If any of the quotes from the following podcasts or video interviews are used, please credit those sources and provide an H/T and link back to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
** Rob Van Dam did an interview with WrestleZone’s Bill Pritchard. When asked about his contract status with IMPACT Wrestling, RVD said that he’s on a per-taping agreement with the company and elaborated on why he has chosen to not let his emotions get wrapped up in pro wrestling.
“We kind of are like by a handful of shows, you know? So Scott [D’Amore] said, ‘Hey…’ I gotta figure what month it is but, ‘Hey, we got these tapings coming up in August, can you make it? What about these dates?’ So it’s still like that so we [do it], might be two shows ahead and then at the end you might say, ‘Hey, what about the next ones?’ So right now I’m sort of taking it one step at a time and even though I’m having fun and stuff, I would never allow myself to invest feelings into it to a point where I could hurt emotionally or mentally. You really got to learn to not give a — can I swear on here? You have to learn what to give a f*ck about in life. In this business, there’s plenty of heartbreaks, there’s plenty of promises that are made that are gonna not come through and that’s just part of it. How you adjust to that depends on who you are, what your values are and those are all factors on where you get. For me, I’ve always been up front and saying I adjusted by not giving a f*ck after a while. So when someone says something’s gonna happen, I believe it when it does happen and so, I’m stoked that IMPACT thinks that I’m a worthy investment. Some people ask, ‘Dude you’re not even on the opening of the show. How could they have the biggest star there and not even have you –’ I don’t know but you know what? I don’t give a f*ck, they’re paying me, so I’m doing my part and I hope to see them go and I know they are gonna go places but how they do it, regardless of [if] it’s different than how I would do it or not, that’s part of my adjustment to make it work.”
** Independent talent Benjamin Carter joined Ringsiders Wrestling and talked about his recent AEW Dark appearances. Carter credited Britt Baker for getting him into AEW and showing some of his work to Tony Khan and several others in the company.
“So, actually I’ve got Britt Baker to thank for that basically because she had seen a few things on Twitter and Instagram, various social medias and she was watching the GCW show, I think in New Jersey and since then, she’s been super supportive. She’s reached out to me saying all these kind things and she actually had shown all my stuff to Tony Khan himself and a few other people in AEW so, from there I got a message from Christopher Daniels asking me if I’d like to come down to the thing and I was like, ‘Yes. Is that a question?’ So, that’s pretty much how that went down but, so I’ve got her to thank a lot for her kind of making it happen which is awesome because I’m a big fan of hers.”
** Major League Wrestling announced that LA Park Jr. has officially joined the organization.
** Doc Gallows, Rocky Romero and Karl Anderson joined Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast. Gallows revealed that while he was under contract to WWE, he was running independent shows based out of Georgia and when WWE found out about it, they wanted him to stop but Gallows quietly continued running shows.
Karl Anderson: “He was running shows about halfway through this little four year run in the fed and well, they shut him down halfway through because he wasn’t allowed to anymore.”
Doc Gallows: “So like any good brother would do, I just sold the promotion and then changed the name and just started silently running more.”
Anderson and Gallows also shared that IMPACT Wrestling ring announcer David Penzer was not supposed to be involved with Talk’n Shop A Mania because Gallows thought Penzer was Gary Michael Cappetta.
Karl Anderson: “So what’s funny about all this is [David] Penzer’s lucky to have a booking because it’s not Penzer that Gallows is making fun of for years, it’s that other son of a b*tch.”
Doc Gallows: “It’s Gary Michael Cappetta. At some point, I morphed Cappetta into Penzer and then Penzer’s a way better target anyway because he responds to all of this. He has real feelings about it.”
** AAW based out of Illinois announced that they’ll be running shows again starting October 1st which will be followed by 10/29, 11/12 and 12/10. 50 fans are allowed per show and social distancing and masks are mandatory.
** Chuck Taylor, Trent and Orange Cassidy were the latest guests on the AEW Unresricted podcast. Trent’s mother Sue has made a series of appearances on AEW Dynamite and Chuck Taylor shared that his mother had some thoughts about Sue’s appearances as well.
“I do have a funny story about my mom when his [Trent’s] mom showed up. My mom texted me that night after that match aired. I went back and checked my phone, it said, ‘WTF, I can drive’ and then she calls me the next day when we’re taping Dynamite on Thursday and she goes, ‘Oh what are you doing?’ I go, ‘I’m at work.’ She goes, ‘Is that f*cking Sue there?’ That was a joke, she didn’t mean it… nah she meant it.”
Chuck Taylor also talked about the head-to-head shows between NXT and AEW. He feels that the rivalry is “bullsh*t” and said most of the guys in NXT are his friends and he wants them to succeed.
“People maybe talk about this fake, bullsh*t rivalry between AEW and NXT I think just because we’re on the same [night]. Those are all my friends. I was a groomsman in Johnny Gargano’s wedding. I want them to succeed too. Not at the expense of us obviously. I hope they lose and die forever but… but those are my friends. Everyone on TV, I pretty much know.”
** John Morrison sat down with Chris Van Vliet for an exclusive interview. Morrison talked about his return to WWE and choosing them over All Elite Wrestling:
“So when season four of Lucha [Underground] ended, they have some stuff on their contracts where there’s a tail and the tail doesn’t stop until the episodes stop airing, and so I had signed with IMPACT and when everything was free and clear, I decided — I’m a free agent again, completely free, no ties anywhere. I’m going to figure out where I want to go. So I talked to WWE and I talked to AEW and I had a really good conversation with Vince [McMahon], and they made me a really nice offer and I ended up taking it.”
** NXT UK talent Jinny was a guest on the Gorilla Position podcast. Jinny opened up about the injury she suffered during the NXT UK Championship tournament special at Royal Albert Hall in 2018. Jinny was in a four-way involving Toni Storm, Isla Dawn and Killer Kelly. Jinny was removed from the match and it was later restarted as a three-way.
“Accidents happen, it’s part of the business. Obviously when we step into the ring, we wanna protect the person that we’re working with as well as entertaining the audience but, again, WWE says it for a reason, do not try this at home because things can go wrong and unfortunately for me, it did go wrong but straight away they had the doctors there, they have medical right there by the ring so I was looked after right away. It was definitely heartbreaking, especially because we had only just signed our contracts a month prior. However, what it did do for me was give me even more passion and even more determination so when I made my actual NXT UK debut, I came in with a massive bang.”
** Shane McMahon joined Corey Graves on WWE’s After The Bell podcast. Shane dove into his upbringing in the wrestling business and how he worked his way up the ranks in WWE to get to where he is now in the company.
“Well, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to grow up in this business and ever since I was probably five or six was the first time I went to my first show which was the Worcester Auditorium, not the Centrum. It was this tiny, little place in Worcester, Massachusetts. You just gotta get hooked, so I was always from a very early age, I was taking jackets back from ringside. It was kind of my job to hang it back in the locker room where the guys were or as I got a little bigger and stronger I was able to help with the ring. I did ring crew for many, many years and took a lot of pride in that, putting that up and down and making sure that was right, turnbuckles and pads. You know we evolved to the bigger things like working in the truck and eventually was on tour, setting that up, setting the ring up for everybody and that’s when [it] started evolving more. [It] became ring announcing, it became being a referee, had all these different opportunities physically in the business but never thought I would [be in the ring]. I always wanted to be in the ring performing but never thought that would’ve come to fruition, you know because my grandfather had more of a philosophy of, ‘Don’t.’ My dad echoed that for a while, until it was right time, right place and then got involved physically and in storyline and it caught and we ran with it so, but that’s just when you’re talking the pure, call it the superstar, the talent side of the business. Corporately, I’ve been shadowing one of the greatest minds in the business my entire life and absorbing so again, around 11, 12, going to all the production meetings, listening, hearing greats like Pat Patterson talk about the psychology of the business and I really learned the business backwards where I wasn’t a performer but I understood the psychology and why men and women should do things and when they should do them and Pat was obviously so far ahead of his time and so literally learned from some of the best between Vince and Pat, so many others that would come around that table. Sometimes you would hear stuff from Harley Race and you just listen. So being around it, you learn so much of the storytelling and the physical storytelling of the business of why and why not, then knowing the product, that just grew into production and I was a production brat so pulling cables, on the tour buses and setting up everything and setting up stuff with the camera guys and I used to do a lot. I was Go-For. Go for this, go for that, get a coffee. So I grew up from a production assistant now to an associate producer to a producer, went through the ranks like everybody else, really had to earn stripes to do that from a production — editing, putting stuff together, putting pieces together. Some of the interesting things going on was producing Vince voiceovers and his inflection would be wrong where he’d flump or something and you’d like [deep sigh]. Hit stop, you gotta go read back. We gotta go back and redo it, rerack it, and everybody in the edit seat would be like [deep sigh] because you know what’s coming… I can’t tell you how many conversations my dad and I have had privately outside the back of Edit One where it was just he and I about — he’s trying to produce me while I’m producing him. I was like, ‘No, you’re the talent right now.’ By the way, Vince is always right. So, once he thought he was wrong, he was mistaken.”
Shane also discussed his return to WWE in 2016 after stepping away in 2009. Shane was brought back to set up the Hell In A Cell match between himself and The Undertaker at WrestleMania 32. Shane detailed how that opportunity came about and it started with a conversation with Undertaker.
“Taker needed an opponent at WrestleMania and needed it to be special and there was talks, even back then that in Texas where, now that the cat’s out of the bag and stuff where Undertaker is from and stuff, WrestleMania, that magnitude of 100,000 people setting the indoor attendance record I believe. That was gonna be an awesome way out and again… and I thought it was gonna be one and done so I [just wanted] to do it but coming back, so I got the call from Taker saying, ‘Hey, would ever consider this?’ I was like, ‘Hmm…’ I was like, ‘Well, let me think about it.’ Ten minutes later I got a call from my dad. He was like, ‘Well, congratulations. This is what we’re doing, what do you think?’ I was like, ‘Well it doesn’t sound like I’m thinking much.’ In typical Vince fashion he was like, ‘No seriously, I want you to think about this’ and I was like, ‘Oh, alright’ and then really started coming up with the creative. I said, ‘Well if it’s gonna be what I think it’s gonna be then it should be. Can we do Hell In A Cell? Can we do this? And we have to make sure the storyline more than anything is right, otherwise it’s just a match.’ So [where] are you emotionally — this is one thing, again, going back through what I’ve learned throughout the years, in any match I’ve ever done, I’ve always had kind of some crazy stuff that happens from time to time, but it’s [a] really emotional story of why and what you do telling the physical story once you’re in the match.”
On the topic of RAW Underground, Shane McMahon talked about the inspiration behind the project and how some of his life experiences and interests led to the formation of RAW Underground.
“Quite a bit, quite a bit. I mean this goes way back. This is an original concept. This is more even going back to roman gladiator times when they used to have short matches to determine who was gonna be [the successor]. So the iterations, there’s been lots of stuff or similar things I should say — got ‘em in Japan for quite some time and I’ve been traveling to Japan since the late 80s, so when I was a teenager and I saw some of this so, it always resonated with me and again, you mentioned MMA and a lot of my friends do that sport. I also practice multiple forms of it and I really enjoy it so, if you can blend that with WWE entertainment and what we can compact together and again, it’s a work in progress. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Shane touched on he and AJ Styles’ WrestleMania match from 2017 and feels that a lot of people were surprised with how that turned out.
“Very proud of what Taker and I accomplished in Hell In A Cell, very proud of what AJ Styles and I accomplished. I think that surprised a lot of people actually because I’m not really known to wrestle in the normal sense of collar elbow tie-up or whatever. [Again], I learned from Dr. Tom [Prichard], Al Snow and many others. Can I do it? Yes. That was cool I was a part of a story we got to showcase that a little bit.”
** Announced for the 9/24 episode of NXT UK is the return of Pete Dunne, and Kay Lee Ray defending her NXT UK Women’s Championship against Piper Niven.
** Zelina Vega guest appeared on D-Von Dudley’s Table Talk podcast. While discussing how her 2020 has panned out professionally, Zelina shared the words that were given to her by Vince McMahon about her on-screen performances.
“It started with Drew [McIntyre] and we had that back and forth and I was like, ‘Man, he’s like my other promo half.’ He’s just — it was perfect. Whenever it happened, it was just magic with him and it’s interesting because, before even quarantine happened, Vince would always say, ‘You’re one of my favorites. You’re one of the reasons that I watch RAW. I love your character’ and it was such an honor to hear that because one of the things he used to say to me was, ‘You remind me of Stephanie, because she was always working out there and you’re a cutaway machine, I love that about you’ and I’m telling you when — first of all, I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ Like legit, I was ready to cry. I was like I love Stephanie, she’s a huge inspiration when it comes to me and the Zelina character but, it’s wild to think that if this quarantine didn’t happen, I wonder where I would be. I wonder if I would be getting a RAW Women’s Title shot against Asuka, you know?”
** Matt Cardona was interviewed by Inside The Ropes. Cardona talked about working with All Elite Wrestling and stated that he’s aware there’s a portion of the fanbase that do not want him in the company.
“I would love to be the bad guy because I think, there’s definitely that audience that doesn’t want me in AEW and that’s fine. Listen, you’re not gonna please everybody. I’m not about proving doubters wrong. I want to prove my supporters right, that’s what I’m always about. But if I had to flip the switch and be a bad guy, I’m telling you, you would hate me.”
Matt Cardona reflected on the period of his career when his YouTube channel was growing at a rapid rate. He mentioned using clips from a WrestleMania press conference with John Cena, The Miz and Triple H and how Stephanie McMahon reacted to those clips being used in his YouTube video.
“I believe it was episode seven, around WrestleMania that year, where someone went to the WrestleMania press conference and he asked John Cena, The Miz who’s the WWE Champion and Triple H why I wasn’t on TV and he sent me all their responses and I just put ‘em on my show because I thought it was so great that at the WrestleMania press conference or the red carpet, wherever it was, that someone was asking about me and the responses were great, I put it on the show and I remember the next week, Stephanie McMahon came up to me, she said, ‘Oh I saw your YouTube show this week.’ Something like that and I said, ‘Oh thank you’ and she said, ‘I didn’t say I liked it’ and I was like, ‘Oh…’ So I don’t know if she was just joking with me, I’m not sure. But, I was like, ‘Okay, well people know what it is.’”
** Paul Heyman spoke with Sports Illustrated to promote Friday Night SmackDown. Heyman feels that WWE pairing him with Roman Reigns is the biggest move the company could make.
“With all humility aside, this is the biggest move WWE could make with its talent at the moment. We have the tenured, still-young, just-hitting-his-prime WrestleMania main-eventer, the undisputed No. 1 star in WWE, and he’d been off for seven months. Didn’t even appear at this year’s WrestleMania. Now he’s ready to come back, and he returns with someone that has been on top and been associated with top acts for 30 years. However you define me, whether it’s as a manager, an advocate, a supporting mouthpiece, and now special counsel to the tribal chief, I have been with more WWE and universal champions than anyone. And now these two acts are together for the first time.”
** Wrestling Inc. chatted with Jonathan Gresham and Gresham shared his thoughts about the current IMPACT Wrestling product. He feels that they were trendsetters of sorts in regard to their women’s division and have now become WWE-lite.
“And I feel, and hopefully I don’t get any heat with this, but just to be as transparent as possible, I look at TNA back in the day of when the X-Division was really big, and they had the women’s tag division and the Knockout’s division, to me, they were, what, 10 years ahead of their time. If you look at professional wrestling now, I’m not sure but I think we’re still in the middle of a women’s revolution. They were ahead of the time, but then, for some reason, they decided to ditch that awesome direction and then go back to essentially being mainstream, WWE lite. They just mimicked WWE, and I feel like most companies do that instead of trying to figure out their own identity.”
With wrestling in general, Gresham feels that a lot of talents are working styles similar to The Young Bucks and Will Ospreay but proposed that if you’re not going to be the best at that style, why not try something different.
“Then around 2005-2006 Gabe [Sapolsky] had the idea of bringing Dragon Gate to America, and when that happened, the style changed on the independents, and if you notice, that style took over and we’re still kind of living in that mindset of wrestling right now because its graduated to the point of all the guys that were on the lower-tier cards of Ring of Honor at that time, took that style to the next level. And it became the main style of Ring of Honor, and then those guys graduated and went off to TNA, WWE and so on and so forth. And they took that style along with them. And now that is a style that everyone is trying to do, so I believe that a lot of people are noticing that.
And hopefully a lot of the younger guys noticing that, it’s like, ‘OK, well, there’s so many guys doing this particular style of wrestling that I need to differentiate myself and do something else’ because if you really look at wrestling as a whole, everyone is wrestling the Will Ospreay, The Young Bucks kind of style of wrestling. If you’re not going to be the front-runners in that particular style, then why don’t you hop in another lane? I try to tell all the younger guys that I work with like try to emulate guys like Necro Butcher. If you think about that style of wrestling, can you name five guys that are doing that style right now. Necro Butcher would just come out and fight people. You can’t really name five guys that do that right now.
The vintage luchador style, the Maestro way, Negro Navarro, there’s no guys, besides those guys, that are doing that style of wrestling right now, presenting it that way. It’s really important to differentiate yourself so fans can enjoy, on one show, different styles of wrestling. I think that’s really important.”
** Gerald Brisco was released from WWE recently after spending over 30 years in the company. He teased a “big” announcement for 9/16 and he delayed that “big” announcement but shared that he’s now on Cameo and he’ll also be forming a talent agency of sorts.
** The Shield Of Wrestling spoke with TAJIRI. The former WWE Cruiserweight Champion talked about what it takes to find success as a Japanese wrestler in North America and he feels that it all comes down to if said wrestler can adjust to living abroad.
“I think anyone is okay, but what matters is whether or not they can endure living abroad. It’s just whether or not you have a hard time.”
TAJIRI also talked about his time working with Eddie Guerrero. TAJIRI expressed that he considers his time with Eddie some of the best times of his life.
“The time I spend with Eddie is still the greatest pride of my life. He was always a quiet person.”
** Thunder Rosa did a Q&A on Sportskeeda’s Facebook page with Chris Featherstone. She was asked about the Matt Hardy incident at AEW’s All Out pay-per-view and described what the situation was like from her viewpoint.
“I personally didn’t see what happened during the show because we were in Gorilla, but it was really scary when I saw him coming in. He looked disoriented and stuff. It was a little scary. I’ve been there before so I really felt bad for him, and it also put a lot of pressure on us [Rosa & Hikaru Shida] because from that incident, it was kind of like the momentum, it was down because everybody was scared for his life, so it was scary.”
** Mission Pro Wrestling head booker Robyn Reid was a guest on the This Is The NWA Podcast. Robyn is preparing for Mission Pro’s show on 9/18. Robyn firstly spoke about how she and many other women in wrestling feel that as of recently, the independent scene has taken a step back when it comes to the growth of women’s wrestling.
“Actually I agree with you. I do agree with you. I feel like — and it’s not just me who feels like this. It’s also other women that I’ve seen talk about it, where they’re just like, ‘You guys can book more than one women’s match.’ I have always, always, always been an advocate. When I was at Reality of Wrestling, when the division got shut down in 2015, the beginning part, every month, ‘Booker [T], is there a women’s match this show? No? Okay… Booker is there a’ — you know what I mean? I did that for five or six months straight and then they came up to me and they were like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna bring the division back. We’re gonna put it around you’ and I was like holy cow. They were like, ‘Do you have anybody you wanna bring in?’ And I was like, ‘Hell yeah, Ember Moon. Can we get Athena in here?’ She was going by Athena at the time, because I wanted to start building that back up and I have always been an advocate. I say that to say this; when they put the division on my back, I always wanted there to be two women’s matches per show and that’s the issue that’s going on now. It seems like with a lot of shows that are male-dominated, there’s always just one women’s match and sometimes the women’s matches don’t get a lot of time and so I’m just like, ‘If you can only give one women’s match to the crowd, give them some time.’ You know what I mean? But I’ve always felt like there should at least be two women’s matches per show, if not more.”
Robyn being the booker of a promotion, there are many individuals who reach out to her for bookings. She shared that there are many women who are not getting opportunities and admitted that she’s tired of seeing the same women booked on every show.
“Respect women’s wrestling, to really sum it up. I feel like women are getting overlooked. I feel like women that should be given opportunities [are] overlooked and I’m tired of it and I’m not even in the ring and I’m sick of seeing it and like I said, I’m a realist so I’m going to be honest with you guys. I am tired of seeing the same handful of girls everywhere. That’s me being completely honest, don’t care. If you feel this is directed at you, well, lace them b*tches up. Put them shoes on, lace ‘em up and if the shoe fits, and there’s still so much talent out there. I know people are like, ‘All the talent’s gone,’ blah, blah. That’s not true and that’s what I want to accomplish here at Mission Pro Wrestling is showing that there’s still talent out there. They weren’t given as many opportunities as I feel like they should have and that’s what I wanna do with everyone. Everybody that has contacted me, there’s so many people that have contacted me that I couldn’t put on this show but I told them and I made sure to get back to them within 24 hours. I told them, ‘I do want to use you, so don’t think just because you’re not on the show, I’m not going to use you.’ I’m not gonna do that because everyone just wants an opportunity and that’s what I wanna do, so…”
As far as the Mission Pro schedule goes, Reid revealed that she’s in the process of booking the next event and they would like to run once a month and collaborate with other organizations.
“We would love to have it as much as possible. I know I’m already working on booking the next show. The goal is to if not have it every month, have it every six weeks so like a month-and-a-half, so especially in 2021, we’re hoping all this stuff clears up and we can really travel, work with other people that are in different states, work with other promotions and things like that. It’s not just a one-off. We’re hoping that this could really build and grow.”
** Comicbook.com spoke with Jonathan Gresham to promote the ROH Pure Title tournament. Gresham feels that the rules of pro wrestling have been lost amongst most wrestlers and added that the referees no longer have authority.
“When you watch a guy at a bar watching a football game, soccer game, normally he’s yelling at the referee because of a technicality that he saw, the referee didn’t see, or a bad call. But in professional wrestling, you can’t do that because fans don’t know the rules. A lot of the boys in the back that are wrestling don’t know the rules. And the referees no longer have any authority.
And I think that the Pure Championship, we give that authority back to the referees, and now we can tell those stories of good guy versus bad guy because, in the current climate, good guy versus bad guy doesn’t [work] no matter [what] because there are no rules to break.”
** Daniel Bryan and Brie Bella hosted the latest episode of The Bellas Podcast.
** IMPACT Knockouts Champion Deonna Purrazzo was the latest guest on Taylor Wilde’s podcast.
** Drew McIntyre’s WWE 24 documentary on the WWE Network premieres on October 4th.
** Josh Barnett announced Lindsay Snow for Bloodsport.
** Adam Hangman Page appeared on The Wrestling Inc. Daily Podcast. Page discussed his new children’s book and shared his thoughts on if he thinks AEW will ever transition to a format that’s better suited for children to watch.
“I don’t know. Not anything that I’ve been involved in. Obviously, there’s room for everything. I’ve kind of felt like in the past decade or two, maybe? I don’t know. WWE’s product has largely — I don’t wanna say geared towards kids, but kid friendly, kid accessible and I feel like wanting to be something different than the thing that already exists. We are not necessarily adult-only or overly adult or certainly not something that kids can watch in joy but I feel like AEW’s niche is to be something that appeals a little bit more to adults and children. That being said, what comes in the future, I don’t know. It’s not really my place to say.”
** Sport 360 spoke with AJ Styles about Twitch streaming and the WWE Battlegrounds game.
** NWA World Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa spoke with Chris Van Vliet. Thunder Rosa lost to AEW Women’s World Champion Hikaru Shida at All Out and during the interview, she was asked for her thoughts about the idea that her title is now devalued by losing to another champion.
“No it did not. It did not. I will dog dare anybody to get in the ring and do what we did there. It just shows anybody — like one of my friends, she just got her fight. It was for the contender and she’s a champion for the L.F.A. [Legacy Fighting Alliance]. She unfortunately lost. It didn’t devalue that she’s still a champion in the LFA, that she’s still a fighter, that she’s going to get her dream. It’s the same thing. Just because I lost this one and I’m the champion doesn’t devalue anything. On the contrary, I think it just shows the caliber of talent and the caliber of an athlete I am and that I’m valuable with and without a championship on my waist.”
** Natalya wrote about setbacks for her latest article for the Calgary Sun. Here’s an excerpt from that piece:
“I remember when I tore my ACL wrestling in Japan in 2005 during practice for a match I was set to have that evening. The injury happened while doing something so small and in my frustration, I asked myself, “How could this happen?” I refused to even believe I was hurt, but my knee definitely wasn’t right. I had no stability to walk or run and I knew I was in trouble. I flew home a few days later and cried my eyes out the entire time because, in my mind, I was so close to landing my dream job with WWE. Once I finally got the MRI back and had a doctor say to me, “hey you tore your ACL completely, you need surgery and you’ll be out for nine months.” I stopped crying, got really serious and said to myself, “I’ve got this.” I couldn’t deny I was hurt and had to get through it to end up stronger.
As hard as it was getting hurt and knowing that I was going to sit out for the next nine months healing, this was an opportunity for me to stop and completely focus on rebuilding myself. I called my trainer that night and asked how early I could get in the gym with him the next day. We met the following morning at 7 a.m. with a mission to accomplish: getting in the best shape of my life, mentally and physically.”
** NXT UK’s Jinny chatted with Gary Cassidy.
** The next portion of Hiroshi Tanahashi’s interview series can be read at this link.
** Sesame Workshop has a new General Manager of their Europe division and it’s Stefan Kastenmüller who was senior VP and group GM for EMEA at WWE.
** Newsweek conducted an interview with Tyler Breeze. Breeze told the publication that he and Fandango would love to do ‘Fashion Files’ segments in NXT.
“I think that’s the beauty of WWE and in sports entertainment in general that anything can work so I think NXT would be a perfect place for Fashion Files. I think RAW would be a perfect place for the Fashion Files, it’s one of those things that if you use it properly and you write it into a show it will work because it worked for eight months, and it’s not one of those things that we’re just saying it worked. The whole reason [Fashion Files] survived was because of social media and on a show where you have so much talent when you’re the number one trending topic on Smackdown people take notice and we’re asked to do it another week and another and eight months later we’re still alive because everybody’s saying, ‘Give us another Fashion Files.’ That tells you that in any scenario it’s going to work so I know myself and Dango would both love for it to come back in the right scenario with the right writing and if it works for what we’re doing I guarantee people will go, ‘Man, that was really cool. I miss that.'”
** Miro (Rusev) and Kip Sabian played Call of Duty: Warzone together.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1LpB9oL-rs[/embedyt]
** Buffalo, New York outlet WKBW covered the Buffalo Brothers (Daniel Garcia and Kevin Blackwood’s) appearance on AEW Dark. They worked against The Butcher and The Blade.
** Here’s a video of Samoa Joe and Shelton Benjamin playing TEKKEN 7.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcFzJEfmd7o[/embedyt]
** Ronda Rousey uploaded another video to her YouTube channel featuring herself and D-Von Dudley.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kj385Wg3HI[/embedyt]
** Eddie Dennis chatted with U.K. outlet ‘Metro’ and said that the first bumps he took in the U.K. Performance Center after lock down felt like the first bumps he ever took in wrestling.
“I feel like I get some momentum and then get scuppered by some kind of injury. With professional wrestling, it’s a real mix. Yes, it’s good to rest our bodies. Our bodies have been battered for the last 15 years on a weekly basis. But there is this real thing where your body builds up a callous, and that callous has 100% gone away. I cannot express – when we returned to the Performance Center to do some training, those first bumps felt like those first bumps you took when you started training 15 years ago.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Dennis expressed the goals that he wants to accomplish in NXT UK and the milestones he wants the brand to hit as well, specifically wanting six NXT UK TakeOvers a year.
“You watch Monday Night Raw, Friday Night SmackDown and NXT. If you were involved in the British wrestling scene for the past 12 to 15 years, it’s littered with people you’ve either shared a ring or locker room with. In all honesty, for me the primary focus since I signed a contract with WWE is to try and grow the NXT UK brand as far as it can possibly grow. I want it to be the fourth brand on a level playing field, I want us to have six live TakeOvers a year. I want our weekly episodic television show from BT Sport studios to be absolutely must-see TV – not just here in the UK but worldwide on the WWE Network.”
** Asuka uploaded a new video to her YouTube channel.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XE62yzifmQ[/embedyt]
** Jay White previewed a portion of his G1 Climax schedule with NJPW1972.com.
** Savannah Evans has been confirmed for Eddie Kingston’s Grindhouse on 9/26 in Florida. The event is streaming on WWNLive and FITE.
** WrestleTalk has an interview with Santana and Ortiz of AEW.
** Beyond Wrestling founder Drew Cordeiro chatted with Sports Illustrated.
** Ethan Page joined The Major Wrestling Figure Podcast.
** GameSpot chatted with Tyler Breeze ahead of the 9/16 edition of NXT.
** ‘Metro’ released their interview with Jinny. She discussed Mustafa Ali’s positive impact in WWE.
** Flash Morgan Webster and Mark Andrews did an interview with Daily Star to promote the return of NXT UK on the WWE Network. Inside The Ropes also spoke with the former NXT UK Tag Team Champions:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh-VVLH7LvI[/embedyt]
** Gabriel Kidd’s blog went up on NJPW1972.com.
** Here’s the newest episode of Booker T’s Hall Of Fame podcast.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utJIfE40_Pc[/embedyt]
** ViBE & Wrestling interviewed Finn Balor.
If any of the quotes from the following podcasts or video interviews are used, please credit those sources and provide an H/T and link back to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
