me with a back fist and she’s knocked me out. So definitely her. Something else about Masha is, for the longest time, thank God that she finally listened to me, she didn’t wear kick pads, and I don’t know if you’ve seen her wrestle, she throws kicks constantly, so anytime she would kick me, it wouldn’t make a great sound. Because when you kick someone in real life it doesn’t really make a sound but it hurts so bad. So in wrestling, you want the strikes to make a sound, and it’s okay if they’re stiff, but you don’t want them to hurt. So every time that bony front of her leg would hit me in the chest or hit me in the face it’d be so painful, and people didn’t know how painful it was, because there was no sound.” 

On wrestling Bully Ray:

“No, he does not hit hard at all. But also he didn’t do any strikes to me. He just did slams. So he didn’t slam me super hard. He actually complained about how I hit him. He was complaining to me about how I hit him. I know that’s what I said. I was like, Come on, get out of here. I did beat Bully, which was wild. That was 2023 that was why I say that that year was so awesome, that was one of the moments that made that year so cool was that I got to win, be the first ever Knockout to win the Call Your Shot Gauntlet, and I also got to beat Bully on top of it. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.” 

On her lifting records:

“For deadlift 505. I want to say it was like 275 for bench, and then for squat it was like close to 500. I cannot do anything close to that now. I don’t even want to try. Now I’m lifting much lighter, I’m just getting a pump and I just want to feel the burn essentially. You don’t feel the burn when you’re powerlifting. You just feel your back giving out.”

On if WWE has always been the goal:

“It was just to be a wrestler in general. I just wanted to wrestle when I was a kid, but I also wanted to be a Diva. That’s the era I was watching. So I wanted to be like one of the models. I wanted to be like one of the model wrestlers. I think since then, obviously things have changed so much. I started watching TNA I want to say a few years before I actually started wrestling. And the variation in WWE and TNA at the time was huge, obviously. I saw women like Awesome Kong and I was like dang, maybe I could be like that.”

What is Jordynne Grace grateful for:

“My family, my husband, my 6 dogs and my 2 cats.”

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto, Las Vegas & Indianapolis with VIP Meet & Greet!

Tom Pestock (@tompestock) is a professional wrestler known for his time in WWE as Baron Corbin. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his WWE career, being told that his contract would not be renewed and the overwhelming fan response to the news, his Bloodsport match against Josh Barnett at The People vs. GCW, what’s next for him in wrestling, his new in-ring name moving forward, responding to the discourse surrounding AEW contracts, a John Cena match that did not go according to plan, how he met Taylor Swift at a Kansas City Chiefs game and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” – Colin Powell

Sponsors:
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ORGAIN: For 30% off your order, head to https://Orgain.com/INSIGHT and use code INSIGHT

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

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MANSCAPED: Get 20% off plus free shipping when you use the code CHRISVAN at https://manscaped.com

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On his GCW appearance:

“I put in 13 years with WWE, and that was my first ever in-ring experience was WWE. Most guys come from the independent world or whatever. There’s a few of us that skip that whole process, more so now too with all of the NIL and bring in athletes from college so you don’t kind of get that taste of the other side, if you will. Gable [Steveson] is another guy who came from Olympic wrestling, and all these people love wrestling, but it’s a different world out there. I now know and can say that I actually know working an independent show.”

On his Bloodsport match against Josh Barnett:

“I was so nervous going into it. I mean, you always get good nervous when you’re doing a show, especially massive arenas in front of lots of people, big matches. But it was a different nervous for me because I had no idea how they were going to react to me. Also, GCW is known for its crazy matches and wild bumps that guys are taking, and we’re going to put on a Bloodsport match, which is we’re grappling, we’re hitting each other a lot harder than we would if it was not a Bloodsport match. I was like, man, how’s the audience going to take to this style match? I was worried. If I planned a match or put something together that had a lot of like the jiu-jitsu grappling and all of that in a WWE ring it just doesn’t translate as well. I think especially with the audience being families and kids they would get bored very quickly of watching, the same reason a lot of kids don’t watch UFC, if you will, because they don’t understand the grappling, the technique, and it’s chess, not checkers, they’re trying to set things up, and sometimes it takes a minute or a minute and a half to set up a triangle or an arm bar. So going in front of that crowd that I know is rowdy and I’m going, man, how are they going to react to not hearing Baron Corbin? How are they going to react to hearing Tom Pestock? Are they just going to chant Corbin or are they going to boo me out of this building? I had zero insight into what was going to happen. It was very surreal. It ended up getting some pretty cool chants.”

On what he wants to do now he is no longer with WWE:

“I mean, a lot of things. I’m always a guy who’s got multiple things in the fire, always was with WWE. I was doing food stuff on my social media, or I started a coffee company and was doing the coffee company, and then all the family stuff and like that. But now I’m gonna have an opportunity where I don’t have to ask permission to do something. I’ve also been smart with all of my money that I’ve made over the years with WWE because I’ve watched how quickly it can end. When I left the NFL it’s like no more paychecks, and you go oh man, it ends that quick. I was playing ping pong, and now I don’t have a job, it’s crazy. So I put myself in a position now that I can literally just do the things I want to do. I don’t have to do things because I have to do them and I think that’s a really freeing thought process. So I can take risks, I want to do movies, I want to do TV shows, and I want to do horror movies or thriller movies or darker action kind of films, anything in that world. Whether it’s television, it’s Netflix, it’s Hulu, or it’s the B rate horror movies that are amazing, just like guilty pleasures, I love them, that’s the world I want to dive into. It’s risky, it’s scary, and a lot of people don’t make it. But how many things have I already accomplished that a lot of people don’t? NFL, 1% of college players make it to the NFL. Made it to WWE, made it to the top of the roster, main eventing around the world. All of those things. How many people get that opportunity? Talking to The Usos one time, and they’d never had a singles match at Mania, and they’ve been in the WWE longer than I have, and I’d had three at that time. I had Ambrose, I had Kurt Angle and Drew McIntyre, and it was like, whoa, it’s crazy to think that.”

“So I think that if I go after that, it’s something I can accomplish. You need a little bit of luck, a little bit of opportunity, stages like this. Coming here and talking with you, maybe somebody hears this, and it’s like oh man, he’d be perfect for this. Or I know somebody here, it’s a lot of connections, as you know, to get into that world. I signed with CAA, with Ross and he’s going to do an amazing job with helping me get some opportunities and it’s up to me now. I control everything that happens right now. I can take independent shows that I want to take, like GCW, I would definitely go back. It was so fun. That crowd was amazing, energetic, passionate, and that show was five hours last night because unfortunately one of the girls broke her ankle in the second match, and with the New York commission it kind of put a hold on the show for like 40 minutes. It was like, how do we restructure to try to get the crowd back and all those things after this long intermission, and they were just as passionate when we got back to work as they were when they started. I want to go to Japan. I want to wrestle in Japan. I’ve wrestled there quite a few times at WWE, but never at that New Japan company. That’s something that AJ [Styles] and Finn [Balor] and [Luke] Gallows and [Karl] Anderson and Shinsuke [Nakamura] and all those guys. They did that. I never got to do it before WWE like they did. So I’m like, man, let’s go do it now. I love it over there. I love the culture. I love the history of the wrestling business over there, so many stars, so many traditions. I think it’s so cool. So I want to go there and do that. I want to go to Food Network do some food stuff. I’m going to go to Miami in like four weeks for the Miami Food Festival to meet some of the people, go eat with Michael Simon, and I’m going to do some Guy Fieri stuff. I had a friend reach out about potentially doing Beat Bobby Flay, not as a competitor, but as a host like that would be amazing. I want to win some more gold medals in Jiu Jitsu, like I got my purple belt two weeks ago after our professor tried to kill us with eight minute rounds, we basically went like 104 minutes, or something like that. 106 minutes, whatever it is, straight just beating the crap out of each other. So I’m gonna do a couple more tournaments there like the Pan Am games. I’m just kind of flooring it in all of these different avenues.”

On possibly signing with TNA or AEW or New Japan:

“I would love to go to New Japan for multiple reasons, and the door never closes with WWE either. And as far as AEW, their fans, they like that AEW in a sense is its own entity and built from the ground up. If I went there out of respect for that world, I wouldn’t want to be just another WWE guy that came there because they left WWE. I would rather go and do New Japan for a year or more, who knows? Maybe that’s where I just love it and I stay there for the rest of my wrestling career. So if I ever did go that route, I would want to kind of clear that oh he’s just a WWE guy coming over. Baron Corbin is dead as far as we know, we’re dropping new name, new moniker, new character. I love wrestling. I love the creativeness of it. I love the freedom. I love performing in front of an audience and getting that live feedback in the moment. There’s nothing better.” 

On his time in WWE:

“I think that for me, with my contract ending in WWE, deciding not to renew, obviously that hurt and lights a fire, because I felt like in my WWE career I was in uncharted water, in a sense. I had gone to NXT, reinvented myself and put a lot of work into it, even though I didn’t agree with some of it. I had a conversation before I moved to NXT. I was sat down, I’m gonna be polite. We talked about it. Bruce Prichard, I’m gonna be polite. He was like, y’You know, it’s just not working, we want you to go down there, reinvent yourself, new moves, lose a little weight, blah, blah, blah.’ And I did and I think it was maybe not meant for me to succeed as well as I did down there. But they’ve got such an amazing system there with the talent they have, with the producers they have, and with the coaches they have and the writers, it’s impossible not to succeed down there. I think I killed it, and it couldn’t be denied.”

“I went back to the main roster and I’m a very open, truthful person. I’m not capable of lying or BS-ing about things. But when I got up there, I feel like someone was holding me down, in a sense of that wasn’t supposed to work, because I would go out and do dark matches, or when I did wrestle on TV the crowd was insane for me. It was the best reactions I’d had in years since I was the King or the Constable. When I was getting all that heat, this was the opposite. I was getting people chanting my name. There were times in matches where Apollo would be getting beat up and they’d be chanting my name, and he’d just look at me like you’re over, it would be crazy. Every night it would be crazy. My reactions, and with no ego, I say aside from maybe Cody, Randy and Kevin, were the best on the whole show every night on SmackDown. That’s doing dark matches, or doing TV, like Berlin, we did that tag match, they were insane. I would come back to the curtain and Regal would always be like, ‘This is amazing, the work is awesome.’ They love you. Road Dogg would be like, ‘Corbin you’re over in this town.’ I’m like, ‘It’s every town, dude, it’s not just a one off.’ Even one of the writers we were talking about turning me heel and I’m like, I don’t know, man, we’ve never done this babyface. They wanted me to be different, what do we have? Then we went out there, I don’t remember what city it was, Arkansas, or somewhere, and it was crazy. They blew the roof off for me, chanting my name in the match when I wasn’t even in the match, standing on the apron or whatever, cheering for everything. I walk back and it’s the head writer Smackdown. He goes, I told him that you should just walk back here and give us both the finger and walk off, because the reaction was so good. So I think that that was frustrating. I’m like, man, there’s still something there maybe unresolved that I could get back and accomplish as that babyface with the cheering. I think it made me hungrier to succeed being told, Oh man, we’re just going to go a different direction after already being told hey, we want to go change everything and you do it and it’s successful.” 

“I’m very self aware at the same time, there were times with the JBL stuff I think it could have worked if we’d done it differently, which we’d pitch several ideas. JBL is the man, he’s unbelievable. He sent in amazing pitches and they just died in the wind somewhere. But I’d stand out there and go you could feel it’s not working. I’m not getting the reactions I want or anything like that, to where six months ago, I’m telling you, the reactions were everything was there. It was firing on all cylinders. I recreated everything like I was asked to do. I’ve always done everything that I’ve been asked to do, and then to be like we’re gonna go in a different direction. What? That was frustrating because there’s nothing you can do at the end of the day. I was talking to Randy about it, a lot of guys reached out, you know, I’m sorry, guys you expect like Seth and Finn and Kevin and those dudes are amazing people, and Punk and Randy. But Randy’s like Dude, I honestly thought you were gonna be here another 10 years? I don’t understand it. He’s like, do you mind if I talk to Hunter about it? I don’t know if he ever did, but he’s like somebody doesn’t like you. I’m like, There’s nothing I can do to change that. I feel like I know who it is, and that’s besides the point. But they had power enough to either kill creative or whatever it is, and they got to go to bed with that at the end of the night. That’s on them. But for 13 years I made this entity that is me and is Tom Pestock, and I think it’s going to help continue to push me and again, I wouldn’t have had that without WWE.” 

On his WWE exit:

“I wish it hadn’t ended like it did. I wish I had more opportunity to continue with this babyface thing. Nobody wants it to end. Any job, it’s not fun. But it’s also exciting at the same time, because now I can literally do whatever. I can try to create something new. I can go in different directions. I think the most frustrating part for me is not understanding why there’s an ulterior motive there. Because, again, I’ve been a company guy through and through. I’ve never said no to doing something. I’ve made everything work that I’ve been given, not complained, have never once complained online. You can send me to talk to ESPN. You can send me to talk to boys and girls club. I fit the mould of a professional. I dress professional. I show up professional. I don’t miss shows. 13 years never once missed a show or training or anything because of injury or being sick. Not once, not even COVID. I was a hero during COVID in my opinion, I was on every show. Sometimes both shows, I’ve been a team player through and through and I think maybe in the end it hurt me a little bit always being the guy that’s like, yeah, no problem. Oh, you need Finn Balor the demon to beat me up in three minutes at SummerSlam? Okay, no problem, cool. So it was a weird place to be, but I think now, again that moment yesterday, standing in between the two buildings, it’s pretty cool to go yeah man, I was here, now I’m here. How do we get back to there? Not necessarily WWE, but that level of accomplishment.”

On fans being shocked that he exited WWE:

“It was two and a half million views on my tweet alone. People were shocked. I was shocked. I could weirdly, kind of, you know when your gut instinct tells you something, and like I said, I think there was one person in particular that I think was behind all of it, and it sucks, but it is what [it is]. I’m not gonna cry over it because I’m grateful for everything I had there and every opportunity that I had there, I can’t let one person put me in a bad place. I’m not gonna let one person control my emotions. I mean the fact that Randy Orton’s calling me, going there’s someone that doesn’t like you. Again, I know who it is. I told him and he’s like yeah, probably right. But when you have someone of that magnitude being like I want to talk to Hunter, it makes you feel good, because, you know, a lot of other people see the flip side of it. They’re like, Oh man, no, he’s really good. I don’t why no one can do what I do in a sense of going out and make people believe in the authenticity of what I’m doing. Whether it’s Happy Corbin, Sad Corbin, Wolf Dogs, or the new stuff I was doing with burn the ships and just being myself, people believed it. And then also too I could make people believe. I got beat 10 million times, but people were still booing me and still having fun. When I would work with different babyfaces again, when I would lose every single week they still bought that there was a chance I was going to win, a chance that I would screw this guy over and that’s a special talent to have, and also to do it without complaining. There’s a lot of guys that walk around boo-boo facing when they’re not getting the win or whatever it is. I just did my job, and I was happy to do it. When I look back, we were talking earlier, maybe I should have been a little more selfish with what I did. It could have hurt me, and I could have been done three or four years ago, you never know, or it could have helped me, because there are some guys that are that way, and you see it benefit some and doesn’t benefit the others. I don’t know. There’s no right path to take to find all the success that you want.” 

On wondering when his moment would come:

“100%, that’s why I was there. I wanted to be World Champion. I wanted to have that accolade on me for the rest of my life. That’s a cool thing to tell people when you’re 60 or tell my kids I was a World Champion in WWE, here’s a picture of it. Whether it was a day run like Kane had or whatever, I wanted that moment and I did it for a lot of people. I built Braun to go. I mean, not that these people needed building, but I worked with these guys. Braun went on and then he won the title from Bray Wyatt. Seth Rollins, I worked with him, he went to SummerSlam with Brock Lesnar. Roman Reigns did that. He went to WrestleMania. I’m not getting those big moments, but I had a lot of great, big [moments]. There were so many.” 

On if he will still wrestle as Tom Pestock:

“I’m letting it out right now. Because I got to do me at the end of the day still. I’ve talked to you about I want to go here, I want to go here, I want to go here. I want to go to New Japan. TNA has called, so maybe there’s something there. Maybe NWA, I’m open to it all because I love wrestling, and if I can go somewhere and be in front of fans, I’m going to go like, it’s just I know that I don’t want to sign a contract right now, because I like this ability. So I’m going with “The Nomad” Bishop Dyer, I’m gonna be The Nomad. I’m gonna roam and I’m gonna go to all these. Change a little bit, because it kind of pays tribute to The Lone Wolf, Dire Wolf, and then a bishop is higher than a baron, so we’re going up. The rankings are going up. So it’s getting trademarked. So don’t even try it suckers, getting trademarked right now. But I think it’s just a powerful name, it’s a cool name, and I want to be The Nomad. I’m gonna float and see where the wrestling world takes me in that sense.”

On WWE plans suddenly changing:

“So many instances of that in my career, and you kind of lose faith in a sense of, this is the plan, this is where we’re going and then it changes six hours later.”

What was the original Money in the Bank plan?

“I think Vince saw me becoming World Champion, and I think that winning that he’s like, you’re going to hold it for a while. Because I think Jinder being champ also played a part of not only him doing his thing because he’s an incredible performer, but also they were trying to get a certain demographic of an audience, that helped, and they had no intentions of changing that title at that time. So it was to carry it, and it was eventually to take it off of Jinder. But obviously it did not come to fruition.” 

On Sad Corbin:

“I had a lady in Houston too. I was leaving the building, I’m driving up the rampway, and I had a lady trying to shove a $20 bill in my window. And I was like, I should have done the D-Von and passed the hat, I probably could have retired three years ago. [D-Von kept all that money]. I would have too. Why would you not? I mean, I’m walking to the ring. I probably could have made 1000 bucks a night, for sure. And if I pass the hat in the stadium.”

On feeling disrespected:

“I was sitting with the head writer of SmackDown, and it still just kind of makes my blood boil, because it doesn’t pertain just to me. But I was just like ‘Hey, do we have any ideas? What are you thinking creatively?’ He’s like, ‘Well we got we got Jacob up and running, so we’re gonna need bodies for him.’ I was like we’re not bodies dude. Nobody on this roster is just a body. That was so frustrating to hear. Like I said, it doesn’t pertain to me, but it just goes, this is what you think of [us]. I’ve been here at this point 12 years and I’m a body for somebody else? Dude, if you want to say something like that go ‘Hey man, we think you’d be great, because you could help build Jacob, you could make him look like a monster.’ Dope, let’s go. But we’re gonna need bodies? He’s referring to the bottom half of the roster. When you say that it’s so disrespectful to say that about people who go out there and put their life on the line every night, because careers can be ended in an instant. I mean, look at Big E, one suplex wrong and he may never wrestle again, it can end like that, or you can end up a quadriplegic. All of these things could happen. It’s your livelihood. It’s how you put food on the table.

I’m so gracious to have such a long career that I don’t have to worry about that. But if you’re three years in and you’re just a body, and you’re disregarded as not even a human being, in a sense, come on dude. It takes everybody, guys who are there to be extras, they’re just as important as talent in a sense, because without those guys doing that, we don’t have major superstars. You need guys that can do that and do it well. I think that that’s harder sometimes than being the top guy when everything is fed to you, you’re given every opportunity, you’re built on this pedestal. When you’re all the dudes clawing at the bottom to try to get there, it’s way harder to be down there and survive and be happy and successful than it is to be this is our guy, we wrote his name right there, so everything else funnels to him. That’s easy to be up there. It’s the only hard part is the amount of time it takes. When you’re put on a pedestal, it’s much easier than being guys fighting for those two three minutes on a show and then to refer to him as bodies. I said something, and he was like, ‘I didn’t think about how I said it that way.’ But I was just like, This is why it’s good that I’m going away for a little while regardless.

On a funny John Cena story from his time in WWE:

“I will start with the backstory of it. So when Nexus was up on television Bray Wyatt was not Bray Wyatt. He was Husky Harris, we’re going back here. There is a rumour that I believe is 100% true that Husky poked John Cena in the eye in a match, and Vince was so mad, Cena was so mad that they sent Husky Harris back to NXT. We’re all grateful for that because Bray Wyatt was born. So this story of I’m gonna tease Randy, because Randy’s a buddy of mine, but you’re always taught don’t hit Randy, he doesn’t like to be touched. Everybody’s kind of scared to work with Randy. It’s not like that, Randy’s tough. Sometimes he’s a baby. Sometimes Randy, I know you’re listening, you’re kind of a baby. Love you. So this whole rumour of Cena has been poked in the eye a couple of times and it sent Bray back to NXT for two and a half years, this was a massive punishment for that. So fast forward to this six man, and I’d only been on the main roster [a short amount of time]. I still had hair, we’re going way back. Still had the long, beautiful locks.”

“It’s the beginning of the match, the match starts, this is my first big match. We got a lot of crazy spots. There’s a lot of cool stuff. I’m supposed to attack Cena. So I drive Cena to the corner, put him in the corner, and I wind back to throw a body shot, and my thumb lands about knuckle deep in his eye, and I’m like oh no! And he starts cussing ‘You motherf*cker,!’ He’s dropping F-bombs, like we’re talking first 20 rows are hearing this he’s going, ‘You motherf*cker! You poked me in the motherf*cking eye, What the f*ck!?’ I mean, he’s laying it in on me. I’ve got my back to him at this point and I’m hearing all of this, I’m literally about to start crying, because I’m like I’m finally on the main roster. I’m up here, now I’m going back to NXT! Because this whole thing of Bray poking him in the eye I’m going dude, I’m going back to NXT. Without a doubt, I’m so screwed. I don’t want to go back to NXT. I’m so sad but I know I have to turn around to John for the next spot, and he’s still mother-effing me up and down. And I was just like, can we rewind life like five minutes? Let me start over, all of these things, and then we’re on live television, and these are all going through my head. The audience is even like, I can see in their eyes, they’re like John Cena is cussing, he’s going ape sh*t on Corbin. Finally I have to turn around because this is the time, I’m delaying this as long as I can possibly turn. I turn and John punches me dead in the face. It was a solid potato. I wore it, and I was like cool. Then for the rest of the match I’m trying to remember these spots, but I’m trying not to cry, because I’m like I’m going back to NXT. I just got out of there, just the range of emotions I’m going through for the rest of that match. I’m just like, dude. I’ve walked through the curtain so dejected, and they’re like, that was amazing. And I’m just head down in the corner like it’s over for me, man.” 

“John comes back, and I just look at him, puppy dog eyes. He’s like, ‘Hey, that was great.’ I go, ‘John I am so sorry.’ He goes, ‘Oh, we’re good. I gave you it back. We’re good.’ And I was like, Wait, this is gotta be at work. He’s lying to me. I’m gonna walk out this curtain and they’re gonna like, we need you to get your bags. You’re going back to NXT. But that was the end of it. I was good. But, like, I legit thought my life was over. I was like, This is it? Because I poked John Cena in the eye and he mother effed me up and down. The whole match I’m panicking trying to remember stuff. And I walked through the curtain, he’s like, Oh no, we’re good.” 

On his comments about wrestler contracts:

“I’m not saying that one side or the other side is correct. I’m just saying simply that’s how they work. I’ve signed NFL contracts. I’ve signed five WWE contracts. It’s the nature of the beast and it’s the same in any industry. They may not be the greatest contracts when you start out, they are unfair. You’re fighting an uphill battle sometimes in a contract. The music industry, 50% of your money is gone like that, it’s a contract, but you’re a band, you’re trying to make it. You got to do it, you got to sign the paper, and you got to get through it, and then you can kind of start to negotiate terms. It’s just one of those things. They’re there to protect both sides. Usually they benefit the person giving the contract a little bit more than they do the other side.” 

“But at the end of the day, those people arguing over contracts, number one, everybody that’s commenting on social media, including myself, we don’t know the inside thing that’s going on. There could be bad blood there. There could be things one side said to the other. Nobody has a clue except for those people in that small circle. So you can’t say one person is right, one person is wrong, because nobody actually knows the answer to that question. But what I do know is how contracts work and how unfair they may be. No one is forcing you to sign it. Every contract that’s ever been put in front of me, you’ve never been forced to sign.”

“I’ve been in some sticky situations where I was supposed to sign a new five-year deal, and I’ve been pushing off because I was not agreeing to the money that WWE was offering. I felt like my value was higher. Then I was approached at WrestleMania before my match with Kurt, and they’re like hey we need you to sign this deal. I went and had a conversation, and I ended up signing the deal, but I was like, Hey man, can we reevaluate this in a year? It was one of those things and Hunter said it to me, and I fully get what Hunter said to me, but when I was asking for more money, because it was my second contract. I’d finished my first, I didn’t ask to renegotiate. I was out earning my downside. I was happy, and then my next offer was lower than I wanted. Hunter had a conversation with me and he said, look you can out earn this. I’m going, yeah if I’m booked correctly and on pay-per-views and all things that are out of my control. I can’t control who you pencil in for these things. I can do my best, because look at where I’m at now, if you went based on reaction, I would have been in that upper, not the tip top, but I would have been in that next level of guys based on reactions and based on people cheering for me, and based on what I was putting out as a product. I should have been on some of those pay-per-views, but I wasn’t, it’s not in my control.” 

“I was barely on TV coming back up after the draft. I deserved to be on TV, and I deserved to be working in programs. They threw me and Apollo together, and it started to really work, and I thought we had something special. Apollo was showing out and he’s still crushing it, so happy for him. He’s getting a lot of TV time right now, but those are things are out of my control. So you’re telling me I can out-earn this downside but I can only do that if I’m booked this way. Because I’m a heel number one, so I’m not slinging merch, and I’m not getting asked to do the Snickers commercials, because the second my music hits it’s guttural boos throughout every arena in the country and world. So I’m not getting all those little things that good guys get, those those monetizing opportunities. So I feel like my worth is higher than this. He said, we also had to figure out and make sure you’re not a flash in the pan. He’s like, Yeah, you’re hot right now. But what’s six months from now? What’s a year from now? I get the business sense, they don’t want to offer me this deal that I’m fighting for every penny, and they meet me where I want to be and then they lose out on it, the contract is going to benefit the person handing the contract. And I had a conversation, signed the contract two years later, it was a five-year deal. Two years later, Vince brought me to the office, up in a very fancy office, at the Royal Rumble, and was like, Hey, you’re underpaid. Let’s fix this. He offered me a different deal and I said No thank you, this is what I want. And he said, You want to bet on yourself? I said, absolutely do. He goes, how about we do a one year deal for this much? Done. Bet on myself, and it worked out fantastic for me, because 10 months later, I got a fantastic deal. I’ve had, like I said, five contracts there. I bet on myself through them. I did it again.”

“When I went down to NXT that day, they were releasing everybody. A guy named Dan was in charge of all that. I had no idea they were releasing people. So I see that I missed a call from Dan. I just got out of a boxercise class. I was wanting to get back in boxing, and I was trying to again. I was told to lose weight for some reason, who knows? I never thought I was in bad shape. I used to be 330 pounds, there’s going to be loose skin, not abs. It’s just the nature of the beast with me. I was a gigantic refrigerator, but I was trying. Again, you want me to be professional and do what you asked me Done, let’s go. And Dan, I would call him, and he’s like, Hey, I think you’ve seen we’ve been releasing people today. I go, No, I had no idea. So I was like, wow, this is a call. I’m done. This was maybe September, while I was in NXT, and he’s like we’re not letting you go. I go, Okay, so what’s up? He goes, we can’t keep paying you what we’re paying you with what you’re doing in NXT. I was like, Okay. He’s like, you’re gonna take a significant pay cut. I go, okay, so what are we talking? Again, I’m fine with it, because I understand. I’m a business guy. You can’t be paying me this monster contract of main roster, what I thought was monster while I’m in NXT working one day a week, if that.”

On if a WWE return could be possible:

“I think so. I don’t think it ever closes. I mean, how many people, look at the roster now of guys. Cody, Drew, Punk. I mean Punk, the guy who said he would never, ever, ever, ever go back. Again, I hold no ill will towards WWE because I’m so thankful for everything they’ve ever given me the opportunities to perform in front of millions of people on TV, in person, go to Boys and Girls Club, pull a plane for Special Olympics. There’s just so many cool things they do. I was a little bummed I didn’t get to be on Netflix. How cool is that? It’s such a really awesome thing, and things are changing there. I never thought I would see logos on the ring, because it’s been such a historic business of don’t change this, this is the history. We don’t mess with it. Hunter’s bringing a new light, a new vibe, a new energy and I think it’s going to bring new fans. You’re seeing celebrities. It’s not what it used to be where guys were like, Are you a wrestling fan? Don’t let anybody hear me tell you but did you see Raw last night? Now it’s like, this is cool, man. This is fun. Stars from [George] Kittle to all these people. [Patrick] Mahomes was at Raw, Bad Bunny is killing it. It’s not like, Hey, we’re bringing these guys in and they have no clue, we’re just gonna pay him to show up. Like, these are people who they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re getting.” 

What is Baron Corbin grateful for?

“Family, my time in WWE and the opportunities I have gotten.”

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto, Las Vegas & Indianapolis with VIP Meet & Greet!

Kurt Angle (@RealKurtAngle) is a retired professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Pittsburgh, PA to discuss his legendary WWE and TNA careers after winning a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics, the merchandise he wishes could have been made, the origin of his “It’s True” catchphrase, why he wishes he could have ended his in-ring career 10 years sooner, his legendary matches with Chris Benoit, being the odds-on favorite to induct John Cena into the WWE Hall of Fame, the ‘Perc Angle’ nickname and his battle with addiction, getting into a backstage fight with Eddie Guerrero and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

Sponsors:
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On nearly becoming a Pittsburg Steeler:

“You know what? It’s a long story, I’ll make it short. A football player or a wrestler. Three time national champion, Division One, NCAA Championships, his name was Carlton Haselrig, and when he graduated college, he didn’t play football, never played football a day in his life. When he graduated college, he won three NCAA division one titles, and the Steelers called him and said, Hey, you want to come try out? Not only that, but he didn’t even try out. What they did instead is they drafted him in the eighth round, one of the lowest rounds, and they brought him on the team and he did incredibly well. He was a seven-time All Pro, and they saw me. I was the next one coming up through the ranks for the NCAA Wrestling and I dominated for the next three years, just like Carlton did. Steelers thought, you know what, this kid might be a good choice too. I tried out at a skill position, which is backfield, defensive back, quarterback, anytime that you have a lot of movement. Carlton was a lineman, so he was an incredible athlete, and he was so much better than the other athletes on the line. So I understand why they picked him and why they drafted him. But for me, being at a skilled position, you have to have college experience. They want me to be a running back and it’s like going from wrestling to pro football, it’s a hard transition.”

So it wasn’t gonna happen?

“Well, they had me try out. I had a real good tryout. They wanted me to go to NFL Europe for a year or so, and I didn’t want to do that. Don’t forget, the reason why I tried out for the Steelers is because I wasn’t making the Olympic team in wrestling. So 1993 and 1994 I was losing. I ended up third in 93 and second in 94. I kept losing to these two wrestlers consistently. So after the 1994 season, I decided to quit. I figured, what’s the use, I’m never going to beat these guys so why even try? So that’s when the Steelers approached me, and I tried out for them, and I’m glad that I didn’t make the team because I ended up coming back after five months and I made myself a promise that I was going to do everything possible to make sure that I could give the very best I can in the tryouts in 95 and 96. So I did something that really helped me. It was called exhaust training. That’s when you train to your exhausted and that’s when the training actually begins. It’s almost a form of torture. I learned this from the University of Iowa head wrestling coach Dan Gable. He taught his wrestlers this and they were always the most well-conditioned wrestlers. So I did that and in 95 and 96 I won the world championships and I won the Olympic gold medal and never looked back.”

On how he made extra money on top of his guarantee while with WWE:

“It comes with merchandise, but you have to be a businessman, which I wasn’t. Also pay-per-view buys. If you’re main eventing a pay-per-view, you’re going to get a hell of a lot more than the other guys are. We’re talking significantly more, 50-70 grand more. So yeah that’s another way to make more money. But for me, for the most part, I made about two and a half million a year. I did all right, no, I did fantastic, but I wasn’t a businessman. I didn’t promote myself, I didn’t do a lot of merchandise. I didn’t know. I went into pro wrestling thinking all I have to do is wrestle and that’s it, but you have to market yourself, and I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that at all. And watching Stone Cold Steve Austin, rumor has it that he made 10s of millions of dollars with merchandise. So he obviously was a good businessman, but he was also the most popular wrestler of all time.”

On merchandise he regrets not having made:

“My gold medals. But the problem was, I don’t know how this happened, but somebody started making them, and the reason why I couldn’t make them is because we weren’t allowed to duplicate them, but somebody else did it. Now a lot of fans come to me with these gold medals, I’m signing it and I’m like, Where’d you get this? They say I got it online. And I’m like well somebody snuck in there and made those gold medals without the Olympic Committee’s permission.”

On the “It’s True” catchphrase:

“That came by mistake. Vince McMahon was having me cut promos and whenever I go to whatever city or whatever town, he would have me pick on their sports teams. Usually their sports teams were doing horrible. So when I would say, hey your Olympic hero is here to save your year. I represent you now instead of the Detroit Pistons, who actually suck right now. The fans would boo me and I’d say ‘No, it’s true. It’s damn true.’ So that came by mistake, just because I was reacting to the fans’ reaction.”

On his moonsault:

“You know what’s crazy? I never practiced it. It’s one of those things you don’t want to practice. I mean, you could put a crash mat on there and go ahead and do it, but what the hell. If you’re going to do it, just go ahead and do it. Take a chance and see how it goes. I don’t know any other way. I don’t know anybody that does practice moonsaults off the top of a cage. I could see them doing at the top of the rope, but practicing off the top of the cage is just stupidity.” 

On possibly picking a different career after the Olympics:

“You know what? I wish I would have finished my career in WWE 10 years shorter, in WWE or TNA. So in other words, instead of 20 years, I think 10 would have been enough and I think I would have been okay. But I pushed myself further, got into my 40s and kept working at a high pace. The only reason why I retired is because I was losing a step, and I could see it when I watched me on film. I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t want the fans remembering me as a broken down Kurt Angle. I wanted them to remember me when I was in my prime, and that occurred when I went back to the WWE for the second time. That was in 2017 when I came back, they wanted to induct me in Hall of Fame and I was like Vince, I’m not done wrestling. He’s like we’ll get to the wrestling and then he said that that night after the Hall of Fame I want you to be a General Manager of Raw. I was like, Vince, I want to wrestle. He said it’s coming. So he made me General Manager of Raw for nine months and during those nine months I was inactive. I never got in the ring. I was so busy doing General Manager stuff, I couldn’t get in the ring. And by the time they had me wrestle, I looked like an old man. Taking those nine months off, especially at my age, close to 50, it just shut down. My body shut down and literally, my knees were bent full time, I couldn’t straighten my knees out. I had to have knee replacements. Now my knee is straight, but I had a rough time in that ring. I wanted to retire against John Cena, but I was doing a program with Baron Corbin and Vince McMahon said if you wait another year we’ll give you Cena. And I said, Vince, I want to retire this year. I don’t want to be the person I am right now. I don’t want to be out there in the ring where I lost the step, and I don’t want the fans to remember me like that. He said, Well, you’re going to have to wrestle Corbin, and that was fine.”

On if there were any conversations in 09 to return to WWE:

“No, I was happy in TNA. I was literally moving along nicely and I loved being there. The great thing about it is you got to be creative yourself. They would give you an idea, a promo, and you would write the promo and do it. And when you wrestled, you usually have agents that will structure the matches for you. We did it ourselves for the most part.”

On the Perc Angle nickname:

“I know that fans, it’s almost like they want me to feel good about it, the fans are having fun with it because I was the best wrestler in the business. So they want to say that, Kurt Angle was Perc Angle. That’s why he was doing it, because he was all perked up. The thing is, I didn’t use painkillers while I was wrestling. I did them in the morning, and then at night I would wrestle, then I did painkillers after I got done wrestling. So I never wrestled high.”

On the misconception that he wrestled well because of painkillers:

“No, listen, you can’t wrestle messed up. It’s going to be sloppy. You’ve seen people in the past that have wrestled high, people are like what’s wrong with them? So you can’t do that. It’s almost impossible, especially to have a good match. You have to be sober or you’re not going to have a good match.”

On if it feels strange talking about Chris Benoit:

“I will tell you this. I did it for a while. I did what I was told to do, [which] was to pretend Benoit didn’t exist. But what that did for me is it took away all my best matches. It was rubbing on my legacy. So by saying that Chris Benoit no longer exists is saying I never had those matches, and it’s like whoa, I have my best matches with that kid, and he was an incredible wrestler. I don’t condone what he did. What he did was 100% wrong and it’s unforgivable, but how he was in the ring, he was the best in-ring worker I’ve ever been in a ring with. He reminded me of me. I felt like I was wrestling my twin.”

On if he considers Chris Benoit his greatest rival:

“Yes, I do. Him and Brock Lesnar. I also loved wrestling Shawn Michaels, but we only wrestled three or four times. It wasn’t a big program, but Benoit and I, we went for years. I mean, it would be him and me, and then they would take a break from it, and then we’d go back to him and me and take a break. Then it’d be him and me tagging together when we’d be tagging and fighting each other while we were tagging. We just had a really strong program and it went on for years. But Brock, our program went on for about two and a half three years, and that was a good run.”

On not being able to return to the ring for John Cena’s retirement tour:

“No, I can’t wrestle anymore. Actually, you know what I did? I did wrestle about two months ago. I did a commercial for CBS, and it was for the NFL pre-game for the Ravens and Steelers. So me and a gentleman named Kyle Brandt, he’s a sportscaster for CBS. He pretended he was the Ravens and I pretended I was the Steelers. We had a pro wrestling match and I was bumping.” 

So you’re telling me there’s a chance?

“No, no, no. Because what happened was I threw my back out and I couldn’t walk for a week after that. My wife was like, you’re never getting in that ring again, and she’s right. I shouldn’t have even got in the ring, but it was a lot of fun to do it. But I would love to wrestle John Cena. There’s nobody that wants to wrestle John more than I do for his retirement match, especially with the respect I have for him. I just can’t do it.”

On being the odds on favourite to induct John Cena into the Hall of Fame:

“Well, I’ll tell you this, there are a lot of people that deserve to induct John. Randy Orton, who was his biggest competition, or his nemesis. But Stephanie McMahon, don’t forget that she’s the one that discovered his rapping ability, and she was a big fan of his, she really supported him quite often. But no I’d be honored to induct John Cena, the one thing I want to say about him is he has shown that he is possibly the greatest WWE superstar of all time. Winning 16 World Heavyweight Titles in one company, Ric Flair won 16, but he won them in NWA and WCW and WWE and you can’t take that away from him, they were all major promotions. But to do it all in one company, that makes you that company’s greatest star. And I really believe that he deserves another title before he retires.”

On his match against Chad Gable:

“It was okay, but Chad made me look good. Chad is incredible. He’s a very talented kid, and I’m just glad that they’re utilizing him properly, I know because he’s undersized a little bit, they didn’t know what to do with them. But this kid could be a World Champion and be very marketable. I mean, especially with the gimmick he has right now with the whole USA thing and the ‘You Suck’ and everything, he’s like my son. [He should have been your son]. Yeah, he should have been, exactly. But Vince McMahon had other ideas having Jason Jordan be my son, which was ridiculous, but that was cool.”

On a photo with Eddie Guerrero that recently resurfaced:

“Okay, Eddie and I had a little scuffle one night. What happened I was in a faction called The Honor Society. It was with Luther Reigns and Mark Jindrak, and we were supposed to get heat on the Guerreros. It was the end of the show, we went out in the ring and Luther and Mark Jindrak beat up Eddie, and I was beating up Chavo. We got backstage at the Gorilla, where you enter the arena. When we went backstage Eddie started yelling at me. He said ‘You were stiffing me. You were hitting me hard for real.’ I’m like, ‘Eddie, I didn’t touch you.’ And he’s like, ‘Yes, you did’ and he pushes me. I said, ‘Eddie, don’t do that again.’ He pushed me again. I shoved him, and he tried to double leg me. I got him in the front face lock and I choked him out. The thing was, when we went to talk, I went over to him and said, ‘Hey, I want to apologize.’ He goes, I’m not ready to apologize. And I said, Oh really, we start going at it again. So Eddie and I were like brothers. We loved each other and we hated each other hard. But that was right after that occurred. That’s when Eddie calmed down and said, Listen, I know, let’s just let bygones be bygones. He’s like, I love you Kurt, you know I do. And so that photo right there is right after that incident.”

On staying sober:

“Well, I stay clean for 14 years. Time always helps. When you’re not in trouble and you’re out of the eye of going against the law, and you show that you got your sh*t together, people start to forget it. The only time they remember is when they say, Hey, remember Perc Angle? So that’s one of the things that I still have to deal with, but I understand that for the fans, it’s more of a term of endearment, how great was Perc Angle? He was awesome. So I know they’re not saying it to try to hurt my feelings.”

Does it hurt your feelings?

“Yeah, but I know they don’t mean it. And for that, I’m okay if they say it. I don’t want them to say it to my face, but it is what it is.”

What is Kurt Angle grateful for?

“God being there for me, being a father and a husband and for my legacy.” 

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto, Las Vegas & Indianapolis with VIP Meet & Greet!

Matt Hardy (@MattHardyBrand) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Dallas, TX to discuss why he and his brother Jeff Hardy chose to stay with TNA and why it has been a perfect fit, The Hardys becoming Tag Team Champions again and what this reign means to him, the inspiration for Broken Matt Hardy and the Broken Universe, why he never broke character, boxing a kangaroo, how much longer he thinks he can wrestle for, the epic WrestleMania 33 return, if a WWE return could happen as part of the ongoing TNA partnership and more!

Quote I’m thinking of: “A man is great not because he hasn’t failed; a man is great because failure hasn’t stopped him.” – Confucius

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

TIMELINE: Go to https://timeline.com/insight33 to get 33% off your order of Mitopure while supplies last

ORGAIN: For 30% off your order, head to https://Orgain.com/INSIGHT and use code INSIGHT

SQUARESPACE: Head to https://www.squarespace.com/INSIGHT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code INSIGHT

VUORI: Get 20% off your first purchase! Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at https://vuori.com/cvv

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ZOCDOC: Instantly book a top-rated doctor today at https://zocdoc.com/insight

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

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

RHONE: Rhone’s premium performance clothing is made to move you. Use code CVV to save 20% at https://www.rhone.com/CVV

MANSCAPED: Get 20% off plus free shipping when you use the code CHRISVAN at https://manscaped.com

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On what the 13th Tag Team Championship reign mean to him:

“I think this particular title just shows that people need to get their tenses right. A lot of people say in past tense the Hardys were great, but present tense is what they need to speak in that the Hardys are great. We had a couple of years at AEW where people thought oh my God, maybe these guys are done or they’re finished, whatever. We came back to TNA, and kudos to TNA for putting us in a position to succeed. We rocked and rolled as the original OG Hardy Boys, more or less, and then we ended up earning a tag team title shot and we built to that full metal mayhem at Bound for Glory, which was full metal mayhem reimagined with all of Jeff’s art on the tables and Ladders and Chairs and whatnot. We earned these titles, these mean a lot to us and we’re really happy to be back and be very prevalent again in our position.”

On nostalgia:

“I’m big on that. I’m big on hanging on to stuff. It means a lot too, memorabilia, it’s very important. I love to look back at that stuff and be reminded of a certain time, a certain feeling you had during that era. But you talked about the OG Hardys, that was very important for us to go through and win these titles as the OG Hardys. Now we’re at the point, I think, in 2025 one of the important things that the Hardys are going to do is start to evolve again. I think it’s time to reinvent a little bit and go in a totally new direction. You’re seeing little bits and pieces of that in some of the promos we’ve been doing recently.” 

And what does that look like? 

“I think it looks like the Hardy Boys, once again, have found success. The Hardy Boys are feeling good. They’re physically feeling good. They’re mentally and emotionally feeling pretty good about what they’re doing and they’re going to understand and be able to comprehend and understand that they are these legends that people speak of, these icons that people speak of after doing this for 33 years and maybe even lean into that a little bit.”

On wrestling in his 50s:

“I never really thought about it I guess. My approach in life, I live every day like it’s my last but I am also simultaneously living like I’m preparing myself to live to be 100 years old. That’s kind of my mindset because life is so short, life is so precious, especially after those incidents with Jay Briscoe and then the thing with Bray Wyatt, Windham, just them passing away like that so quickly and unexpectedly. You never know.” 

On what hurts right now:

“I mean, my lower back, my hips, that’s my biggest issue. I miss not being at home, not doing the cold plunge, because there was no bathtub in the hotel, so it was just like a little bit of a cold shower or whatever. But I mean, I get in that cold plunge every single day and I sit in there for like four to five minutes and it’s just crazy the feeling that it gives you after sitting in that once you get out. It’s tough to get in. Sometimes you’re like, Oh, I really don’t want to get in there. It’s hard. But then once you come out you feel so good. It’s such a high.”

On why TNA was the right fit:

“It just worked out right because they offered me something just a couple days out with the Moose thing, doing a little program with Moose. I went in initially on a handshake deal and we said I’ll work through Against All Odds and we’ll see what I end up doing by then. If that ends up being the last day, then we have a match, he retains the title, and then I’ll go wherever. It turned out that Jeff’s deal had expired at AEW one day before that. So it was crazy timing. Then he ended up showing up that day. It was a huge reaction and Jeff said, Man, I love what you’ve been doing, and it’s been so cool, I think we should have a run here, it seems like this is a really good spot for us. They would put us in a position to succeed, which they have, and we can help TNA, because they’ve been hot this year with Joe Hendry, they’ve had the NXT exchange, which has been great, and then they’re really having a true resurgence, and we think we’ve helped add to that, which is very cool.” 

On returning to TNA:

“Once again, I can’t compliment AEW enough for putting us in a position to succeed and that’s what’s real important, especially with a legacy act like myself and Jeff. We are guys who are still very beloved. We’re generational talent, because we have different generations that like us and adore us and follow us. We have a very, very strong following, a very, very die Hardy following fan base. And the fact that they have done that, they gave us opportunities. We don’t need to go out there. The show doesn’t need to be all about us. We don’t need to be on every single week, but we can contribute to TNA, and they’ve done a great job in utilizing us.” 

On why WWE added a z onto Hardy Boyz:

“They added a z so it would be theirs. I think that was specifically why they did it. So people ask, Oh yeah, Hardy Boys, you use that. I mean, Hardy Boyz is a WWE property, especially with a Z. I would guess the Dudley Boyz are too. They put their own spin on it so they can own it.”

On the WrestleMania 33 return:

“It was amazing, one of those things we are so grateful to have had that moment, we really kept it to a very small circle of people that knew about it. So there were some people that speculated it may happen, may not happen, but it did, and it’s crazy because TNA, after we’d done all the broken Matt Hardy stuff, the broken universe, brother Nero, just the 10s of 1000s of people in there going, delete, delete, delete. How we had gotten that over and established it and it was all over the wrestling industry. It was so, so cool.”

On how much longer he hopes to wrestle for:

“I just think I’m just gonna ride the spiral until it ends. I’m just gonna ride the spiral until it ends. I think in the past I have, I’m just gonna see how I feel and just roll with it. I try not to think too far ahead. I try not to overwhelm myself. I’m more of a day-by-day person. I just try and get through every single day and make it as good as possible.”

On if The Hardys would end their career together or as individuals:

“I would imagine it would probably go out that way. We came in that way. We would probably go out that way. Then for Jeff, I could see him, he’ll end up being an artist, living in Cameron or whatever he’s doing. I think I’m a lifer in the business. I’ll be working somewhere as a producer or an agent or creative or whatever else, just because I’m so passionate about pro wrestling. I think once I stop being an in-ring performer, I will still contribute.”

On TNA taking a gamble with Broken Matt Hardy:

“Yeah, they totally could have said this isn’t worth taking the risk. I mean, once again, it was a risk. They were very nervous. I’ll never forget we sent a final copy and we did this intentionally. JB edited The Final Deletion and he sent it to John Gabbert, and we’re gonna clear it for TV. And he did it at like last second. So it kind of had to be sent in to go to TV and be on air, whatever. He said well, I watched his back and some people told me only a wild man would let this go on TV so I guess you can call me the wild man from here on out. I’ll never forget Dixie texting me that morning or that afternoon before The Final Deletion. She said I’m so nervous about tonight. I hope everything goes good. And it did, like a record high number on the channel it was on, and there were so many people seeking it out, and the DVRs and trying to record it, whatever. And then it was viral online in so many ways. Pro wrestling in many ways, especially if you’re talking about creating a new genre or new character, new persona is a risk. But I mean the big scheme of things that’s what life is, it’s a risk.”

On the concept of Broken Matt Hardy:

“The concept from Broken Matt, well there were so many young guys doing these amazing matches, doing all these crazy athletic, acrobatic moves and stuff. That’s when really the business, the work rate, was picking up more and more and more. I said everybody’s doing this, let me lean into something I feel like I’d be better at, an over-the-top, maybe half-assed, delusional character. This is larger than life, and I could do it and maybe even tap into the old school wrestling when you had Papa Shango, or when you had Undertaker, and he was more magical let me see if I can get into something like that and get it over. I said worst case scenario I’ll see him, I come crazy, and then maybe even people will buy that I’m some sort of supernatural character. Something has happened to me after my brain was broken and I became cognizant of where my essence or my soul has been over all these years. I think the reason I really came up with that was because of True Blood. My wife and I were watching it. I was a big TV series person after I took time away from WWE initially, and I’d watched True Detective, which season one was just incredible. Dexter, still a huge Dexter fan, watching the new stuff right now, and True Blood. I thought the vampire stuff was so cool. I was such a big fan of Alexander Skarsgård and how you see him in these different eras, how he has different clothes on, he has different haircuts, different styles, and just how much stuff changes through, that’d be so amazing if you could do an immortal gimmick. I said, obviously, we’re all mortal, right? You can’t really, truly doing a mortal gimmick when it comes to that. But what if I could be aware of where my soul has been, like the different bodies has been, and once it leaves one body, then it goes to another. I could say I’ve done all these people and I could say, in theory, I’m 2000 years old, if I’m aware of where my soul has been, and that was pretty much the the building blocks of Broken Matt Hardy.”

On never breaking character:

“I mean, that was something that I was very dead serious about, to keep consistency, because I wanted people to think if I had lost my mind and I was going crazy, that he is going crazy. Because as soon as you step out of that and show people that you’re normal and that you’re a regular guy who can articulate and speak normal and you’re okay, then it’s obviously a character that is not really you. I remember I was hot as far as business growing, people were buying merch, and they wanted to see Broken Matt. They wanted to see Brother Nero. They wanted to see the broken universe stuff. They asked me to do media for something, and they were going to have me do the Wrestling Observer with Dave Meltzer. They said yeah, we’re gonna do this but we would like you to talk to him a little bit about promote this event. This was with TNA. I said I’ll go on but I’m not breaking character. I said, I’m gonna talk about being 2000 years old, don’t give a sh*t about work rates or five star match or whatever else. I said, I’m Broken Matt Hardy through and through and that’s where they’re gonna get, that jargon. I did it and I really stuck to the gimmick. I did a podcast with Chris Jericho and did it for an hour. I was so locked into it, once I would commit to that bit and commit to the role. It was pretty easy. I was pretty good at it.”

On boxing a kangaroo:

“That was one of the most terrifying things. People don’t realize how scary that was. They would tell us too. They would say look, you guys can play with this kangaroo a little bit, you just can’t hit it. It can hit you. But these guys, they’re a little older, and they’re not as excitable as a young kangaroo would be, but still, be very careful, it was terrifying. The very first time we were doing I said, Okay, I’ll get out there and I’ll spar with them a little bit, just show you with Jeff. I think it was so intimidating. We were actually shooting and we’re now. I said, okay, yes, here we go. I said, Let’s go Smoking Joe Frazier, and I go, brother Nero, I would like to allow you to go first. And, yeah, Jeff was like what? That’s kind of how that all started.”

On a possible WWE return as part of the TNA partnership:

“That was actually one of his [Jon Alba, Extreme Life of Matt Hardy co-host] bold predictions, The Hardys will wrestle a match in WWE before the year is over. [How do you feel about that?] I feel good about that, that’s one of the great things about working with TNA. They know that we do have a lot of love for WWE. They know that we would like to do the Hall of Fame. We filmed some content for WWE that’ll probably be dropping pretty soon. I saw the Dudleys did it the day before us, and I know theirs just dropped recently, but we have a good working relationship with them. I think the perfect storm arose. I think you could see us pop up even as TNA champs on some WWE show at some point. Who knows?”

On his favourite Jeff Hardy match:

“One of the matches that really stand out, just because it was such a big deal for him at the time when it happened, I know it’s one of his favorites as well is when he wrestled The Undertaker in a ladder match. I know Taker was taking a lot of pride. He wanted it to be good, and he wanted to make it into a great match. That moment at the end where Jeff wouldn’t stay down and he came back and he endorsed him, that once again, such a big moment. That’s probably what pops into most people’s minds.”

What is Matt Hardy grateful for?

“My family, my health and that I get to do this.”

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto and Indianapolis with VIP Meet & Greet!

Jeff Hardy (@JeffHardyBrand) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA. TNA Genesis is Sunday, January 19 live from the Curtis Culwell Center in Dallas, TX. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Dallas, TX to discuss why he and his brother Matt Hardy returned to TNA, the origin of the signature Hardy Juke, their signature theme song, the most scared he has ever been in a professional wrestling match, his worst injury, hitting Brock Lesnar with a vicious chair shot to the head, his battles with addiction, getting sober, what he remembers from his match with Sting at TNA Victory Road 2011, if a WWE return could happen as part of the ongoing TNA partnership and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.” – Heraclitus

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On there being something special about The Hardys’ music hitting:

“There is, yeah. Even when I returned, it was so weird how everything worked out. I had no idea Matt was going to go to TNA. I finished a workout one morning, went upstairs and my wife said, ‘Did you know Matt was going back to TNA?’ I said, ‘No, I had no idea.’ Then I watched the footage, oh my God, that was amazing. And naturally, I asked him how it felt. It’s just so strange and bizarre how everything just worked out. My nose was broke when I was in AEW, so my contract was a little extended, but it ran out the night before I was able to show up and save Matt once again in the world of professional wrestling, back in TNA.”

On where The Hardy dance came from:

“It definitely came from our wrestling daddy, Michael PS Hayes, when we hooked up with him. Because back in the days the Free Birds, I think he would do it and then do a moonwalk and make the tag to Jimmy Garvin. So that’s where it came from, just the way he goes, like this. So I might bust that moonwalk out at some point. But, yeah, it came from Michael Hayes. I just modified it, and it became such a big deal for me.”

On leaving WWE:

“I’m not sure. It was so weird. When I left WWE in 2021 my dad had been real sick. 2017, right after we went back to WWE at Mania, that was probably around the time that he felt good for the last time before he slipped back into this dark depression. But yeah, I’d been taking care of him, and it was just bad to where he did not want to be here. He was ready to go. Our mom died at a young age, I was 10 when she passed away. So I’ve always told myself when he needs me, I’m going to take care of him. I just did everything I could to get him excited about life and all that stuff. So that’s definitely when my drinking got carried away during those times that I’ve never really talked about. The year 2021 is when I miss WrestleMania because my dad had just passed away. April 6, my wife’s birthday, is when my dad passed away, which was strange in itself. But yeah, it just got out of control and I needed something extreme to happen. It’s sad the way it worked out, but I refused to go to rehab, so I ended up waiting my 90 days out and showing up in AEW, and naturally screwed that up as well. I feel so bad about Matt’s position, because now being in TNA, I feel like I can really kind of pay back for that to the fullest extent.”

On drug and alcohol addictions:

“There were times when I would wake up and I was just like oh my God, what am I doing? I would tell myself all the time, and I never got to the point to where I had physical withdrawals from not drinking. So with that, I was like okay, I must not be an alcoholic because I don’t get sick from not drinking. Then I’ll be sober for weeks and then give into it again. But then, man, when the DUI started happening, that’s when it really got crazy how much denial I was in because, man, I never have any intention of hurting anybody. So the thought of I could have possibly hurt somebody else out there on the road, I’m so sorry for that, especially for people who have lost loved ones in DUI accidents. But I needed something big to happen, that’s what happened. I went to rehab for the long haul, and it’s exactly what I needed, man. I’ve been so enlightened, there was a moment with the sun, actually, when I was in treatment in Florida and the moon, and I’m like, Okay, there’s something very special going on here with me getting sober again, because every time, my second time, when I came back to TNA, I had gotten sober and I was great. 2012 was one of my best wrestling years in my career, in my opinion, and that’s because of sobriety. To be back in that zone now approaching three years of sobriety, it’s just super exciting to keep doing exactly what I’ve been doing and prove people wrong in the process.”

On the current iteration of Jeff Hardy:

“I feel more than ever, not even like The Charismatic Enigma, [I’m] The Enlightened Enigma, I’m so grateful for the gift of life I have. I was born to be a pro wrestler, and it’s just crazy how it worked out. I had such an opportunity to be a huge wrestling star in my younger 20s but I just went another direction. It would be amazing if I wouldn’t have fell into that dark place in my life from drugs and alcohol to see what would have actually happened. But I’ve also had all these other hobbies that I just love. I love motocross like crazy. I eventually broke my leg in 2015 and that pretty much ended my motocross career. I got into music. I just had all these things I never could commit fully to pro wrestling. That’s kind of, I guess, that’s kind of been, it’s hurt my career, definitely a little bit. But again, that’s kind of what makes me interesting as well.”

On paying tribute to Bray Wyatt:

“Oh, the feedback was incredible. Just the love that came back from that and people being grateful of that, because he was such an amazing human being. Matt got to work with him. Naturally, I would have loved to, but I still watched the little pre-tape we did backstage when I was coming back from shoulder surgery, and we did a little thing back there. I was about to go out with Finn Balor and Seth Rollins and me, Matt and Bray did a little thing back there, and it warms my heart every time I see that.”

On breaking his leg in a dirtbike accident:

“The worst injury, that was the first time in my life that I could not get up on my own. We had just won the TNA World Tag Team titles, and I’ll never forget my buddy was out there. He was filming it and he came up. He said ‘Oh man, you can walk it off.’ No, I can’t walk it off. I can’t get up. I thought both my legs were broke. It was just the impact was so powerful. My wife coming out there and said ‘Oh my God, do I need to call Dixie?’ I said, ‘Yes, call Dixie.’ My buddy called 911 and then naturally, Dixie needed to know what happened. I think she might even have said to post a video, which was smart, just because I was going to take a while before I was healed from that. It was a good year before I was able to just referee that match when Matt won the title from EC3, I was the referee. I tried to paint up all the zebra stripes and all that. But I was my leg was still throbbing so bad. It took me a good year to come back from that and it was way worse than any wrestling injury.” 

On the most scared he has been in a wrestling match:

“Definitely my first huge Swanton Bomb in my first run in TNA. It was the one against Abyss and Rhino over the stage and there was one little area. I don’t think I told him that I was going to go up to it, but I just noticed that area about three foot taller that I might get up to just make it more impressive. I jumped over Jim Mitchell and I cleared it, it was so, so scary, because when I got to that peak, I looked back down at the monitor area where people were watching the show, and I was like, Oh my God, this might be it Jeff, this might be the end of your career. Let’s go. I did it and then I think I even made it back to the ring to take a power driver off the second rope from Rhino. But that was, I think, the scaredest I’ve ever been.”

On that chair shot to Brock Lesnar:

“Man, I had been taking the three power bombs so much like night after night, and I just felt like it was my chance to get it in. We were out there and Matt followed up with a chair shot. But the echo in that building that night was just crazy. Matt followed up, and he just went out of the ring. I was like the adrenaline was flowing because it was such a loud chair shot. He didn’t go down because he is a beast of a man. But then I think after that I found out through Paul Heyman that that was the first chair shot he had ever took to the head. And I was, Oh, my God. I had no idea, but I guess I’m sorry.”

On separating Jeff Hardy the person and the wrestler:

“It’s weird too, because my personal life kind of became my professional life back in 08 09. A lot of people [thought] that’s messed up, they’re going there. But I mean, in a way, I think it helped me, but also, looking back at it now, I go, Oh my God, was that the right thing to do? Because that is my personal life and now here we are in my professional [life]. It’s super interesting. The storyline and the feud with CM Punk was just so amazing, and that kind of helped make it that way, because we were complete opposites. But yes, there’s really no difference in Jeff Hardy. That’s why I’m excited too. There’s this alter ego of mine, alter Nero of mine named Willow, and he appeared in TNA, my last run in TNA. There’s a new mask with a brand new face plate. I haven’t tried it on yet, but when I go pick it up, and if it fits real good, I’m sure I’m going to get excited about possibilities with a way darker side of Jeff Hardy, or way more just spiritual, innovative character that Willow has never actually been in the past. The original idea with Willow is like nothing makes sense, because he’s not human. He’s just some alien, and he’s the God of my imagination. That’s kind of where it all started. But for him to be my dark passenger and kind of guide Jeff Hardy into this different zone in pro wrestling, I think there might be something pretty powerful within that idea.”

On if he thinks about how much longer he can go:

“Not at all. I just said a joke a few weeks ago at this show we did, and my humor is different, too. I know a lot of people don’t get my humor, and I guess it can be dark at times. But I just said that by the time I’m 50 I might go back to WWE, retire CM Punk, and then maybe go in the Hall of Fame. But there were things like that was seriously what I was manifesting, which is not the case at all. I just said that thinking I was being funny, and I think that was right after I painted my face so uncomfortably in front of all those people. But no, I didn’t mean that at all. I just thought it might be funny. But yeah, the reality is it could happen because our feud, I still get so many compliments on that with people that are adults now. ‘Oh man, you and Punk, the feud was amazing.’ So even in AEW I felt like there was a moment for me and Punk, at least just some kind of face off or uncomfortable like us running in each other in the backstage or something. But we never got to do that. But ultimately, I would love to revisit that feud in some way, and who knows. CM Punk is such a superpower in the pro wrestling game, but if Jeff Hardy getting sober made him like an asshole. I mean, come on, heel Jeff Hardy against the one and only popular CM Punk. I feel like that’s completely possible.”

On a possible WWE return as part of the TNA partnership:

“For sure. There’s never been a real heel Hardy run. I was so excited about that in AEW, but I know I own what I’ve done and it was my fault I really let Matt down with the whole AEW thing. I think even AEW, before I broke my nose wrestling Sammy Guevara my thinking was we’re not being used, what if I can be like a heel on social media and send out some tweets? It evidently wasn’t professional, but again, it’s not like I was being serious. I just said something like Collision was designed for Punks. But I ended up getting three matches out of that with Swerve Strickland, Jon Moxley, and then Sammy. In all those matches I had that feeling, that passion. I could feel it again within myself. Oh my God. I love this I can still go, I got a lot more left in the tank, and I experienced that. But then naturally, injury happens, and my nose was broken, that was going to take a while to heal and things just worked out the way they worked out. I’m so glad to be back in TNA and super excited, because TNA has been there for me in dark times. When I left the pro wrestling world in 09 and got in my situation TNA employed me, they supported me and oh my God, like I said earlier, 2012 is one of the best years of my career, I was from sobriety. I was doing really good, and I just eventually eased into that drinking alcohol again. It took a while, but it just slowly caught up to me. It got me.”

On what he remembers from TNA Victory Road 2011:

“I remember going out there, and I remember just Sting roughing me up and throwing me to the mat. So I remember, and naturally we say he shot on me, but Eric Bischoff told him to pin me because I was a zombie. It was obvious when you watched the tape and I was kind of MIA throughout that whole evening. Sting had talked about this one killer spot I was going to do. It was something like the twist of hate with the head in the chair, but I was going to take his finish the reverse thing in a chair and I was scared of that. Oh my god, I’m going to break my neck, I don’t know if I should do this. But anyway, I remember sobering up after that and Jeff Jarrett and even Hogan knew I had to go home and get straight. They gave me another chance and when I did go back I did this song called Resurrected. Bruce Pritchard was there, I believe, and he made me go in the locker room and apologize to everybody. I don’t think I’ve ever been that nervous in my life. I was so nervous in front of all these professional wrestlers that I admire and love so much, but I had to go in there and just admit, say I’m sorry for what I did on pay-per-view. But that was good for me. It helped me heal. So I just moved on from there and had a really good 2012 but yeah, such a dark time with Sting. Every time I’ve seen Sting since he’s just such a good dude and such a support. So I’ve just had a lot of dark, dark times from the alcoholism and the drug addiction stuff. It feels good to be on the other side of that.”

On his TNA return:

“That’s why I’m so grateful for TNA and I think everything did work out exactly how it was supposed to with me being able to go back. There was even one moment when I found out Matt went back to TNA, I watched the footage and I was like Oh God, maybe I need to stay with AEW to continue to prove myself and really have some of these killer matches, some of these guys are on a different level with these matches they’re having. But then I was like wait, what? I had such a good run in TNA last time and the merchandise they came out was so cool. Started doing the eyelid paint and everything was so good the last time at TNA. There were so many innovative bumps I did throughout that run and I said, No, this is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. So naturally, I called Matt and agreed to show up. But yeah, this time, I’m glad I didn’t try to run and do the Juke at the same time.  I still don’t understand why would I try to Juke and run saving my brother my first time in AEW it was so bizarre. I’ve even practiced it since to see if it’s possible and I don’t think it’s [possible], it’s not smoothly possible at all.”

What is Jeff Hardy grateful for?

“Health and family.”

Seth Rollins (@WWERollins) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his main event match at WrestleMania 40 and if there was any concern he wouldn’t make it to the match, CM Punk’s WWE return and his viral reaction, cashing in his Money in the Bank contract in the main event of WrestleMania, the stomp into the RKO from Randy Orton, wrestling an injured Cody Rhodes inside Hell in a Cell, what goals he still has left to achieve in WWE and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “All we get is time and choices. Be wise with both.”

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On what his goals are in WWE now that he has done everything:

“It’s a great question. I’ve asked myself this many times, especially over the last couple of years. I don’t know. I’m in this weird space where I feel, especially after WrestleMania this past year in Philadelphia. I had this sense of accomplishment, but in a way that I never experienced before where I felt like I’m good. If I stopped tomorrow, I’m good. Everything that I wanted to do, I’m good. I really felt like WrestleMania was kind of this moment where we really took the business into a different era. It was the first WrestleMania that Triple H was really in control over. I felt a big part of it and I just felt like we ushered in kind of a new era of WWE. Business was amazing and WrestleMania in Vegas is going to be even bigger. It just feels like everything is fresh, everything is new within WWE, whereas the previous 10 years felt like a real fight to get it to that point. I don’t know, after Philadelphia, after night two, I just felt this release, like this kind of weight lifted off my shoulders, like I don’t have to do everything on my own or I don’t have to be the guy that pushes this thing forward. I think we’re going to be okay. So with that said, I’m trying to be healthy, trying to be happy, trying to find more of a balance between my home and work so that I’m not just prioritizing whatever next goal is on the horizon. Obviously, you work every year to main event WrestleMania and to be the biggest act in our industry. I think when I kind of don’t care about that it might be time to hang it up. Right now I think that’s it, but it’s not the obsession that it used to be.”

On Cody Rhodes winning the WWE Championship at WrestleMania:

“I had a different experience watching Cody win the title. I felt joy, probably a little bit of jealousy. But I don’t know, I’ve never really been the guy that’s been handed the ball that way. For the last 10 years it’s been Roman for the most part, and then Cody comes back and he kind of gets that treatment as well. I’ve always felt like I wanted to be that person, and I could be that guy, but it just wasn’t for me in the eyes of the people who were making those decisions. So there was this joy and this happiness that we kind of crossed a proverbial finish line, certainly a little bit of professional jealousy as well. But I mean, look, Roman doesn’t get to where he’s at without me, I don’t think. I think he would tell you that as well. And certainly, Cody coming back, there’s a reason when he came back that I was the first person they put him with, so I don’t think he’s where he’s at if it’s not for me. I don’t mean that in a way that’s arrogant or anything, but I’ve always been the person who wanted to put the industry and the company before my own personal desires. I was okay with it. If we all did better, if the company did better, and the business as a whole was healthier, I felt like I was doing my part, even if it was kind of unsung in many ways. So I told Drew you f*cking deserve it and he does, did, he squandered it pretty quickly. Because I get it, that moment there’s a lot of emotions going on in that moment. There’s some things that don’t go your way all the time when you’re kind of wrapped up in yourself, but Drew had a really good year after that, so I kind of stick with what I said. He does deserve the spotlight. He works really hard. He’s a guy who got fired and came back. He didn’t leave on his own, he got let go because he didn’t know what he was doing, and he went and put in the work and then came back a totally different version of himself and has continued to improve. Say what you will about him being a super troll online, when you get him out there in the ring, whether it’s with a microphone or in a match, he’s one of the best there is.”

On if there were any concerns he wasn’t going to make it to WrestleMania 40 due to injury:

“No, I just didn’t know what shape I was gonna be in by the time we got to WrestleMania.” 

How much pain were you in? 

“At that point the pain wasn’t so bad. So the match with Jinder Mahal would have been in January. I had basically really sprained my MCL pretty bad and tore my meniscus. The meniscus tear was an older tear that I think got displaced. So I’d basically been wrestling on a torn meniscus for as long as I can remember but I had a kind of a mechanism to sort it out. Whenever I kind of dislodged it, it put the meniscus into a different position in my knee. I don’t need to get into the anatomy of all that, but basically it was really painful when I would do specific things. So I just had to be smart. So I took, obviously, Rumble off, Chamber off, but then I came back in a brace and I did some live events. I had wrestled Solo Sikoa on one of the Mondays leading up to WrestleMania as well, mostly because I just wanted to get a feel for it. I wanted to know what I could and couldn’t do, and I didn’t want to wrestle with a brace at WrestleMania because I hate wrestling with a brace. So I wasn’t in a ton of pain only because I had gone through the pain the weeks leading up to it, kind of like trial runs. I was like let me test this out at these live events, and then let me test it out on TV. Let me see what’s going to hurt me. Basically like stab, stab, stab, okay, now I know what not to do, now I know how to work around it. Then I just had booked the surgery for right after. I knew what the end game was at Mania. I’m like, let’s just get through that. I want to help, I think I can be an integral part of this. So let’s do that, and then I’ll go get it fixed and take a little bit of time.”

On what would have happened if CM Punk did not get injured:

“That’s a great question. It would have been Seth Rollins and CM Punk I believe. But then you’ve got The Rock and his introduction into that story right after Royal Rumble. But he comes in and kind of didn’t really understand the scope of what he was messing up I don’t think. So I don’t know what would have happened if Punk won the Rumble or not got injured. Yeah, I don’t really know. I don’t know where Cody would have landed in all of that. I don’t know where Roman, I don’t know where anyone [would have landed]. There were just a lot of players and somebody would have been on the outs. I don’t know who that would have been. I have no idea. So, I mean, all the stars were pointing towards CM Punk and Seth Rollins at WrestleMania. But it’s a tough business and things get in the way.” 

On if he thought CM Punk would ever come back to WWE:

“When he joined the broadcast team on Fox, when they were doing that Backstage show I thought to myself okay, maybe there’s an opportunity here. Then when he joined AEW I kind of thought maybe he’ll have a twilight run here. But there were then a lot of times where I just thought, you know, because I know he makes it out like he didn’t really like the other guy that was in charge, but the truth is he didn’t really get along with the current guy that’s in charge either. It wasn’t like they were pals as well. So I think that even when Triple H took over, I didn’t think there would be an olive branch to be had, so kind of 50/50, but I would waver more towards no, I never thought it was gonna happen.”

On if he knew CM Punk was coming back at Survivor Series:

“No, that was a bit of a surprise.”

On his viral reaction:

“You know what I wasn’t happy about was Randy had just come back from a long hiatus. That was his moment. It was a great moment. The reaction for him when he came through the curtain was unreal. We went out there, there was 10 of us out there, and we went out there and had a hell of a contest. [We] just didn’t really need him, but you know, it was Chicago, it’s his city, it’s just the most classic make everything about me CM Punk moment I’ve ever seen. So I was just, you know when you’re in that moment, your adrenaline just going through the roof, you’re on the top of a cage celebrating with your pals, sold out All State arena going bananas. Then that happens and it’s no longer about the performance. It’s no longer about Randy. It’s no longer about what you had done to get to that point. It’s just, hi guys, it’s about me. Remember I’m the guy that you that you miss, remember me, guys? So yeah, just another kind of throw that on the pile of disgusting CM Punk moments. But don’t worry, he’s not selfish. He’s in it for helping everybody else.”

On his WrestleMania 31 Money in the Bank cash in:

“There might be camera footage of this somewhere, but I’m just sitting in this chair right outside of the curtain in Gorilla. This was a smaller Gorilla at the time, we hadn’t expanded it to this big one yet. I remember Michael Hayes is in the producer seat and Hunter and Vince are on the far side. I want to say there was panic about the time because we were still on pay-per-view, so we have to be off at this time. It wasn’t like an option to overrun like on Peacock, they want a certain time period. With streaming they’re awesome because of that, you get a little window and you’re not strict, because the advertising model is a little different. So it’s like, by the time we had to be off, done. So I remember sitting there and thinking oh shoot, they’re not going to make it, we’re going to have to do this tomorrow, that’s what I was thinking. I was just if it doesn’t work, we’ll just do it tomorrow, just hoping that my idea doesn’t go up in smoke. So fortunately, they are professionals, and they hit their cue when they needed to and the rest is history.” 

So this was your idea?

“The idea to cash in the contract at WrestleMania was my idea. I had put it into the ether probably two months prior or so, because you remember I win this thing in July or June. Immediately when you win it you look at the landscape and you go okay, when can I cash this in? At the time, if I’m not mistaken, there was only one World Championship and the champion was Brock Lesnar. You looked at it, okay, Brock wrestles twice a year. When are you going to cash this thing in on Brock Lesnar? Is Brock Lesnar going to allow you to cash it in on him? What circumstances would be the best for this? Then you start to go down the months and you take off all the shows that Brock’s not going to be on. So you look at SummerSlam, probably not going to happen. You look at Survivor Series if he’s there, and then it’s like, maybe Rumble or Mania. Then you’ve got that little window after Mania where maybe, so you start to plot it out in your head. The major point for me as I was kind of going along with that was the Royal Rumble earlier that year. I did a triple threat match with Brock Lesnar and John Cena. I kind of had to, I don’t want to say weasel my way into that, but that was initially meant to be John vs. Brock, they were in a series of matches and the audience was kind of getting a little tired of it. Not to say that those guys aren’t incredible, they are, but you do the same thing and Brock wasn’t around to sell the story that much. He just kind of showed up, and when he did he was a huge attraction, especially at that time, but I think the audience was getting a little bit bored of it. And I was like well what does it hurt, I don’t need to be in the Rumble because I’ve got this briefcase. That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t want to be off the show. I’m like, just throw me into that triple threat, I can mix in there good, change the whole dynamic of the thing up and see what happens. We ended up having a really great triple threat and a really good dynamic. That was the first time I think I worked with Brock, so he got to see how my mind works a little bit. So got to kind of create some little touches of respect there. Then later that night Roman wins the Royal Rumble to a chorus of boos, even The Rock comes out afterwards to try to endorse him and it just did not matter. I was like oh, this isn’t good. You don’t want to give him this title at WrestleMania. If he gets booed out of the building there when he wins the title the first time, that’s not good. So I’m a hated, hated, hated villain at this time. If I win the title, then we can give the audience time to understand the story of who the good guy is supposed to be against me. I’m not cool at all at this point. I’m like, let me be the guy. Let me be the heel that can get what we want out of this change. So I pitched the idea, I let it sit in the ether for a while, and then still even the day of, obviously, I was doing the story with Randy Orton, leading up to WrestleMania, even still until the till after my match with Randy was the first confirmation I had gotten that we were gonna go in that direction. I don’t know whose idea the triple threat part of it was. I think my idea was just a cash in after the match. But somebody came up with the triple threat idea in the interim once it was floating in the ether there and it was a brilliant, a brilliant kind of way to do it that I’d never even considered.” 

On Seth “Freakin” Rollins:

“I give that credit to the old man. The middle name was his idea back in the day. I don’t remember why. I don’t remember how it came about. I think he was just bored with Seth Rollins and he was like ah, you’ll be Seth Freakin Rollins again. Okay, cool. Sold a lot of T shirts when we did it, so whatever. The thing that killed me was when we first did it, when we first brought the freakin’ back in. Because it was just like The Monday Night Messiah Seth Rollins or whatever, for a while. And then there was the Drip God, which was never my idea. I didn’t like that nickname at all. I tried to push The Visionary on him, and he didn’t get that character at all, and then added freakin’ in there at some point. But then everybody had to say freakin’ every single time they mentioned my name on commentary, anywhere. The first thing I did when I had the opportunity was let’s just pull back on that, how about I just say it? If someone’s introducing me in a grandiose manner, they can say it. But if they’re just talking about me they could just say Seth Rollins, it’s okay. You don’t have to say The Tribal Chief Roman Reigns all the time. No one said The Hitman Bret Hart all the time.” 

On fighting an injured Cody Rhodes inside Hell in a Cell:

“You know he refused to not do the live events before Hell in a Cell, because they told him that he couldn’t hurt his pec anymore, even though he was in horrific pain whenever he moved it in a certain direction. They were like, well you can’t tear it anymore. He’s like well I’ve been advertised for these live events, so I should probably be there. I think it was in Rockford and Bloomington, Illinois, or something like that. Everyone was like maybe just stay home. You can just come to the pay-per-view on Sunday. We’re probably good. No, I gotta be there. So he comes to these, maybe Bloomington was the first one, and I remember [saying] let me see this thing. He pulled it open and this was two days after it happened so it hadn’t fully gotten crazy, what you ended up seeing in Chicago at that Hell in a Cell match yet, but it was gnarly, and I was like, yeah, okay, all right, whatever. I’m not gonna tell you what to do, I mean we just talked earlier about how I wrestled with a torn meniscus for many, many months in a lot of pain. So I get it, I understand it. So as long as you know you feel safe enough and you feel safe enough that you’re gonna be okay, we’ll get through it. We’ll figure it out. That’s part of the gig. It was a gnarly pec.”

On how much longer he could wrestle for:

“I think about it all the time. I am 38, I will be 39 in May. I think I’ve got more than a couple years left in me. The dynamic of the industry has shifted so much. I’m not wrestling 200 times a year anymore. I’m not on the road 300 days a year anymore. Live Events, non-televised events have kind of dissipated, which for me, guys like me, I’ve wrestled over 2,000 matches in my career, that’s nice for me. It’s just like riding a bike for me. We’ll see how it is for people coming up who need that experience, we’ll see what that looks like in a few years. But with that schedule, I feel like I’ll be able to extend my career probably longer than I thought I was going to, and then it just depends on where I want to go from there, what I want to do next and how much time I’d like to spend at home with my daughter, taking her to do things that are important to her, that are a lot more important than making towns.”

On Captain America:

“It releases in February. I wish it the best, but I am not a part of that film. [What happened?] Well, does my NDA still apply if I’m not in the film anymore? Truth be told, any answer I gave would only be my opinion on it. The script went through a lot of rewrites and reshoots so what I was there to do, essentially my role got either repurposed or completely erased. So I did do a bit of an audition to possibly pop into another role, I believe, or the repurposing of my role, I’m not exactly sure on what it was, but they ended up going in a different direction with it. And yeah my understanding was there were just a lot of rewrites and a lot of reshoots, and they know they’ve got a finished product that hopefully they’re happy with, and hopefully it’s successful, but it will be sans Seth Rollins.”

On fans thinking they spotted Seth Rollins in the trailer:

“To be fair, he looked an awful lot like you as well because you could just see his eyeballs. I’m not in the movie. I will say unequivocally I’m not in the film. I do not want anybody to go to the film thinking I’m here to see Seth Rollins. There might be two people that would do that, but I don’t want those two people to waste their time. I don’t want to misinform anybody. I don’t want to lead anybody astray. I am not in the film. It should be a good one. Marvel does a great job. I mean, if I’m not [in anything else], I don’t care. I don’t love acting. I love wrestling. My wife loves acting. She’s way better at it than I am. She’s got awesome stuff coming out, obviously, she announced her bit on Star Trek, which is going to be sick. I think that comes out maybe next year and she’s got another thing that I’m not allowed to talk about that’ll be coming out sooner than that. Yeah, I can’t say anything. People have been like oh she’s on hiatus, taking a break. She has not been taking a break. She has been working her tail off the last six, seven months, she’s been hustling.”

What is Seth Rollins grateful for?

“My health, people around me and that I get to be Seth Rollins.”

Sheamus (@WWESheamus) is a professional wrestler signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Phoenix, AZ to discuss his YouTube channel Celtic Warrior Workouts hitting 1 million subscribers, his first championship reign being with the WWE Championship after beating John Cena, why he is still chasing the Intercontinental Championship, his 18-second victory over Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania 28, being Edge’s final WWE opponent, why he and Gunther always have great matches, coming back from a potentially career-ending injury, signing a new 5-year deal with WWE and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.” – Jim Watkins

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On hitting 1 million subscribers on Celtic Warrior Workouts:

“Yeah, what a ride, man. We started out, me and a friend of mine, Ray Senior. We started in Dublin. I was going through some issues with my training and I just kind of lost all motivation to work out. I started doing these kind of, I wouldn’t say CrossFit style, but just kind of more functional training stuff, wall balls into burpees and then sledge pushes down the street and all these different exercises. I just kind of got to challenging myself in the way I never challenged before, rather than just doing static weight lifting, bench press or barbell curls, doing one armed with the land mines. So yeah, it just became a thing where I started getting my passion back for working out. I talked to Ray about it and we’re posting all this stuff on Instagram because there’s nothing really happening at the time. At the time me and Cesaro were tagging, but we’re kind of in a period of just purgatory where we weren’t really doing much. Think we might even have been the champs at that stage, but we weren’t really doing much on TV, so I was just trying to figure a different way to burn off energy and be more creative. Then came up with the idea of the channel, because in WWE the entire roster is made up of athletes. There was nothing that touched on working out. Just one handheld camera, did a couple of videos. Then on the road I asked the talent if they wanted to do it and if they’d help me out and they all did. I’d phone up the gym, I’d ask one of the social media guys to come in, throw them few quid to record it, and we basically go in there and we’d film the workouts, and Ray took until four o’clock in the morning editing them. So my part was easy, and his part was torture, a nightmare. But it just grew and grew and grew. Then, the biggest thing for me was seeing the responses from people in the comments about how they’ve always wanted to work out, and they just didn’t know how. They started doing these workouts and how it changed their lives. Was incredible. That’s really the biggest benefit from the channel of seeing people just have their lives changed by just diving into health and fitness.” 

On getting his passion back:

“I definitely felt during the pandemic I really came into my own skin. I really felt like I had an opportunity to kind of recreate myself and show people what I was really about. And that’s I think where the whole physicality came from. You know how it was, nobody is physical in the ring as I am and then that’s where we went into the banger era of Sheamus. But yeah, I still get nervous every time I go out there because I care, I’ve still got passion. I’ve always said to myself, if I’m ever in the business where I go out there and I just phone it in, then I think it’s time for me to hang up my boots. But it took me a long time, I definitely faced a lot of negativity from people when I first started the whole thing, working out with Triple H, his workout buddy. Then I became the WWE champion really quickly and people just hated that. A lot of talent hated that too. But it’s been a long journey, and I’m like, sometimes you kind of feel where’s this going. But I think the whole part where it really came together was when I started tagging with Cesaro, and we became The Bar that best of seven series, that’s where I really got my passion back.”

On working with Cesaro/Claudio Castagnoli:

“Claudio just came back and he did a short run. He was off for a while. I think he did something to his shoulder, and then all of a sudden he was doing nothing. I know Claudio well. He’s very, very passionate, he’s very motivated, he’s very disciplined. I know he put a lot of effort into coming back. Then he comes back and after a short time, there’s nothing there for him, he has a chip on his shoulder to show people how good he is, and in the ring he is one of the best. There’s not many people who can touch him. So I was going through a phase after being World Champion with Roman, then we did the League of Nations thing, which kind of just self-imploded, and then we’re just thrown into to the best of seven stuff. We’d already wrestled each other twice, and people were just like I’ve seen this match twice already. But then by the end we told a great story over seven matches, and really had people involved. Then the yay boo stuff as well was fantastic and just our chemistry just grew and grew and grew. That was one of the funnest periods of my entire career working with him. It was great.” 

On his first Championship being the WWE Championship:

“The Randy, Cena thing had just done its rounds, they wrestled about 100 times, and then me and Kofi got picked. Kofi got to go with Randy and I went with John, and we had a couple of matches on a European tour. We had definitely had one in Wales or Minehead. I think it was where I actually wrestled for All Star Wrestling before I got picked up by WWE and I guess that was a test, I think, be honest with you, I don’t know for sure, but there was a throw up between me or Swagger to go in with John at the time, because obviously Jack was obviously a fresh, new talent as well. And that whole initiative, you look back at the Survivor Series, which we’re touching on next Saturday, if you look at that like it was Miz and me and Drew. The talk at the time was I was supposed to go with Hunter, Drew was supposed to go with Taker and Miz was supposed to go with John, and then it all switched with Taker and Shawn for WrestleMania 26 which is in Phoenix, which is where we are.”

On if his accent has changed:

“Not really. It comes back when I go home. When I am talking to you it definitely gets watered down a bit. Because the first year was tough because nobody understood a word I was saying. Like Drew, people still don’t know what Drew was saying half the time. [Drew said he had to get lessons.] He still has to get lessons. I can’t even understand some of his texts, to be honest. But yeah, there’s no chance. He gets the bollocks slagged off of him when he goes to Scotland. Actually, I think it was a Scottish comedian, has a show, sketches, like I think you should leave. And one of them is where just this Scottish lad goes over to America. Comes back, and he starts speaking like an American. Drew, reckons it’s about him, bit of an ego. I think he thinks a lot of himself, but, yeah, I still don’t understand him half the time.”

On it only being a matter of time before he wins the Intercontinental Championship:

“You say that, right? It’s the IC curse of The Celtic Warrior. It’s the one thing I can’t win. The irony is that it’s the first title I really became focused on because Macho Man was in a feud with Steamboat over it. So when I started watching Macho Man was the first IC champion. So the one title that I was exposed to as a fan is the one I can’t win, which has become this kind of crusade. But it’s definitely an IC curse for me.” 

Is it that you want to become Grand Slam Champion?

“Ultimate Grand Slam Champion. It’s basically the first one to win everything. It’s true King of the Ring as well is in there, Rumble, all the rest of them. Jesus. I was almost one of the longest reigning World Heavyweight Champions too but Big Show messed that up, but I was close. I think I’m like the third longest, whatever. But, yeah, it’s been a hell of a ride. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that I’m going into my 18th year with the company.”

On why he and Gunther constantly have great matches:

“European style maybe. I think a lot of talents when they come up, when they’re going in with top talent, I feel they’re just afraid of hurting them, and they’re afraid of just leaving it all out there. For me, they know I don’t give a sh*te. They know you better bring it, because I’m gonna beat the sh*t out of them, but I want them to beat the sh*t out of me too. I want them to bring it. It’s not a thing where I’m going in there taking advantage or taking liberties. That’s the word they used to say. It’s not just like people going, Oh, he’s taking liberties with the younger talents. No, I want them to step up. I want to show a side that no one has seen before, and I bring it out in whatever way I can. Whether it’s the shots, whether it’s the clubs or the 10 beats of the Bodhrán. I want to see them show a side of them that’s never been seen before and they’ve never seen in themselves before. So that brings it out, because you can do all the flips and you can do all the stuff, and there’s definitely a place for that, and people love that. I can’t do it. I’m never going to take it away from anyone. But there’s still a lot. This is still an art to two physical lads going out there and just absolutely tearing each other apart physically, where the people in the crowd just believe that these two individuals hate each other. And I take pride in that. You better step up or just step off. That’s the way it is for me, and I love it, and I know that. And do I get the crap knocked out of me as well because I have that style? Absolutely. This time last year I was sitting on the on the sidelines coming back from what I thought could have been a career-ending neck injury. People don’t realize I went through a lot of procedures, a lot of physical therapy, and I couldn’t move my neck. I went in. I got cortisone shots, I went to see spine surgeon specialists, and then I thought it was good. Then I went back in the ring, and I took a bump and I kept getting stingers, so it wasn’t looking good. Then eventually I got my nerves burned in the back of my neck. And even then, it took a while for that all to settle down. But I literally thought that was it.”

On if a particular bump caused the issue:

“Just over time, took one big bump in the last one before I went away in my last match. I think it was Edge’s last match. I just took an awkward fall, and that itself just I woke up the next morning and thought my neck was broken, just because, again, me and Edge were just knocking the sh*te out of each other, just took a bad fall on the ground. At the time I felt it, but I just worked through it. Then the next day I woke up, it was not good, and it just didn’t go away. I just could not move my neck. And then after that I was trying to work through and then I didn’t know. I didn’t know how serious it was. I just thought it might be something. Because over time, just wear and tear, especially how I work. For example, when I had my first major surgery where I tore my shoulder at the Money in the Bank match. I was out for well, supposed to be six months, but I got ready in three months. I tore my labrum and my left shoulder. So I came back, and the first thing I did was take the hardest post on my shoulder and Flair was in the back going, you’re lunatic, what are you doing? You just had shoulder surgery and you’re hitting the post 100 miles an hour. I said, Yeah, I gotta make sure it works. You know, gotta make sure it’s all right. You gotta test it out. It’s like when someone has something or injury, you gotta just go head first into it. You gotta go make sure you get that fear out of your way. So, yeah, so I took a post 100 miles an hour, but that’s just the kind of mentality me. But, yeah, it was touch and go. There was a couple of times Pete Dunne was there. He was in and out of NXT. So it was Ridge. They both helped, Ridge and Pete really helped me out back in January, February. But there was, I was work with Fit and I couldn’t even take a bump, like even a headlock takeover. I didn’t know whether or not I’d be back.”

On the body shaming comments from fans:

“No that’s on me, mate. So I was I was pushing for Mania. I was pushing for that Gunther match at Mania. [I know Walter had quite a few more pounds on him]. Not anymore. Gunther, he looks like a swimmer now, two different people. We just had different ideas on diet. But yeah, so Gunther. I was pushing that match with Gunther at Mania, and it just didn’t happen. So I was really hoping to end the trilogy on that note, and then that didn’t happen. So I just kind of lost a bit of motivation. I was full on speed towards that. And then once I heard it, once that was kiboshed, yeah, I was like, you know, whatever. So then I just kind of took the foot off the gas, probably drank too many Guinness, enjoy myself too much.”

On the short match against Daniel Bryan:

“No, they didn’t give us a time. I guess what happened was I heard from somebody that it was either going to be Punk and Jericho’s match was going to be short, or me and Bryan’s match was going to be short. I don’t know what the time was. They just said the idea was ding ding ding, distraction, finish.”

Were you ok with that?

“I mean, look, we knew that we could have an amazing match. When we were running the US title back end of 2010, 2011, we knew how good our matches were. We were putting on such good matches I think couple of lads in the main event actually asked like, just so you don’t have to kill yourself. I just kept saying I was trying to break that glass ceiling. But we were just stealing the show every single night, we were tearing it up, knocking the crap out of each other. I remember one time, I don’t know where we were, I think it’s before WrestleMania 27. But yeah, we’re having great matches. We had these street fights we are hitting the bollocks of each other, hitting each other with everything you can think of. One time went for the Brogue and this happened. He’s ducked the Brogue, my left foot got stuck between the middle and the top, and I flipped over upside down. So I was hanging upside down outside the ring, totally by accident. The rope is just like strangling it, so much pressure on my ankle. Bryan comes in with the bleeding kendo and just starts whacking the sh*te out of me! But that’s what it was. We just didn’t care. We just went out there and just was physical as hell. That’s why I loved working Bryan. Bryan was just so unique because he wasn’t the biggest, tallest, whatever, but he had this heart in him and this fighting style, and just never gave up. Just unbelievable, great athleticism and also just very, very physical. The kicks when you’re on your knees, he brought everything. Every kick he did it was brought, was as much intensity as he had.” I told this to Regal the day before we did this. While I was doing the stuff with Pete Dunne I felt Pete’s exactly the same. Pete’s very creative. People realize that, and I’ve got great, very creative mind, but he’s also when he needs to be physical. He can be really, really physical. And that’s kind of like when I was doing that feud with Pete on it kind of brought me back a little bit to the stuff with Bryan.”

On if he has been told to not hit as hard by an opponent:

“Of course I have. Some of them are still there, so I’m not going to go down that road [laughs]. But yeah. But most of them enjoy it. I think most in the beginning are taken aback kind of deer in a headlight stuff. But if you ask them afterwards [they say] that was brilliant. 99% of them after match like that. Because I’m not dropping them on their head, not breaking their nose. I did kick out Jeff Hardy’s tooth once. That’s probably the most damage I’ve done to someone. But yeah, everything I do they could wrestle again tomorrow. It’s not like I’m putting them on the sideline, or I’m putting them in surgery, or I’m putting them in the hospital, or on the shelf. Because they’ll come back. That was awesome. That was great. And you’ll see just kind of adrenaline going in their face.”

On signing a new WWE deal:

“I signed a new five year deal. It just started about two months ago. I’m loving it. The channel hit a million. A lot of great men and women, WWE superstars have given their own time as well to make that happen. So that’s not something where I go I got a million followers. Again, the channel wouldn’t happen only for a lot of the talents were so gracious with their time, and they were so nice about it, because they weren’t getting any money. They’re just on Saturday. You’re on the loop, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, whatever. They’d have a Saturday morning off to get dinner, go to gym, and I’m dragging them into a Celtic Warrior Workout. And they gave their time graciously. So definitely, thanks to all every single person who’s been on that channel, because every single one of them gave their own time, and it would not have happened without them giving their time to make the channel.”

On his match against Edge:

“We talked about it. I remember we talked about doing an angle together, a storyline together for a while. We came up with a storyline, it was shot down for whatever reason. And then it just happened. I just got a call, I think it was because we did a promo the week before, and then we did the match the week after. Edge’s contract was coming up. I didn’t know. No one knew if he was going to stay or go. No one really knew. I didn’t know. I thought he was going to stay, because we’re talking doing something after that as well. But yeah, it was just a situation. I think originally Damian Priest was penciled in, but then it just turned to me. So I don’t know however it happened, but I was really surprised that did happen. Both excited about it too, because me and Edge have never had a one on one match. Me and Rey [Mysterio] still haven’t had a one on one match. Me and Punk still haven’t. Well, no, I think me and Punk did wrestle a couple of times back in the day, about 12 years ago. But for me, I think Rey is the only person I haven’t wrestled who has been on the roster for a substantial amount of time.”

On if he has thought about how much longer he intends to wrestle:

“Not really. Again, I just signed a new five year deal. [So that’ll take you into your 50s?] Yeah, my wife reminds me all the time, 52. Listen, I’ll go to the wheels fall off me. Could do it until physically I can’t do it anymore. I love what I do, and listen, there’s plenty of time to sit back and read a book and just watch TV. I know a lot of people. I’ve talked to some talents as well, but we meet them all of Mania and everything when they come in, especially the Hall of Fame, but also everybody gets invited to Mania. You can tell a lot of the talents who just retired too early. I mean, look, if I had to hang on my boots when that stuff happened with my neck, I’d be at peace with it. Because sometimes you can tell that when they have retired before their time there is a little bit of regret there.”

On the disastrous Raw after WrestleMania 35:

“So that Monday we [Sheamus and Cesaro] were supposed to be off for Raw because we were SmackDown talents, and then we got pulled in to break up the Seth and Kofi match. Me and Tony are like this is horrible. They’re just going to sh*t all over us. People want this title versus title match. Kofi had just beaten Bryan and then Seth had beaten Brock. But they’re in New York City, Barclays Center. We’re like, we’re going to go in there and break that up? That’s a terrible idea. There’s going to sh*t on us. So it was just what happened was with the singles that turned into a tag. That’s when the beach balls came out fella, all the beach balls because people are just angry, they took away what you’re giving them, which I think was a terrible idea. And then the next night we had a six man. It was me, Drew and Cesaro against all of The New Day. So time got messed up in that one. It just got messed up, and it was a taped show as well. But whatever happened, I end up getting a concussion. Got a shin in the back of the head, so I was knocked out cold. I was knocked out on my feet, but I don’t remember anything after the kick, and then I went back and I’ll remember is I was not good for about a month after got really bad concussion. So that could have been [the end], I didn’t know if that was it. I think, if you think back then, if I’d retired then, I’d missed out on the whole coming back during the pandemic era, going into the banger after banger, all the stuff I’ve done lately, that would never existed. That’s kind of really where I started to show people, they started realizing who I was and how much passion I had and the matches I was putting on. So you take that out, you know what I mean? So it’s like, when do you retire? When you go, like, I’m gonna pull the plug, when is the right time? Because if I’ve had a massive concussion. I can’t do this anymore. Would I be a producer, or whatever it is, or just go on? I went on, and then I got the neck stuff, and then it’s like, so that’s just wouldn’t have existed. I wouldn’t be sitting here with you right now. So I think as long as you’ve got passion and your body can go, obviously you don’t want to be. Like, my biggest fear with the Mrs is that if we have kids and stuff that I won’t be able to play with them or whatever, but I think for a 47-year-old in January, I feel like I’m doing all right physically, I’m moving around pretty good. But I think I’ll go until I feel like I’m not wanted. Thanks for everything, but you know, we just don’t enjoy watching anymore, you can’t do what you can do. I don’t know when is that time? Could be 70 [laughs], I’m just throwing stuff out there. But I just feel like as long as I can do what I do, as long as I enjoy what I’m doing, as long as the fans are enjoying what I’m doing, yeah, I keep that banger after banger thing going. To keep the banger after banger era, just keep going and going, who knows where I end up because I’m still enjoying what I’m doing. The schedule is just a lot better now as well for the talent. So I think a lot of the talents are going to have longer careers because of the schedule being the way it is compared to what it was. I think that’s good.”

What is Sheamus grateful for?

“My wife, my family, my friends, my health and my dogs.”

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets for the first ever INSIGHT LIVE the day before the Royal Rumble on January 31, 2025 in Indianapolis are on sale now!

R-Truth (@RonKillings) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Phoenix, AZ to discuss how his career is still going strong at 52 years old, being a former TNA World Champion, his hilarious segments with the likes of Brock Lesnar, Wade Barrett and Triple H, his music career, how he is able to make so many stars break character, crashing Drake Maverick’s actual wedding to win the 24/7 Championship, his more serious side in 2011, whether another heel turn could happen and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Most New Year’s resolutions fail because they are wishes, not plans. Break your goals into daily, actionable steps. Success isn’t about the resolution — it’s about the execution.” – Joe De Sena

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On not aging:

“I wish I didn’t age. Thank you, man, thank you. Thank you for the kind words. I hear that a lot and it’s good to know.” 

What’s the secret?

“Daniel Bryan always said this, I don’t have a [time]. Time just doesn’t exist to me. I feel like we have to make time for time, in a sense. So I don’t look at it as you’re too old for this. Are you too young for that? Just look at it like we have time to adapt, evolve, create, we have time to make time.”

On the difference between R-Truth and Ron Killings:

“Oh, wow. Ain’t that much of a difference, man, but there is a difference. Ron Killings is either father, he’s a husband, he’s a son, he’s a friend, he’s all those things above. R-Truth shares that with Ron Killings, I would say share because when I’m R-Truth, I’m R-Truth. That’s up and down.”

On finding his comedic side:

“I’ve always been funny. I think we are all funny, man. It’s timing. I’m best at it on the spot. I mean, I can be creative, and think of it too. But like on the spot funny is just, that’s what my strong points is.”

You’re not coming up with that stuff in advance?

“Most of the stuff no. It comes on the fly, even in pre-tapes, backstage stuff. I sometimes don’t tell what I’m going to say, because I don’t know what I’m going to say. Just it’s the moment, you have to ride the wave.” 

On the segment he was most proud of:

“Probably Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar. The thing with that was, I come to Gorilla and Paul was there. He’s like, ‘Hey, we got a bet going on.’ I was like, ‘What bet?’ He’s like, ‘That you can make Brock laugh.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘We’re not going to tell him what you want to say, we don’t want to hear what you want to say. We just go.’ I said, ‘Man, I think we should let Brock know what we’re gonna do.’ He said, ‘Nope, we’re not gonna let Brock know it all.’ And that was the most impromptu thing that just came off like sliced bread. It was just great.” 

On if he purposely tries to get people to break character:

“I haven’t tried to break anybody, it just happens. Got a funny bone. It is all timing. And I think a lot of people when they’re in a promo with me, or they’re in a backstage with me, I think their guard is up so much. Because of that, it’s easy to penetrate. When you try not to do something too hard, too good, you end up doing it. So it’s that reverse psychology type thing. So, yeah, you have to just be yourself. I’m gonna be myself.”

On confusing Triple H with Tomasso Ciampa:

“Hunter was another one that was like you know what, I gotta get through this. I’m not going to break, this is going to be business. I’ve known Hunter for a long time, so I kind of know his funny spots. I know the funny spots on him. I know what to say to [get him to break]. And that was one of the moments I was waiting on.”

On John Cena being his childhood hero:

“Oh, man, I broke him too with that one. That was good, man. And they’re still running with it. I love it, man. I’m not going to burst nobody’s bubble. I’m not a bubble buster. I love it. He is my childhood hero. I would be legs crossed watching him every Saturday morning.”

On parodying John Cena and asking for his blessing:

“Everything, even wearing shorts. He said, ‘Truth you don’t have to ask me to wear shorts in the ring.’ I said, ‘Man, but I want to. I want to be you. I want to do everything you do, walk, talk. How do you hold your head to the side? I want to do everything. I want to be you.’ He said, ‘Run with it, man.’ Yeah, he’s one of the greatest.”

On having fun:

“Yes, It is the most fun I’m having in my career because I’m clear headed. I’m happy. I’m in a good space, good spot. Everything bounces off me. I’m good to go now.” 

On little Jimmy:

“Do you know people were taking pictures with an empty chair? Yeah. They were like, ‘Hey, do you mind if we take a picture with little Jimmy?’ By all means, take a picture little Jimmy. And they would get to the side of the chair, and they were just like, it would be nobody in the chair. So I was getting a kick out of this. So as long as they went with it, I was going with it. Because little Jimmy was birthed. He was created, and people loved it.”

On the Hell in a Cell 2011 angle:

“Me and Miz were in that mode. We were ready to grab the bull by the horns and ride it. Man, it was again at that time, it was time for Awesome Truth. I think it was the first time with Awesome Truth. So we was like, we were in it to win it. So everything, man was like coming up on the fly, everything was just great. I love that moment. As of right now, that video has over 100 million views on it.”

On his career nearly coming to an end:

“At one point I thought it was [the end], because it was when I caught the infection. A lot of people thought I just tore my quad. I did tear the quad tendon, but a couple of weeks out, when I go to get the stitches out it wasn’t healing. And that’s when they found out I had five different bacteria like staph, MRSA, their cousins and kinfolks and relatives. Yeah, it was bad. It was so bad the doctor wouldn’t even give me a high five. I know it sounds crazy, I want a high five with the doctor. He’s like you don’t have time for high fives, this is serious. I just went to get my stitches out. He said, ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ I said, I’m gonna pick my kids up. He said ‘Can somebody else go do it?’ I’m like, why? [He said] ‘We need to take you to surgery now.’ Yeah. So everything went from haha to you better be ready. It was serious. There was a chance I could lose my leg. That’s how serious it got. The infection was that bad that he thought they would have to amputate if they couldn’t get it slowed down. I was on antibiotics that was like, it was $4,700 a week for it. I was on the heavy stuff. I had a picc line the first 6 weeks. Deep down it was like it might be gone. He told my wife if we don’t get this under control we are going to have to think of other options. My wife said what other options? He said amputation. I’m like what the? But that’s when I was thinking I may never come back to this, how can I adapt?” 

On still being able to go in the ring:

“I like being in the ring. I think I’m like Rey Mysterio with this right here. I’ll let my body be the guide and be the answer to that. I always listen to my body, always. And right now, man, to be honest, I’ve never felt as healthy as I feel now, clear-minded, clear-headed. Still can do my back flips, still can do my splits. There’s a lot of things that this generation hadn’t even seen me do yet, and I still can do, like you said, just sometime I don’t need to do it. Give me an opportunity, I will go out there and show that oh, sh*t, he could still go.”

On bringing a ladder into the Royal Rumble:

“That was a fan’s idea. Yes, I do read those tweets. I see them all too. So watch what you say. But, yeah, I saw a fan tweet that. I see you running in there, going in with the ladder. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s funny. Took it to creative, and they was like, let’s do it.”

On constantly coming up with new material:

“You have to reinvent yourself all the time. You have to evolve. You have to stay up with the times and you won’t age out if you keep coming up. It’s like you’re as good as good as your last match. That’s saying you have to always just evolve. You have to resurface. You have to reinvent yourself. Everything changes. I was around when they didn’t have telephones, not when they had pictures, but when they had pagers and stuff. I heard they had pictures. I don’t know about that, but when they had that you got mail! AOL. So you just evolve. Chris, you gotta evolve with everything, musically, theatrically, with a visual to everything evolves.”

On winning the US Championship in confusing circumstances:

“That was crazy. If I could remember this correctly, we had maybe another two or three more spots to go to, and that was it. I was going to get it anyway, but there’s a strict rule, if you don’t kick out at three referees gonna get fined. You don’t want that. You better slap that motherf*cker. Excuse me, sorry, you better slap it down, right? So Chioda just did his job, Shinsuke didn’t kick out and we’re like, oh sh*t, sorry. We’re like, Oh shoot. That was it. That was a wrap. He did his job.” 

On a possible heel turn:

“The selfish part of me would love to turn heel and be a heel, but the majority of me is like, I could never be a heel. People would think it’s cool if I did something bad, if I did something heelish, they would think it’s cool. I smoked a cigarette, and they thought that was the coolest thing on TV. To be a heel you have to get that real, genuine hatred heel heat. Mine would be more of like, they will want me to bash somebody’s head in. Selfishly, I would love to see it one time, but I don’t have to.”

On his favourite 24/7 Championship segment:

“Oh, man, there were so many of them that was good. I could tell you some good stories. The plane was good. Drake’s wedding was good. [Wasn’t that his actual wedding?] That was his real wedding. Y’all, that was funny. The thing in New York the Christmas light tree. Oh, man, they robbed us so bad. The guy had the horses, and we had to pay him more money for the horses to run. They wouldn’t even run. They would try. And it was cold. New York is cold. If my horse won’t run, my horse won’t run.” 

On the golf course segment:

“Carmella drove me with that golf cart from one end of the fence to the other end. Because I thought I would outrun the golf cart. Didn’t know the guy gave us the fastest one he had that he had souped up. So I said, we got but one take. I said, you push that gas. You better reach that gas, and she pushed it, and I ran. And that last leap I took, I was holding on for dear life, because she was moving with it. If you go back and watch that, you can tell.”

What is R-Truth grateful for:

“My life, my family and people.”

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets for the first ever INSIGHT LIVE the day before the Royal Rumble on January 31, 2025 in Indianapolis are on sale now!

Mustafa Ali (@MustafaAli_X) is a professional wrestler previously signed to TNA and WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to talk about his new wrestling school in Chicago called Chicago Wrestling Center, how his injury led to Kofi Kingston’s WWE Championship win at WrestleMania 35, being eliminated by Nia Jax in the Royal Rumble, nearly winning Money in the Bank before Brock Lesnar entered the match, the infamous Retribution faction, his viral RKO counter and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “The cost of never taking a risk is spending the rest of your life wishing you had.”

Sponsors:
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For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com

On opening a wrestling school:

“I’m really excited. It’s something that’s been sitting in the back of my mind for quite a while, but it’s located in Niles. That’s like 15 minutes from O’Hare in Chicago, and it’s just the best of the best, man. I’m gonna have the best trainers. AEW, WWE, TNA, they all come to town. I’m gonna invite them to come hang out and train and do seminars with the students there. So we launch in January 2025 I’m super excited.”

On advice for aspiring wrestlers:

“I think the one thing that comes up is there’s never a good time for anything. One of my favorite quotes is ‘Man makes plans and God laughs.’ Who are we to know what’s gonna happen in a year? I know people are financially struggling, so if there’s one aspect of you not financially being able to go to wrestling school, I understand that. But I’ve also seen people cut their cell phone bill and their Hulu and they’re gonna say they’re going to this school one way or the other. They’re gonna wait a couple more tables. If you truly want something the school opens up in January 25, the kids that want to be there are gonna be there. But the advice I would give to people that are planning on going to a wrestling school is, I don’t want to say workout, but it’s intense. You have to realize someone else’s life is literally in your hands when you’re picking them up and you’re running and this and that. So fatigue and weakness from a physical standpoint is very dangerous, both to you and your partner. So I would say that would be my biggest advice, and then be prepared for the mental challenge. I don’t want to say that I’m doing like old school training, but I do feel there’s a lot of schools, and I’m gonna make headlines with this, probably there’s a lot of schools that’ll take your money. I won’t. There’s an application form you have to send out, you have to fill out a waiver, and there’s a big portion of it that’s called, Why do you want to train here? And if I don’t feel what you’re saying off of that app, I won’t approve the application. I’m very, very blessed and fortunate to be very financially secure. This is literally me doing something because it’s a passion project on the side. I still got a million dreams in front of me that I am chasing. I’m just not sleeping in the process. But inside this is something again, I feel like I was obligated to do and my standards are here, and one way or the other, you’re gonna meet me here.”

On his current character:

“This is a super random side note, but this is how sensitive this character can be. In TNA, I had a feud going with Mike Bailey. I’m talking about weeks before a real-life event happened. We came up with this idea where after I’ve been torturizing Mike Bailey for weeks, and beating up his friends like that. I’m pulling up into the arena with an SUV, and I have a campaign manager with me. His name is campaign Singh. And I’m like man, these idiot voters, they love me. Watch this. I put my window down. And he’s like, Sir, I don’t think that’s a good way. I’m like, shut up. They love me. And we have all these fans going and I’m shaking their hands, these idiots. And as I’m shaking their hands, I go back to Singh I’m like, they love me. Mike Bailey appears within this crowd and Mike Bailey grabs me by the throat. He’s trying to pull me out of the SUV, and Secret Service jumps on him. And I’m like, drive, drive, drive, and we drive away. Later that night in a promo, I say Mike Bailey tried to attack me in what the public has deemed an assassination attempt. We tape this, the week that’s going to go live, which is a Thursday earlier that week, the incident happens with Trump, the assassination attempt. So I’m sitting and I’m watching this, oh no. Some people had nothing to do with it, right? A genuine coincidence. So I had to text TNA because some people gonna think we’re parodying it or making fun of it. No matter how you feel about someone, death is death. I personally don’t wish that upon anybody. So I made the call, hey, I really think you should edit this clip. So we ended up editing that part out. But it just goes to show you the volatile, sensitive nature of this character. So, that’s why I am a little bit more OG Ali over here. But yeah, I just got to evaluate and see if it’s something I want to continue doing long-term because of an incident like that.”

On being able to do a reverse 450:

“The thing is, again, wrestling rings aren’t as nice and padded as they think they are. The cause of concern with that move is the ropes actually, more for me, I would feel terrible if I hurt somebody because you had to realize I’m jumping backwards. So there’s a good portion of this move where I have lost my opponent, and the next time I see my opponent is when I’m landing. So that’s why I’ll check back once, and I gotta take that picture and I hope he’s still there. Again, margin of error, it’s a shin or a knee or an elbow across their throat, their face, their head. So, yeah, just as far as how I knew, I have no idea. I must have figured out how to do it when I was 16. Because, you know, you’re 16, you’re indestructible.” 

On people mispronouncing his name:

“I say it the right way. So I mean, I’ll take the blame on that. So when I started with WWE, everyone’s super nice, right? You go introduce yourself, and I’m just that guy where it’s like, I’m the new guy here. I don’t want to rock the boat. I’m in WWE. It’s very like, you’re taken aback. So when you’re introducing yourself, like, ‘Hey, I’m Mustafa Ali.’ [They responded incorrectly] ‘Mustafa?’ Yeah, sure, you just go with it. And again, it’s on me. I just didn’t have the balls at the time to correct anybody. So eventually I was like, oh man, they’re all just saying it that way. I should just say it too, because I think it’s just easier for the audience to say, and I’m not proud about it. I just kind of like, hey, I can say it’s not a big deal, but it’s your name, of course it’s a big deal. But at the time, again, just super unsure of myself. Didn’t have the confidence, or the stock, honestly, to say much. So I was saying my name incorrectly for a long time.”

On his name being changed to just Ali:

“Again, I guess in a way, I’m not proud of it, but trying to make myself a little bit more marketable. We’ve seen the clips that go that guy’s name’s too hard, I’m just gonna call him Mo. I didn’t want that. My biggest fear, which came to light, was if I correct them and my name’s too hard to pronounce, they’re just gonna call me Ali, which, sure enough, when I brought up that, hey, you know, I brought it up one time, by the way, this the correct pronunciation. So Road Dogg explained to me. What actually happened was when you do live events, these producers, they write reports, and this is during a babyface run. I think I was working with Shinsuke Nakamura or something like that. One portion of the crowd was chanting ‘Mustafa’ and the other crowd was chanting Ali.’ It was a weird chant and just dies out, and it happened a few nights, so that got written in the report. So whoever makes decisions, I’m assuming it was Vince at the time, just call him Ali, just one name. That’s how I lost my name.” 

On if his WWE release was a surprise:

“Not surprised that it happened. Surprised when it did happen? Yeah. I think I was in NXT at the time, and I actually had a pay-per-view match scheduled that weekend with Dominik Mysterio for the North American Championship.”

On being rumoured to win that match:

“I don’t believe anything until it happens. But yeah, I don’t mind sharing. I think that was the plan. But mind you, the plan was actually to put the North American Champion on me months prior. But WWE is so smart with advertising and contract negotiation. So NXT, the network deal was coming up. Shawn in NXT is awesome. He explains to me, he’s like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna put the North American Championship on you.’ What happens is the network deal is coming up, and this is when Judgment Day, specifically Dom, is just white hot. I mean, they’re still white hot right now, but Dom was next level right there. So they were like, ‘Hey, everyone in Judgment Day has a championship. We want to put a championship on Dom, and we want to spike the ratings for NXT.’ Because the idea is, if you spike the ratings with the contract negotiations this helps you. So this is when Seth was coming and Becky was coming back. So I get a call from Shawn, ‘Hey, we’re actually putting the championship on Dom, and here’s a reason.’ I go, Yeah, that makes total sense, awesome. Do it like that. I didn’t expect it coming. Dom’s gonna come and challenge Wes Lee and beat him, great. So we do that. Then we do a three way match, which was super fun, with Dom, me and Wes Lee. And then [Shawn] was like, ‘Hey, Dom is needed back on the main roster.’ Poor guy was working six days a week. So I think that was a plan. Was it a surprise? No, because I saw WWE stock and WWE in general going this way [up], and my stock just going this way [down].”

On a possible WWE return:

“I think there’s multiple paths, yeah. And the thing is there’s good relations there. The thing with them moving to Netflix is very, very interesting, because it just opens things. I don’t know how much the show is going to change, as far as dynamic, as far as rating, as far as what they’re okay with.”

On his injury that led to KofiMania:

“Just a series of unfortunate events. It’s really, really cool, because from that came a really tight relationship and friendship with Kofi Kingston. We were in a talent meeting one time where they had someone come in for something, and the guy didn’t know the product very well, and he kept looking at Kofi and calling him coffee. And because Kofi is such a nice guy, and he would not [correct him]. He’s like, right coffee? And everyone’s laughing. Elimination Chamber, it all happened so fast. Come up to SmackDown, wrestle Daniel Bryan, losing that effort. But I think the next week I pinned him and I got AJ Styles. I’m like, What is going on? Get the word finally that we’re moving you over to SmackDown full-time. You’re done with 205, we’re gonna get you a main roster contract, all this stuff. So it’s all happening a million miles per hour. I want to say the week before, I got the heads up about, ‘Hey, you’re in the Elimination Chamber. Could you wrestle 60 minutes on SmackDown?’ I was like, what? They go, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna do a gauntlet style thing.’ I go, ‘Yeah, I could wrestle 60 minutes.’ I’m like, Man, I’m doing all this cardio. That week, I have a match with Randy and just kind of a slip of the boot. So Randy does like the stomp where he goes around, he stomps each body part. And one of the things, I think the compliment just went to my like man Ali sells so good. You hit something and it looks like he just sells so well. So I want to say Randy had either stomped me in the stomach, something like that, something that basically made me sit up to sell. I’ve watched Randy work for years, and usually it’s stomp, and he takes his time and stomp, and then he takes his time. But for some reason, I guess, he was feeling to stomp me again in the stomach. So he went for two stomps. But when he stopped me the first time, I sat up, and the second stop was coming and just caught me right in the eye, and I could feel like the bones. I felt my face move and it was like, oh man. And in a second I’m like, Oh, I’m fine. I knew where I was. I was fine. But Randy keeps saying ‘Yo your eye is flaring up really bad. Are you okay?’ I’m fine. I promise I’m fine. It’s just a black eye. We finished the match. We get back. Everyone’s saying are you okay? I go, Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just a black eye. Later that night, the finish of SmackDown was a big melee to set up the Elimination Chamber match. Eric Rowan’s with Daniel Bryan at the time. So the spot had called for Eric Rowan to do the claw choke slam on the announce table. I take it, and I remember landing on the table, and I go oh no. The whole room is just spinning violently, I feel like I’m spinning on the table. I know I’m laying here, I’m messed up. So I’m like you probably just got rocked. Just give it a second. I get back. I’m all good. I’m all good, that weekend I have live events. I’m sorry, this is when I get the call about, hey, can you go, like, 60 minutes? I’m like yeah I can do it. I’m driving to these live events and I was like man, something’s not right. I wrestled the first night, and I was like man, I’m gonna throw up, I’m not myself. I’m stumbling on myself, but I’m composed enough that I’m okay. The second night I’m in a tag team match, and I want to say my tag team partner was actually Tye Dillinger versus Samoa Joe and Shelton Benjamin, and just things happen in the ring. I was looking this way, but Shelton wanted me to go this way, and he kind of grabs me to give me this turnbuckle move I do where I get thrown in the turnbuckle. It looks like I knock myself out, except this time I really knock myself out right again, because I think I’m going here, but I get pulled this way, get rocked again, and now I’m like, I can’t stand. Samoa Joe picks me up for the muscle buster. I’m able to slip out, get the quick pin, and I’m out of there. And, yeah, this part sucks. I’m sitting in the back Indian style on the floor, and a referee walks by. He goes, ‘Hey, you good?’ I go, yep. And he knows, goes and gets the doc. Doc comes. ‘Hey, Ali, why don’t you come with me?’ And I know. I go, No, no, I’m good. They go, stand up. I go, No, I’m good. And eventually, I get bullied into the medical room. I’m grabbing everything I can. I just my back, and I was like, oh, yeah, okay ‘Do you know where we’re at?’ Yeah. ‘What town are we in?’ We’re here. I’m looking at the wall trying to see, I don’t know anything. I’m gripping the table. Man, this part sucks because they wanted me basically to put my hands in front and I’m sitting on the little medical table. I’m holding it, they go put your hands up, so I do this and, man, I just eat it. They go this is massive, you’re not well. So they all put me up and they, it’s a whole protocol thing where the doc has to stay across you from the hotel room, transport me back home.” 

This is concussion protocol?

“I think mine was pretty exceptional. I couldn’t stand correctly. It was really bad vertigo. So, we have to get you home, WWE arranges for transportation. And, yeah, that’s what sucks. I’m like Okay, what’s the process? Can I make Elimination Chamber? They go, ‘Dude, you’re out for months probably.’ I was like, no! Then, they asked me to film something at home. I send it in, basically announcing I won’t be in the Elimination Chamber. I’m heartbroken, but I’m going to come back better. And then this beautiful gift of KofiMania happens, and Kofi, what a guy and lightning in a bottle. The entire WWE universe is behind him. He has this magical gauntlet performance. He has this amazing performance at Elimination Chamber and those combined is what fueled KofiMania all the way to WrestleMania. Now, no way am I comparing, but as a competitor, of course, there’s some jealousy, right? I’m watching. I’m like, man, could you imagine what a healthy Ali could do in the Elimination Chamber? But then I go and look and I’m so mad at myself. I’m like, if only I didn’t take that bump at the live event. I’m sitting there kind of like, I could have, I would have been fine. And my wife’s like, so you thought it would be a good idea to go in the Elimination Chamber concussed? I would have tried to scale something, you don’t know, at the end of the day, I’m healthy, I’m happy. Everything works. I’m good. My brain isn’t mush. WWE did the right thing. They protected me for the day. You gotta protect these athletes from themselves, because we have that thing. We get hit, we get up. The instinct is, I’m good.”

On Money in the Bank:

“So, yeah, I show up to Money in the Bank, and they’re like, ‘Hey, you’re winning it.’ I go, ‘What? Okay, cool.’ So this is so funny because I’m one of the shorter guys in the match. So they actually had me climb up the ladder so they could adjust the briefcase so it was within grabbing distance of me. And all day we’re putting this match together. Everyone’s like, Hey, man, Congrats. Yeah, man, this is awesome. I was like, Oh, maybe I can get this briefcase to light up, because I was wearing the light of stuff at the time. I’m thinking this is one of those cloud 9 moments, I can’t believe this is happening, because it’s not happening. So the match is about to start. Entrances have started. I want to say Baron Corbin is making his entrance. I don’t know why, I just have his music in my head. I have a very funny visual for you. So I’m wearing this light-up mask and I’m wearing this jacket that lights up and I have a glove, and they all kind of pulsate with lights, obviously. And Jamie Noble comes up. ‘Hey, boss man wants to talk to you. Go talk to the boss.’ I was like, Okay. The entrances are happening. Vince is looking up, and I come over. Now, mind you gorilla is completely dark, so I just have these red lights that are flashing on Vince’s face. And he’s all shadowy. So you can see the picture that I see right looking up him, he goes ‘Change of plans. Do the match, everything you called. When the time’s right I want you to climb up the ladder and grab the briefcase. Someone’s going to come out. I want you to hold the briefcase and just have shock on your face. He’s gonna run down, tip the ladder over, and you stay down. Do you understand?’ And again, my lights are just flashing on his face, so I see what he’s saying. But there’s a moment where he goes black and it’s red, black and it’s red. I’m like, ‘Copy that, sir.’ I just walk away I’m like, It’s Brock. Who else could it be? I’m walking, I’m like, whatever. My music is hitting. So he literally told me. None of the guys in the match know. Finn didn’t know. Randy didn’t know, Baron Corbin in the match, Drew McIntyre, Andrade. No one knew. I’m the only guy that knows. I’m walking down, I’m just focused on the match. At this point, the match happens, climbing up the thing and, man, it’s just like, I know everyone’s like, Well, why didn’t you just grab the briefcase? I want to be like, because my boss told me.”

On why he didn’t just grab the briefcase:

“Well here’s the thing that’s my immediate response to him [Vince]. Well, my music’s playing and he’s got a vision. There’s no point in arguing this time. So what you didn’t see is, I climb up the ladder. I got my fingertips on the briefcase. Brock’s music hits. I do the shock thing like I’m asked, and I’m like, they’re gonna cut to Brock, but at some point they’ll come back to me. They didn’t. But what I did is I did the slip thing where I try to get it, which you don’t see on camera, the briefcase slips out of my hands. So when Brock gets in the ring, you see me trying, it just slipped up. I’m trying to regain possession of it so that I’m not just holding it for the whole time. That was my I’ll cover it up this way, and then I would just tell Vince oh, it slipped out of my hand. So I climb up, I grab it. Brock’s music hits. They cut to him. I do the slip. You don’t see it, but when I’m looking down Brock hits a ladder out the way, and it just completely annihilates a cameraman named Rico. Just hits him in the head. He goes down. He needs stitches. And I’m watching this, I’m like, he’s gonna murder me! I hope I’m not destroying the mystique of Brock here, but what a pro. Gets in the ring, grabs me, looks up to me. He’s like, ‘Hey, kid you ready?’ And I’m like yeah? He says ‘Okay, nice and easy, one, two.’ And the thing is, he was so nice about the push that I was expecting this violent thing that I hurled myself off the ladder, and I end up hitting the top rope with my mouth, cutting my mouth completely my fault, and hurting myself, and I go down like he just pros pro man. I’m saying that, but you can see if you watch it back, if you cut to the clip of the guys on the floor selling. They’re all very unamused that this match happened that way.”

On being eliminated from the Royal Rumble by Nia Jax:

“So that spot wasn’t originally for me. I don’t know who it was for, but someone was not very much okay with getting eliminated by a woman. And I’m at this point where I’m trying to prove that I’m a pro’s pro. I’m down for whatever. And I can kind of see, I think it was Jamie Noble, because it was some sort of frantic search. I looked at Jamie. I was like, ‘What’s the spot?’ He looked at me and he goes, ‘Would you be okay with it?’ I just go, Yep. What is it? He goes, ‘Well, Nia is gonna beat up R-Truth, and then she’s gonna take everyone’s finisher. But before she does that I just need her to throw somebody [out].’ I don’t know who the original person is. I really don’t know. But I remember going it’s a scripted show. It’s fine. Me and Nia are homies. So I remember I told Nia hey, I’ll do it. And she was so like, thank you. I could see the sense of relief. So I could see why some people were like, oh, man, that made you look weak. I go Nia is shoot strong as hell and could pick up anyone in this room right now, and she tossed me over. So we did the thing, hey, Nia, can I do the whole [thing] I’m not gonna hit you. I did this thing and then she head-butted me, picked me up. Gets talked about to this day. Actually, I think the RKO and the 619 she took in the Royal Rumble gets talked more. But yeah, it was a moment. I could see how some of the guys were like, Oh, I wouldn’t have done that. One, I didn’t have a problem with it. And two, I was looking like, I think that goes a long way to Vince and to Bruce. This guy didn’t have a problem getting the spot over because that’s a moment. That’s what we want to do. We want to create moments. That was the honest intention behind it. So, yeah, it wasn’t originally designed for me, from what I understand.”

What is Mustafa Ali grateful for?

“Family, empathy and that I have this mindset.”

Ivar (@Ivar_WWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his recent return to WWE from injury, getting temporarily paralyzed in a match, returning as The War Raiders instead of the Viking Raiders, how he made it to WWE, the comedy segments with The Street Profits, being a part of an independent show with John Cena and Vince McMahon and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “A real loser is somebody that is so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.”

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On his recent neck injury:

“So it started in Brooklyn before WrestleMania, me and Ricochet had a match. I took a European uppercut and I was like, whoa. Did a system check. I’m like, I’m okay. I’m all right. And then after that, I was doing Main Event, Raw, NXT, NXT coconut shows. I was doing some SmackDown dark stuff. I was just on everything. Then it got to that match with Oba Femi for the North American Championship in NXT. We got to the second half of that match, and I just lost all strength in my right arm. I couldn’t pick him up, so I just started calling audibles in the ring where I wasn’t going to pick him up. We made it through the match, and that was that. The whole time we were checking on medical to see how I was doing. And then after that match was like, okay, that’s no good. Then I went to Discovery Cove that week with my wife, just to be like, Okay, I need a break, like a reset. Usually, when we do vacation things, it’s go, go, go. I’m like, I know I need something where I can just relax and just see how I’m doing. We did an animal trek thing, where you interact with a parrot. I held my arm up for the parrot to come over, and I couldn’t hold my arm up. So that was immediately MRI, we’re getting an MRI right away. Then we got the results back and that was it, read the results. They’re like, Okay, this is probably the end of your career, to the point where they handed me mental health paperwork to kind of get that rolling, because I already had the double fusion of my neck. So if we’re talking about another level fusion, because the MRI showed I had another herniated disc in my neck the level above. So two levels, C5,6,7, they’re all fused together. This was C4 and 5, so the one directly above, another fusion would probably be the end of my career. So yeah, they were there preparing me for the worst for when I went to see my surgeon. My surgeon had read the result in the MRI, and he pretty much felt the same way that this was it. So for five days, I think this is it. It’s over with. I flew close to the sun and the wings melted. But when I saw him in Birmingham five days later, and he actually had the disc for the MRI, and he read the results for the MRI himself, he’s like, okay, we can work with this. So with my original injury, I did the suicide dive, and my head got pushed back into my disc, exploded into my spinal cord, which caused the temporary paralysis and then pretty much emergency fusion surgery after that. This one, the herniation happened, instead of shooting in towards the cervical cord, it went out away from it. So he was pretty sure, because my symptoms weren’t too bad, we could probably rehab it without having to do surgery. And if we did have to do surgery, he knew a different surgeon who would go in through the back and just shave the herniation down arthroscopically, which wouldn’t require fusion. So he said on multiple occasions that I dodged a very big bullet.”

On being given another opportunity:

“I do have an opportunity, and it’s like the theme of my career. It keeps happening where things happen, and it’s a career-ending injury, and it’s like, oh, wait a minute, maybe not. And I’m just lucky. I’m not on my 9th life, I’ve been well past that. I’m on my 12th life. Pretty much.”

On being temporarily paralysed:

“So seconds for feeling. So I dive out of the ring. Someone’s hand gets me in the face, it pushes my head back. You watch it, and you can’t even tell that’s what happened. And then this exploded right into my spinal cord, I fall, and I hit the mat. So when I fall, a lot of people thought that I hurt my legs on the dive, because when the hand hits me, I lose everything. My body. I have no control over anything, my legs just hit the ground. There’s nothing. Boom. But then I managed to roll over, but I couldn’t feel anything. This is COVID. No one’s ringside, no fans are ringside, no medical is ringside, no nothing. I knew they were going to the finish in the ring, and I needed to tell somebody I was hurt. I knew the ref wasn’t coming out and checking on me, because they were going to the finish in the ring. So I went to put my hands into the x, the signal that I’m hurt, I need medical out here, and I didn’t feel my arms at all. So I go back and watch the footage, and my arms move, and I do a little X, but I couldn’t feel that. Couldn’t feel it at all. Couldn’t feel my legs, nothing. And then as the medical came out and stuff, I started getting crazy burning sensation in my legs and started getting crazy burning station in my arms and stuff. So the feeling started to come back, but it was just I was riddled with nerve pain, and then it was off to the ambulance. I did manage to ask talent relations for a raise on my way. Didn’t happen though [laughs]. I thought it was a good opportunity, but, yeah, that was crazy. The whole thing was crazy because it was COVID, so no one getting the ambulance with me. Went to the hospital, no one’s gonna come in to see me. There’s a whole bunch of people who came to the hospital, they couldn’t get in. And my tag partner, obviously the ref who I’ve known for so long Bennett, Jason Jordan, came. He was the producer, just trying to check maybe they couldn’t even get into the hospital, not even the waiting room. Couldn’t even because we’re in the middle of COVID. So it was kind of crazy. I mean, obviously it’s a crazy experience, but it made it double, like amplified, because of the situation that we were all in.”

On not choosing to have neck fusion:

“I didn’t have a choice. There was no option for me, because the the disc had exploded into my spinal cord. So I had pressure pushing on my spinal cord, which is what gave me all the nerve pain. That’s why I had temporary paralysis. As the swelling kind of eased up a little bit, I was able to get the feeling back as things kind of went back in, but because they were so damaged, they were going to permanently push on my spinal cord. So that would have been the end of my career number one, but it would have been hurt for my quality of life, because I wasn’t able to do anything. It was hard enough to get an approval to get a flight from Orlando to Birmingham to get the surgery with that surgeon. That’s the surgeon. I don’t think the people in Orlando wanted to do it. So I was lucky and got, got the flight. But yeah, it was I didn’t really have much of a choice.”

On his current quality of life:

“So I’m pretty good now. To be fair, I do have permanent nerve damage and nerve pain in my hands, and that will never go away. That’s something I live with. But as far as everything else, I got most of my mobility back to my neck. It’s a little stiff now because I have another herniation, but I still have very good range of motion. I credit that to yoga pretty much. Then all my strength is returned to my arm, so I have no problems there, so it’s really just the nerve pain right now from the original injury that I have that’s permanent. But I have good days and bad days. Some days I can really feel it goes down my arm a little bit, and some days I can’t feel it all, kind of all depends. But quality of life, I feel pretty good.” 

On the return of The War Raiders:

“When I had this opportunity to do the singles run and it was going well, I had a conversation with Triple H where he said, Hey, how about we start pulling back off of the heavy Viking stuff, slowly peeling some of those layers off so we can tell more stories with you. I’m like, Oh, that’s great. So as we started to do that, I got hurt again, and then Erik and I were ready to come back. I think we were actually scheduled to return in Calgary at Raw. At the last second, they pulled our travel and said that we’re gonna hold off for now. Oh man, here we go. They’re like, No, nothing bad. We want to hold off. We want to have better creative for you. And then the next week, we got a phone call, Hey, how do you guys feel coming back as The War Raiders? And we were like yeah that sounds good. That sounds really good.”

On if there was talk of bringing their original names back:

“I think at this point we spent five years in the main roster and Erik and Ivar, especially with the Ivar singles run. That’s how we’re known. I think it would have felt like an erase of everything we’ve done. I don’t think we want to erase everything that we’ve done on the main roster. We’ve done some great things, including singles run, our Raw Tag Title run that we had, all the stuff that we did with The Street Profits, whether people liked it or not, it’s our history. I loved every second of it, and I don’t think we want to erase that.”

On the move that impresses the fans the most:

“I think it’s the moonsault, but sometimes it’s the Tajiri, sometimes it’s the forward roll to the floor. I mean, it kind of depends on the situation, but I’ve learned a lot. When I climb up the ropes it builds so much anticipation, and they just want to see what’s going to happen. Like, oh, my God, he’s so big and he’s climbing. So I tend to like that stuff the best, because I can feel the anticipation. I did the handspring back elbow, it’s exciting and it’s shocking, but that anticipation wasn’t there before. So I feel like for me, it’s better when I do the climb and that people are anticipating it.”

On his previous WWE extra work:

“Goldberg spears Rosey through the guard rail. It might have been the first through the guard rail spot that was ever done. They had us all planted in the crowd just in case the barrier came down on somebody, or if people wanted to charge, we’d be there holding back. That was my first one. I got in Heidenreich’s face on SmackDown once. He’s reading a poem in the ring I’m a member of the crowd I got yelled at by him. He came out, got in my face and attacked me. A druid at Survivor Series. I can’t remember what year, when he wrestled The Big Show. So they just so we had to bring a casket out. Then it got destroyed. Big Show destroyed it. They went to bring a second casket out onto the ramp, top of the ramp, and Big Show got put in that. Then we had to carry Big Show off in the casket.”

On thinking WWE might never happen at one point:

“Oh yeah. Big time. It was 2011, I hurt my shoulder, I went in for shoulder surgery. It was supposed to be like a little cleanup job, and when they opened me up, the surgeons decided to look where I was complaining my pain was in my shoulder, and discovered that my labrum was over 60% blown out, completely blown out. So that’s all he did. He’s supposed to shave down bone spur, do a couple other things. Didn’t do any of that stuff. He just did the labrum. So everything else is still wrong in that shoulder. But then I was just in deep depression. I’m just, this isn’t gonna happen. I’ve failed so many times. It’s just not gonna happen. But I love wrestling, and I want to leave my mark on this somehow, not just for having small roles in people’s success, their young success, like we talked last time, Kofi and Sasha Banks and Tommaso and so on and so forth. I wanted to leave some sort of legacy. So I’m like alright, I gotta go to Ring of Honor. That’s the only other place I can go at that point in time. So I juice fasted. So when I had hurt my shoulder I was like 350 or something like that. I juice fasted and did DDPY for months for my rehab, I lost 90 pounds and grew the beard. Had to grow the beard out and just evolve who I was as a wrestler and just give my all at Ring of Honor. I did a tryout camp there in 2013 and I was wearing a singlet at the time, but my stomach didn’t look too flattering in the singlet, even though I’d lost all the weight, just kind of loose skin or whatever. Delerious, who was the booker at the time, he got the idea to have me wear something to cover up my midsection. That was kind of the genesis of the war belt that I wear, which took me on this path into the Viking culture going forward. So out of that camp, 2014, Top Prospect tournament comes around, and names are getting announced for it, there’s eight people, seven names were announced. I’m like, I guess it’s just this isn’t gonna happen. And then I get an email, Hey, we want you for the tournament. So I was like, they didn’t contact me for the tournament until they already announced the other seven. I was like, Oh, wow, last second. So then I hopped in that tournament. Erik and I wrestled in the finals. I won, very serious about mentioning that. But then we became a tag team and that was where I found out that Erik loves Vikings, so we really were able to bond and mesh up in that regard. I think at that point we were a team for a minute. He had the motorcycle accident, I got the singles push, then he came back, and we were a team again. I think when he came back we became the team again. We both kind of looked at the landscape, and we had similar experiences with WWE, similar failures, where it looks like we’re good enough, but they’re just not taking our body type or whatnot, the 6 foot 2, 240 thing that was going on in that time frame, like it was very hard to get in. So we’re looking for the landscape wrestling, and we’re like, what if we just go all in on being a tag team? There aren’t too many teams out there, teams that are always teams that are just these well-oiled machines on the Indies, or even in WWE, they’re just these units that are teams, and they’re solidified as that, and that’s how they succeed. That could be our ticket to stardom in Ring of Honor to start, and I don’t know, maybe something like Japan after that. So War Machine was successful in Ring of Honor, and then it caught the eye of NOAH. We did a little bit with NOAH, and New Japan was helping NOAH at the time. So then New Japan ended up having us come in and get over there. So we were loving life with New Japan and Ring of Honor, because that was like, All right, we made it. We did it, and then we got the call from WWE. So we both had to pretty much give up on the goal. I shouldn’t say give up, because obviously it was always in our hearts that’s where we want to be. But we had to put it on the back burner and say let’s become successful somewhere else, as successful as we can get. If the other thing happens, great, but let’s just be the best that we can be, and go from there.”

On a possible War Raiders break-up:

“So, no. I’ve answered this a few times before. I mean, New Day’s having their turmoil now, but for a decade on WWE television New Day’s been together, and it’s never happened, yet. So I feel like we’re in the same boat, maybe we can do singles things on the side. Maybe we don’t have a story in the tag division and something opens up for you know me for the Intercontinental title, or maybe something opens up for Erik for the Speed Championship, just one below whatever I’m doing [laughs]. But I think we can do things. We’re both great singles wrestlers. I don’t think anyone realized that until I had this recent singles run, and he’s just as good. If just the opportunity is there it’s great, but I don’t see us breaking up. I don’t see us splitting up. I think we’re always gonna be there to support each other.” 

On the comedy segments during COVID:

“So it was this whole scary time. I feel like half the roster got fired, the lockdown, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the whole world. It was a scary time. We were told we were doing it and at first, I don’t know, the first hour or two after we were we were told, we were like, Oh, this is not good. This is going to be the precursor to you’re out of here. A lot of times when they take serious characters, or historically when you’ve seen serious characters, and then they take a really sharp turn into the comedy stuff. Then they’re doing that for a short period of time and they’re gone. We’re like all right, well this is the hand we’re dealt, so let’s do the absolute best that we can with it, and make sure that they can’t get rid of us because we’re so good at what we do, and that’s kind of what we did. I felt like originally, that whole feud, it wasn’t for us. It was for The Street Profits, because that’s their thing, or at least the time that was their thing. They’re the comedic, funny tag team. So it just felt like everything was for them, which is fine, totally fine. It is what it is. So it was our job to do the best that we could in that role, and I think we did. I can watch it back, I see memories of it and stuff, or just randomly running the fans. It’s funny because I’ve heard a lot of people online talk trash about that stuff. Never one to my face, but I was proud of the fun, comedic stuff that we did.”

On wrestling John Cena at an independent show:

“He’s on the main roster, but he thinks he thought he was getting fired. He was coming to his school. He was coming to Chaotic Wrestling at that point in time. So we’d see him there and his dad was a manager, Johnny Fabulous, on our shows, and did commentary for years. So I texted you about that. But then John made a name for himself. And then at some point in the late 2000s I want to say 2008 he wanted to do a benefit show. One of his brothers was a police officer and was in an accident. He wanted to do a fundraiser for their police department. So he talked to his dad, and they contacted Chaotic Wrestling, and they said they’re going to put on a benefit show. Vince gave the blessing for John to come in and also Eugene, who was under contract at the time. So we had this big show right by West Newberry at a high school, very close to West Newberry, Massachusetts. I wrestled Eugene on it, which actually the promoter gave me the option. He said, Do you want to wrestle in the main event with John Cena as a referee, or do you want to wrestle Eugene? And I’m like I think I want to wrestle Eugene because I was just such a wrestler at the time. I wanted to have that experience wrestling. I look back on it, I know it was weird. He was like, Are you sure you want to wrestle Eugene? Yeah, I want to wrestle Eugene. Okay, so I wrestle Eugene, and then the main event was Big Rick Fuller from WCW fame against Brian Milonas, who’s a really good friend of me, Tommaso and Kofi. He was in Ring of Honor for a bit, big, almost 400-pound monster. They were the main event with John Cena, who was currently the WWE champion, as the referee. 

I gotta rewind a second, I’ll get back to it, because this is really good story, too. Johnny Fabulous was Rick Fuller’s manager. So John Cena Sr. earlier in the show he cut a promo. And this is running 2500 people at a high school. He goes now, usually I’m a heel that’s a bad guy, but tonight, I’m a baby face that’s a good guy. We’re watching the monitor in the back, I’m sitting next to Eugene, and Cena is standing up in front of us watching on the monitor. And when that happens, he just turns back to me and Eugene and goes, my pops is killing the business and walks off. It’s such a good memory. But main event, Rick Fuller, Brian Milonas, is for the Chaotic Wrestling Heavyweight Championship, with John Cena as the referee, who is the current WWE Champion, and Cena had Eugene put together the whole back end of the match to do whatever they were going to do, layer it with false finishes and belt shots and whatever. So again, I’m watching it with Eugene, all of us around the monitor, I just wrestled Eugene so we’re sitting next to each other. Then they start to go into this finish that Eugene called, and then all sudden, there’s a big commotion, like, what’s going on? And then in the ring appears a figure in a suit, and we’re like what? Vince McMahon [was there]. Eugene was totally confused. Dinsmore had no idea what’s going on, because that’s not what he called. Cena had him call a whole back end of a match without any Vince McMahon. But Vince got in the ring. I think he’s face-to-face with Milonas. I love hearing Milonas tell the story. So Vince was like, are you the babyface of the heel? He’s like I’m the heel. And he grabs his hand, and he raises his hand. There is a picture somewhere, what is going on? Vince takes the worst attitude adjustment ever, just as bad as that last stunner he took so bad, and he rolls into the ring, goes over the guardrail, out to a limo and takes off.”

What is Ivar grateful for?

“That I got to go to Pepper Lunch, to be back in the ring with my partner and for everyone who has supported me.”