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.
** Dean Malenko was a guest on the Pro Wrestling Illustrated podcast. Malenko talked about departing WWE in 2019. He feels that had he stayed, he would’ve been at the top of the list when it came time for the mass cuts/furloughs that took place in April of this year.
“I know it would’ve been me. I probably would’ve been [at the] top of the list. So again, it kinda solidified in my own mind what I did was the right thing.”
Malenko previously spoke highly of Darby Allin in past media appearances. He talked about Allin again and said a part of his role is to scale back the risk-taking that performers take in AEW but that’s just a part of who some of them are as wrestlers.
“A lot of these guys trust themselves and trust the guys that they’re working with. I’m (audio cuts so Dean either said he’s a fan of the style or he’s not a fan) a big fan of it to be honest with you. A lot of stuff these guys do, very scary, very high risk. Part of my job is to try and pull these guys back a little bit, because for every one move you can [do], there’s 50 million moves you can do as a substitute. I think Darby’s a risk-taker. He’s one of the guys — that’s his character, that’s who he is as a person to a certain extent, so it’s hard to change people totally and you don’t want to because then you have a whole different product and a whole different person out there. But I think, to your point, some of the stuff they’re doing, it’s a little risky but, the guys go out there and they’re as careful as they can be.”
Dean was asked how much credit does Eric Bischoff deserves for the formation and growth of the Cruiserweight-style of wrestling. Here’s how Malenko responded:
“Well one, he let it happen so I gotta give him that credit. It was totally different, it was so new to the wrestling audience back then. Never seen the Cruiserweights from that standpoint. When you look back from the list of guys, they had guys from Europe, guys from Japan, guys from Mexico. It was really a wide variety of international flavor to it. When I finally won the title and we had Rey Mysterio come in and the first time I ever wrestled Rey was the Great American Bash. He didn’t even know it was gonna be a pay-per-view. He just thought he was wrestling somebody. But again, there’s a guy that we never got to see before, ever in the public eye and it’s the first time we got to see a guy like Rey Mysterio and there were so many great matchups and you know, I think [Eric] should get credit from a standpoint of he went out there and took a chance on it because nobody [had] done it to that magnitude before, ever in the business.”
** Former multi-time Artist of STARDOM Champion Jungle Kyona announced that she’ll be out of action. She suffered a number of injuries and listed off those injuries: Left knee anterior cruciate ligament rupture, right knee lateral collateral ligament rupture, right shoulder acromioclavicular joint complete dislocation, left knee and right shoulder require surgery.”
** On October 16th, Renee Young and Booker T are hosting FOX Sports’ SmackDown kickoff show live from the WWE ThunderDome. The kickoff show begins at 7:30 PM EST.
** Ember Moon is set to kick off the 10/7 edition of NXT on the USA Network. Ahead of the show, Moon chatted with Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated about her return to NXT. Ember shared how nervous she was upon her return to the brand and added that she was not aware Toni Storm would be returning as well.
“I was nervous and I wasn’t certain how I would be received. I didn’t even know Toni Storm was popping up on the monitor right before me. She’s stunning in the ring, and I want to wrestle her, too.
My nerves kept building as I was walking out to the stage. All I could think was, ‘Crap, did I even shut the visor to the helmet?’ If you look quickly, I grab my helmet and checked. Then I took off the helmet, and it was an outstanding, memorable moment. I think it may have broke the internet for a hot minute. It reminded me that NXT is the place where I’m meant to be. I couldn’t ask for a better team to support me, and it was so amazing to be there on the first night of the Capitol Wrestling Center.”
For weeks, vignettes aired on NXT to promote the return of a former NXT Champion at TakeOver 31. Ember Moon talked about the inspiration behind the vignettes:
“When learned I was headed to NXT, the whole motorcycle package was an idea I had after watching an action movie called Hardcore Henry. The NXT creative team is absolutely amazing, and they got this massive set for me. I wanted elements of The Masked Singer so we could have clues to keep people guessing. And they were like, ‘Let’s do it!’ There is a video game I play, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, where there are these two dueling voices and you have to listen closely, and we did something similar for the surprise, which was absolutely amazing.”
** Part two of PWInsider’s chat with Kurt Angle is up. Angle touched on why he decided to turn down the opportunity to manage Matt Riddle on WWE programming:
“Two reasons – one was my company I started needed my attention 100%, especially with the virus thing and I had to just be there for the company and the other thing was the money, it just… it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t going to manage somebody for the amount of money they wanted to give me.”
During the conversation, Angle further dove into his conversations with UFC about him coming into the company. Ultimately, after multiple neck surgeries, Angle feels that it was best that he never transitioned to the octagon.
“No, that’s where I wanted to go. I got a deal from UFC in ’97 and it was so bad, and the crazy thing is it was the most they ever paid anyone, or offered anyone, it was a 10 fight deal for $150,000 so it was $15 grand a fight. There was no way in hell I was going to do that. But that was back then before Dana White and they were trying to keep it afloat so I went the WWE route but I kept my eyes on UFC and in 2003 I was really considering going over there. I started training at the Pittsburgh Fight Club, I was really debating doing MMA and I broke my neck again so that was the second time, first time was before the Olympics, second time was in 2003. When I healed from that broken neck and I had the surgery and I healed, I lost a lot of strength in my arms, and I lost a lot of size in my arms, I’ll give you a good example, I did that thing in Tough Enough with that kid, those kids, one kid was Puder, and he got my arm, there was nothing I can do. I was in no condition to be in that position. At the time I couldn’t do 3 push ups. I was so weak and I wasn’t sure why they wanted me to do it but I went ahead through with it. And when I did that, I realized – OK, you are where you need to be – in the WWE. You love this business, you don’t have to go off and fight and try and be UFC Champion, because that time passed you [laughs], so I did revisit it in 2006, and Dana White flew me out there and we got a deal structured and he was great, he was an awesome individual, he offered me great money, and I just signed with TNA and I had to make a decision, Dana said, ‘You can’t do both,’ because I was going to try and do both. I was going to [do] TNA part time and UFC, and I just signed a deal with Dixie and I didn’t want to let her down, so I stuck with TNA but I’m glad I did it because I wouldn’t have done very well. I was only lying to myself if I thought I was going to be able to compete at that level with the way my neck was and keep [in] mind, I broke my neck 3 more times after 2003 so it was even that much worse. I mean right now, my arms are 14 inches – they used to be 19. I have atrophy in my hands, my forearms, my arms, my shoulders – it’s gotten really bad, so I’m just trying to stay in shape and I can no longer gain size. I’m going to be an average looking person and I’m OK with that, I just want to look in shape and feel good and that’s it, but there was no chance of me competing in UFC especially after I broke my neck in 2003.”
** Inside The Ropes uploaded a clip to their YouTube channel from their stage show with Chris Jericho. Jericho dove into his WrestleMania 29 match against Fandango and initially arguing to Vince McMahon that he should be doing something better at that event than working Fandango.
“‘And who am I gonna be working?’ He’s like, ‘Chris, I’m gonna have you work with this new guy, Fandango.’ I’m like, ‘Oh that’s the guy with the sh*tty, stupid vignettes,’ and I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t incensed. I was like, ‘What are you talking about, Fandango!? This guy doesn’t even have a match yet.’ Vince was like, ‘I know but he’s the new guy and he’s gonna debut at WrestleMania versus Chris Jericho, versus Y2J. What a great way to start a career,’ and I was like, ‘No!’ I can’t believe now, thinking back how mad I was. Like it’s his f*cking company. Vince can put me in there with whoever he wants. I can’t be mad about it but I was so insulted and angry and I was like, ‘I can’t work with Fandango.’ He goes, ‘Don’t worry, just take 90 percent of the match and then do the finish’ and I was like, ‘No, I’m not –’ [I go], ‘What about Wade Barrett? I’m a nine-time Intercontinental Champion. I could go for my tenth victory, the record-breaking tenth Intercontinental Championship.’ He goes, ‘Oh nobody cares about the f*cking Intercontinental Championship,’ and I said, ‘Well they don’t care about Fandango either,’ and he goes, ‘That’s your job is to make them care’ and I said, ‘So I can’t change your mind?’ He goes, ‘No’ so I hung up on him. I hung up on my billionaire boss because I wasn’t happy with what he wanted me to do, prima donna Jericho in the hiz.”
Jericho recalled going back to McMahon and telling him that he felt double-crossed because he was told that he was getting 90 percent of the match, but Jericho then remembered that Vince never told him he was winning. Jericho added that at the end of the day, Fandango got over with the crowd in a big way and that’s what mattered to him.
“Comes time for WrestleMania, second match on the show. It wasn’t a great match but it was a good match. People were going nuts for it and they believed in Fandango and the finish of the match was me losing, which was another thing that I called Vince [about] the day [when] I got the finish. I called him, I was like, ‘You double-crossed me! You f*cking asshole, you double-crossed me!’ He goes, ‘What you do mean?’ ‘You said that I would take 90 percent of the match and then go to the finish.’ He goes, ‘That’s exactly what I said,’ and that’s when I realized like, ‘Oh… that is exactly what he said.’ I thought he meant I take 90 percent of the match and then go to the finish of me winning. No, you take 90 percent of the match and then lose to the new guy who they’re building, of course. So I f*cking apologize and walked away with my tail between my legs but the match happened, the reaction was great. I remember saying, ‘Vince, people are gonna believe Fandango beating me.’ He goes, ‘That’s what I want. I want 65,000 people chanting ‘bullsh*t’. If we can get that, we got something done.’ Well there wasn’t 65,000 people chanting bullsh*t. I think there was three guys in the front row that had too many drinks that were chanting bullsh*t, that’s about it, but people were into it and the next night on RAW, which is always the craziest night of the year, the night after WrestleMania, the RAW after WrestleMania, Fandango was one of the most over guys on the entire show, and all you f*cking assholes were cheering for him. His theme song was even top ten here in the UK.”
** Thunder Rosa announced that she is relinquishing the Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling International Princess Championship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rosa stated that when she’s able to return to Japan, she’ll get back in the title picture.
** Chris Jericho released part two of his chat with Luther ahead of their match on the 10/7 edition of AEW Dynamite. Luther told the story of while he was working in South America to build up a match he was having with a wrestler named “Tornado”, Luther did a run-in while Tornado was doing media and that led to the radio host thinking Luther was hijacking the station and a militia group being called.
“I think there was only one or two stations, back then. So they had this camper van thing. That’s where the radio was in there, the D.J. or whatever. So, me and Tornado are supposed to go do interviews so, I told Tornado to go first and talk and then I was gonna barge in there because I was the big heel and then demand that this is my time. You know the whole shtick, but they totally believe everything is real there. Tornado’s a cop in his real day job or whatever, so he’s in there and he’s talking and I slam the door open and then I go in there and I start screaming at him about, ‘This is my time’ and I start screaming at the DJ, ‘How dare you book times and now it’s him.’ So I had some buddies listening to this as it was all happening and they said it went dead air and it’s never gone dead air. Like it just stopped. So this DJ guy freaked out, because I started pushing Tornado and I’m yelling because we’re doing the whole shtick and so he hits ‘abort’ on the feed, then runs out and I’m like, ‘Holy sh*t, this is crazy.’ So then I turn to leave and as I walk out I hear, ‘Get down. Get down on the ground.’ I look up and there’s like ten dudes with machine guns pointed at me. Like Army guys, the militia guys, and because they thought I was hijacking the radio station so they called these dudes in, and so I go down on my knees and I’m like, I’m scared sh*tless because all I can think of is one of these idiots is gonna shoot me by accident and I’m down, my hands are up and I’ve never been in trouble before or whatever and so, [the guy’s] like, ‘Get down! Get down!’ I’m down and I’m like, ‘I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything!’ And then the DJ guy’s like, ‘Yeah that’s him.’ You can hear him yell, ‘That’s him’ and then Tornado comes out and he’s like trying to tell them, ‘No, I’m a cop. This is a show’ and so they take the sergeant — the sergeant guy goes to talk with Tornado and the promoter but then keeps everybody’s guns pointed at me. I’m not allowed to move, and then they go talk and then they come out and he just waves everyone off and I go and I’m like, ‘That was one of the most scariest moments ever.’ But they just believed it.”
** English footballer Adebayo Akinfenwa was a guest on talkSPORT’s podcast with Laura Woods. Akinfenwa shared that he does have intentions to transition to WWE after his pro football career is over and added that there has been a few conversations about the move.
“I’ve had a couple of calls recently in regards to that. I’ll be following up on that soon – so it could go up or down depending on the outcome of that. I can’t tell you a direct percentage in terms of that [coming to fruition], but it’s something I’m really passionate about, so watch this space, people.”
** Musician Corey Taylor created a wrestling video game.
** According to TMZ, Brie Bella and Daniel Bryan put their home in Arizona up for sale for $1.6 million.
** Righteous Reg of BlackWrecellence.com spoke with Lee Moriarty. Moriarty has several matches scheduled for The Collective weekend including singles matches against ACH and Jonathan Gresham respectively. He shared his thoughts about sharing the ring with those two individuals.
“I’m excited for every match for different reasons. The ACH match is probably the most important to me. I never thought I’d be able to step in the ring against him because our paths always seemed to go in different directions. He’s inspired so much of who I’ve become so it’s huge. The Gresham match is important to me because of the learning lessons I’ll gain from competing against him. I think studying Gresham gave me a better idea of how I wanted to fight in the ring. A lot of people have wanted to see this match [for] a while, and part of the reason is because they believe our styles are similar. I think I’ve worked very hard, I’m creating my own identity from my influences and I’m ready to show my own interpretation of pro wrestling.”
** CM Punk will be on the call for Cage Fury Fighting Championship’s shows on October 29th and 30th at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
** Comicbook.com published their interview with Ember Moon. In the vignettes that ultimately ended up being for Ember Moon, it was speculated by many viewers that the mystery vignettes would be for Bo Dallas’ return to NXT. Moon credited Dallas for playing along and taking some of the attention off of her name.
“Can I just give a shout out to Bo Dallas real quick for running defense for your girl! I don’t even know if he knew it was me, but he started posting, ‘Oh, the original NXT champ, if you bolieve.’ I love Bo so much. I don’t even know if he knew it was me, but absolutely amazing, thank you, Bo, you’re the real MVP. I didn’t know if they were going to be like, ‘Who is this chic?’ Because let’s be honest, I’ve been off TV for a year, even though I’ve been on Backstage and done some E-Sports stuff, I’ve tried to stay in the eye, but we all know our WWE fans love WWE and they watch WWE. So I didn’t know what the reaction was going to be until the point where I was like shaking, shaking at one point in time, but the NXT creative team is so amazing. They took an idea that I had for these video packages and they made it [better] times a 1000. They made me way more badass than I actually am, sometimes.”
** TSN published a feature on Chris Jericho that included quotes from both Jericho and Lance Storm.
** A Draft special was the theme of today’s episode of WWE The Bump.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtBtm3NlIXA[/embedyt]
** Jon Davis suffered an injury prior to GCW’s ‘For The Culture’ this weekend so filling in for him in his scheduled match against Calvin Tankman is O’Shay Edwards.
** Per the XFL Newsroom website, all XFL trademarks have officially been transferred over to Dany Garcia, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and RedBird Capitol.
** Registration is open to do a meet-and-greet with Big E.
** Independent wrestler Anthony Gutierrez was interviewed by ESPN for a feature article about pro wrestling that included quotes from MLW CEO Court Bauer. Anthony talked about the roll he was on with the EVOLVE promotion prior to it being sold to WWE.
“I was about to approach my fourth year, and I really started hitting that path with Evolve. I [beat] Eddie Kingston and had a good win streak going. Now it’s like boom, Evolve tanks, and I’m back to square one basically.”
** The WWEPC YouTube channel spotlighted Isaiah “Swerve” Scott.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPodR3LscFQ[/embedyt]
** The Ring of Honor Pure Title tournament is progressing and here are the next two matches that are taking place as a part of the tourney:
– Pure Title Semifinals: Jay Lethal vs. David Finlay
– Pure Title Semifinals: Jonathan Gresham vs. Matt Sydal
** Here are the results from the 10/6 episode of United Wrestling Network’s Prime Time Live show:
– Levi Shapiro (w/ Howdy Price) def. Bryan Idol
– Lacey Ryan def. Viperess
– Ricky Gibson & Eddie Pearl def. Ricky Mandell & Richie Slade w/ Flex
– Chris Dickinson def. Max Caster
– Che Cabrera & Bad Dude Tito def. Danny Limelight & ‘King Fatboy’ Papa Esco
– The Pope & Watts def. Zicky Dice & Effy
** Here’s a video from Ring of Honor’s YouTube channel:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VilNhfqfVJY[/embedyt]
** The next portion of Hiroshi Tanahashi’s interview series is up on NJPW1972.com.
** The UpUpDownDown crew recorded another UNO session.
** WWE United States Champion Bobby Lashley will be on the 10/8 edition of WWE After The Bell.
** On October 11th, a WWE ‘Best of 2020’ special will air on FOX.
** WWE sent the Seattle Storm a custom championship belt for winning the 2020 WNBA Championship.
** The latest upload to Asuka’s YouTube channel:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiVTp01KYEg[/embedyt]
** NJPW1972.com ran their interview with former IWGP Intercontinental Champion Kota Ibushi.
** Mick Foley wrote a piece for WWE.com about Drew McIntyre’s ‘WWE 24’ documentary.
** Miro uploaded part two of himself and members of the AEW roster playing ‘Among Us’ to his YouTube channel:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgXflR8McSM[/embedyt]
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.
