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.
** Former WWE Performance Center coach Sarah Stock uploaded a new video to her YouTube channel and during the video, she documented the aftermath of her arrest in Indiana. She was road tripping when the situation occurred. She stated that misdemeanor charges of aggravated assault and resisting arrest were placed against her. In late October, Stock tweeted that all charges were dismissed except for one of the misdemeanors. She paid a fine and the situation was resolved.
“I don’t know. I’ve got misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and resisting arrest. What’s the other one? There’s another. Just like stressing out, ‘Oh, is Cookie [her cat] ok? Is Cookie ok?’ It was just hours and hours away from Cookie and leaving my van and everything there. My head f*cking hurts.”
** Former IMPACT Tag Team Champion Ethan Page was the focus of a virtual meet-and-greet session with Pro Wrestling Junkies. Page talked about the crossover between IMPACT and AEW and added he does not worry about the inner workings of it. He feels that when one does so, it starts to affect them mentally.
“So I have learned that I’m just a wrestler and this is not my show, I am not the writer, I am not the producer, I am not the booker. I’m Julian, and when they need me to show up to be Ethan Page, I show up, I do what I’m told. I don’t care about any of that stuff because the minute you start getting obsessed with needing to know everything and being all out of — that’s when this game starts really getting to you mentally. You start bringing your baggage home to your family and you start worrying about your position and whatever is going on. I’m just there to get paid and do my job as best as I can.”
Ethan Page used to be a regular for the AAW promotion and he explained why he decided to stop working with them.
“Honestly, I actually quit AAW because they were trying to tell people where they were allowed to work and I just — I have no contract with them, they’re not allowed to tell me what I’m allowed to do. So that’s when I jumped ship to Freelance [Wrestling] and once I went to Freelance, it was like the flood gates opened to all these other options and promotions and I could make more money. It just made more sense, I don’t know.”
** Dark Order’s John Silver and Alex Reynolds joined Tony Schiavone and Aubrey Edwards on the AEW Unrestricted podcast. Silver and Reynolds did enhancement work for WWE prior to signing with All Elite Wrestling but were never offered more than that. Silver shared that when they officially signed to AEW, WWE contacted him about a tryout.
“No [they didn’t try to sign us] but after I signed here, they hit me up to do a tryout,” Silver said.
Elsewhere during their chat, Alex Reynolds further spoke about the incident on Dynamite when he was knocked out during a tag match in October. He stated that he was awake the entire time and was just selling the double team move that he took from Private Party.
“But what many people online don’t know, obviously because they weren’t in the situation. I wasn’t knocked out, I was awake the whole time. I remembered everything, knew where I was, knew what was going on in the match.
I literally did like a self-check of myself. Fingers, toes… I was like, ‘Okay.’ The big thing everyone was complaining about was Pepper, The Blade like dragging me to the corner. That was all called. What people aren’t understanding is I just took a double team move, whether I got hurt or not, off the top rope, in a way four-way tag. So, in order to win the match, you have to be legal so Pepper just drags me to his corner so he can become legal and try to win the match, and then yeah, people were upset then yeah, I was just laying there because I was selling this incredible — but also, I was rocked but I was kind of making sure I was okay.”
** Santana of AEW shared on Instagram that his stepfather passed away and that’s why he’s been off Dynamite for the past several weeks. Earlier this year, Santana also lost his father. POST Wrestling would like to send our condolences to the family, friends and loved ones of Santana.
** Ring of Honor announced that hour one of their Final Battle pay-per-view will air for free on multiple platforms including YouTube and Facebook. The free hour will feature Tony Deppen vs. LSG vs. Dak Draper vs. Josh Woods. The winner of that match will go on to challenge Dragon Lee for the ROH World Television Title later in the night.
** Comicbook.com ran their interview with Hornswoggle (Dylan Postl) and Swoggle revealed that back in June, he was flown to the WWE Performance Center in Orlando to film a skit with The Street Profits and Viking Raiders for their match at Backlash. Swoggle’s appearance was not filmed due to the weather.
“It was kind of a funny thing. Last year I did Ring of Honor, Impact and WWE all in one year. This year, no one knows this because it never aired, but I was flown to the Performance Center to film a segment on Backlash during the Street Profit and Viking Raiders match that just never made it to air. It’s just we just never got to film it because we ran out of time and the weather was not in our favor. It just started sideways raining out, so we didn’t get to shoot any of that segment. I would have been the first person to, once again, do … This year would have been AEW, WWE and Impact. Even though the WWE thing didn’t happen, I was still kind of the first crossover between Impact and AEW.”
Swoggle did appear on AEW Dynamite recently. He was a part of The Inner Circle’s ‘Hangover’ spoof. He said that came about when he received a text from Chris Jericho and when Jericho mentioned the ‘Hangover’ film, Swoggle knew he’d be playing the role of the baby.
“Chris and I have been buddies for a decent amount. He literally texted me. He goes, ‘Hey, are you traveling?’ I said, ‘I would love to be.’ He said, ‘Okay.’ He goes, ‘We have this really crazy idea. I’d love you to be part of it. We’re essentially doing a [The Hangover]-esque sketch.’ I said, ‘Let me guess, I’m the baby?’ He goes, ‘You’re the baby.’ I said, ‘Perfect.’ I said, ‘This couldn’t be more fitting’ as to anyone who knows me outside of the ring closely that I fit that part in the Hangover sketch very well.
I was flown to Las Vegas to film it. We filmed. I went to Caesar’s Palace to the actual Hangover suite, which they being like all of us, me being a Hangover fan, it was pretty awesome. We filmed in the suite. I was there for an hour for an eight-second thing. Then I flew home that night, so I was literally in Vegas for less than 12 hours. We filmed the whole thing, it was pretty awesome.”
** Priscilla Kelly appeared on ‘Excuse Me: The Vickie Guerrero Show’ and during their conversation, Priscilla spoke about her former significant other Darby Allin. Darby and Priscilla’s on-screen characters have similarities and Priscilla dove into how it was commonly assumed that her character was inspired by Darby although she was presenting said character prior to meeting Allin.
“So, before I even knew who Darby was, my character was always very daring and I was always the girl that would take the high risk moves and I was always the girl that would have like the candle lit, gothy-esque promos and character, and then it’s so strange to me because the moment we started dating, everything that I did, that I had been doing, people said it was Darby’s inspiration, or because I was dating Darby I had this character, and I was doing this before I even knew who he was but that’s just how it is though. You start dating somebody and immediately, you get compared to them. I remember doing a crazy dive on a show not too long after Darby and I started dating and one of my friends or co-workers had said to me, ‘Oh, looks like Darby’s rubbing off on you’ and I’m like, ‘No, this is who I was before’ and not only that, but I’ve had promoters that I’ve worked for tell me, ‘You should be more like Darby. You should watch his work’ and I’m like, ‘No.’ We’ve always been similar, but we are different and I don’t think — especially when you have two people, they’ve been wrestling the same amount of time and they’re finding their way still, you should never compare a couple and I just think it just creates this weird feeling because it made me have such heavy insecurities for a long time because everything that I did that was my own idea or that was my own creativity, everyone always gave the credit to Darby. I remember even wrestling on the cruise, when I had the match with Allie, it was a non-televised match and I remember somebody came up to me and said, ‘Oh wow, you’re match was really good. You must be training with Darby.’ Just completely accredited all my work to him and me and Darby, we roll around together, we’ll run some spots but we don’t train each other if that makes sense. We use each other as a body. But, as far as my training and my inspiration, I always look to other things or movies or even like older wrestling for inspiration. But it sucks though. In a world of wrestling, it’s always, the woman, if she’s good, it’s because she’s training with her dude or if she’s got some creative thing going on, it’s probably his idea. But in reality, sometimes it’s the reverse. Sometimes the stuff that he does in his promos or songs he uses or stunts he does actually were my idea that I said, ‘Hey, here’s an idea for this’ but no one will ever think that.”
** On today’s episode of NXT UK, former NXT UK Champion Tyler Bate returned to the program for the first time since the tapings started up again. Bate appeared on Noam Dar’s talk show segment and later fell in defeat to A-Kid in a Heritage Cup Championship match. Next week, The Hunt (Wild Boar & Primate) are challenging Mark Coffey and Wolfgang for the NXT UK Tag Team Titles. NXT Cruiserweight Champion Jordan Devlin held his inaugural open challenge on the show and Oliver Carter answered the call. Devlin retained the title.
** Ron & Ian on 95.3 WDAE welcomed Gerald Brisco onto the show.
** Dion Sekone-Fraser, AEW’s Social Media Coordinator appeared on The Turnbuckle Tavern podcast. He talked about how nerve racking it was on the lead up to Sting’s AEW debut as he wanted to make sure everything was in line, on top of having to keep the news a secret for the majority of the day.
“Even with the Sting news, my boss casually tells me that Sting is debuting this Wednesday. I’m like, ‘Okay. Yep. Awesome.’ Like, tell that to me more casually why don’t you.
And you know what’s funny, waking up Wednesday, all day I’m thinking, ‘I can’t f*ck this Sting thing up, I can’t f*ck it up. Everything needs to be perfect, everything needs to be in line. I need the All Elite Wrestling graphic, I need that in my position so when he walks out, I can post it immediately. I need his merch stuff, I need everything.’ I was getting nervous too because I’m looking through our format and I knew Sting was coming out after the Cody tag team match and I’m getting nervous. I’m like it’s counting down because it’s down on the format, you’ll see the time count. Like the time cue of when this thing should hit and I’m just looking at it like, ‘Oh gosh, here it comes, here it comes’ and as soon as the lights go out, like oh f*ck, all things are going. Here we go, oh sh*t. Mikey Rukus is hitting me up, ‘Hey man, I’ve got his theme music that needs to go live right now.’ Like, ‘Shut up Mikey. Give it to me, I’ll do it, I’ll plug it in with everything else.’ I’m even sweaty just talking about it because it was just so nerve racking because he’s a legend.”
Earlier in the interview, he talked about how he got to the position he’s in now. He formerly worked with WWE talents by way of another company he worked for. The conversation started with Dion talking about what got him back into wrestling.
“And then the Bullet Club got into a thing and I’m like, ‘Holy sh*t, what is this Bullet Club stuff?’ And [it] just all snowballed from there, and when I was working for that supplement company, my job for them was the Social Media Coordinator and I was the Community Outreach Manager so my job essentially was to reach out to — well I don’t want to say ‘celebrities’ but just kind of influencer people so I started with WWE. I just reached out to all their talent and said, ‘Hey, I do this thing. It’s cool, you should be a part of it’ and then I just met connections through there. The Good Brothers were my first connection, Tama Tonga was another connection of mine, and then I started taking care of a lot of the WWE and athletes and then one thing led to another, I got fired from that job and then I got hired for AEW not much long[er] after that.”
** Nikki and Brie Bella welcomed Renee Paquette onto their podcast. Renee was scheduled to host the kickoff show for the season two premiere of Friday Night SmackDown on FOX and she shared that the reason she co-hosted the show from home was because she found out she and Jon Moxley were expecting a child.
“That was sort of the thing for me was finding out that I was pregnant and then I was supposed to do the kickoff show for the season premiere of SmackDown on FOX. I was supposed to fly to Orlando and that’s when I asked Brie [Bella] because I just didn’t know what to do about it. I was like, ‘Am I allowed to travel?’ Or what does that look like? How careful do I have to be with everything? I mean granted, I’ve already had COVID so I’ve not tested my antibodies in a while. I’m assuming I maybe still have them but I don’t really know, but then I reached out to my doctor too who I was seeing at the time and she was like, ‘You have to be so careful with everything and it’s just not worth it’ and Brie basically reiterated the same thing of just like how careful you have to be and how much more susceptible you can be during pregnancy to really any kind of an illness and it just obviously wasn’t worth it to roll the dice on that, and luckily everybody that I spoke to at FOX and whatnot, they were all so great and so receptive. They understood where I was coming from and they helped me out big time with that but yeah, I had to pull out of doing that show right away just because.”
** WWE’s Armageddon pay-per-view from the year 2000 was the focus of the latest Grilling JR podcast. While speaking about R-Truth’s arrival and eventual success in WWE, Ross talked about the racism that existed in the territory days of wrestling and how during the early 2000s time period, WWE attempted to incorporate more talents of color into the fold.
“I think his [R-Truth’s] ethnicity in that era helped him, because the company wanted to become, as they should’ve probably 20 years before, wanted to become more diverse. But that was the trend in the wrestling business. You got to remember Conrad [Thompson], when I got in the wrestling business, the territory ran by white promoters had an unwritten rule that there could only be so many African-Americans on their roster, or people of color and I heard that. I’m not just bullsh*tting [or] I made that up. I mean I’ve heard those conversations. Bill Watts’ famous remark to one of the NWA people was, ‘My favorite color is green. I don’t care who they are, what they are. My favorite color is green so this Black thing don’t work in my territory’ and we had a lot of African-Americans. Top babyface, top heels, booker. Whatever, who can do the best job, as it should be. The best people, no matter their skin color should get the jobs and so, no quotas.”
** Ring of Honor’s Joe Hendry appeared on the ‘Last Minute Wrestling’ Podcast. Joe commended ROH for keeping him under contract and paying him although he has not been able to appear for the company because of travel restrictions.
“That is a loyalty for me that will not be forgotten and will be reciprocated […] by the time I get back there I might have not wrestled for them for a year. A year! How easy would [it] have been for Ring Of Honor to just go, ‘Sorry Joe!’ you know? Would have been completely in the rights to do so, but they go: ‘You know what? we got something here for you!’ and I appreciate that. It goes beyond money for me.”
** The main event of All Japan Pro Wrestling’s January 2nd Korakuen Hall show will see Violent Giants (Suwama & Shuji Ishikawa) vs. Nextream (Kento Miyahara & Yuma Aoyagi) for the World Tag Team Championships.
** talkSPORT’s Alex McCarthy conducted an interview with Rampage Brown. In late October, it was unveiled that Rampage was joining WWE’s NXT UK brand and during the interview, he detailed how the conversations between the two sides went and shared that it was William Regal who he spoke to about finalizing things.
“So, we’d had conversations previously. We’d had communications in the past obviously, but at the time I was tied down to other things. Just different situations going on. Kind of with the last few months, everything had reset so I was free agent. I got a phone call and asked if I’d be interested at this time to come on board and I said, you know what, it was only a matter of time anyway so let’s just get it going, let’s do it.
[It] was William Regal himself. I met William Regal in 2005 at my very first try-out because he was very good friends with my trainer Jim McDonald. And then obviously when I got signed [in 2011], we’ve always had a good relationship. I spoke to him about a year ago and then I spoke to him again in the summer and he asked me if I would be interested and I was like, ‘Yep, let’s do it’.”
WWE had interest in the former PROGRESS Champion in the past but Rampage chose to partake in the World of Sport reboot on ITV opposed to heading to NXT UK.
“There was contact at the time [when NXT UK started] and interest from both sides, but there was some loyalties on one side that I kind of felt people had been good to me at World of Sport, so there was some loyalties there. I sided with World of Sport on that one. But, again, I knew it was only a matter of time before it came back around to this, as strange as that might sound.”
** ‘Metro’ pushed out their interview with Eddie Dennis. As of late, Dennis has been managing The Hunt (Wild Boar & Primate) on NXT UK. Although he has not wrestled since an October episode of the weekly show, Dennis stated that he is healthy and very much still views himself as an in-ring performer.
“I’m healthy. I’ve spent so much time unhealthy in the last couple of years, to be healthy and to be not active in the ring at the moment feels a little bit strange. Obviously, I’m still attending the Performance Center and training as a full time competitor. I still very much see myself as a wrestler.”
** Tommy Dreamer guest appeared on Busted Open Radio with David LaGreca and Bully Ray to discuss the relationship between IMPACT Wrestling and All Elite Wrestling. Dreamer was asked what does AEW have to gain from IMPACT and Dreamer responded with “potential matchups”.
“If there is one [a relationship], yes. Potential matchups, as well as… there have been talent that have left IMPACT Wrestling and they have not reached the level of performance that they had in IMPACT Wrestling because hey, some person could see you as something, some person could see you as something else. Same with talents that have left IMPACT Wrestling and gone to WWE. There’s potential matchups.”
** ODB will be serving food from her food truck at the AEW tapings in Jacksonville on 12/16 and at their live Dynamite show on 12/30.
** Kevin Kelly spoke to ACH to promote the Super J-Cup tournament. ACH was asked about his Korakuen Hall moment in 2018 when he had the crowd’s attention while dancing to Tetsuya Naito’s theme. ACH looks back fondly on that moment.
“Definitely one of my top moments there, and the crazy thing about it was, I was very timid, I didn’t wanna do it but KUSHIDA insisted. He was like, ‘You have to. You just have to do it’ and he persuaded me, he got me to do it and once I did it, I got in the moment and I loved every minute of it.”
** D-Von Dudley chatted with Rikishi on his Table Talk podcast.
** MLW’s Low Ki guest appeared on Busted Open Radio and discussed his role as a locker room leader in the organization. Low Ki said he makes sure everyone is on their game and that tasks and duties are getting done amongst the talent and staff.
“All of that, it’s my locker room. So, I gotta make sure all of my people are producing. I gotta make sure they’re in the right mindset, I gotta make sure that they’re not having anything as far as unforeseen obstacles that can be avoided. When I’m there, I’m running that thing to make sure all of my people are producing. So, when I say ‘my guys’, I’m talking about all of my people. I’m talking about the guys, the girls, the staff, my camera guys, my production people from the network. I’m making sure that sh*t is getting done, and that’s the reason why we’re producing so well because no one’s sitting there playing games, nobody’s sitting there on their phone, wasting time on Twitter. Everybody is active. Everybody is working and the thing is, no one is micromanaging. That’s the best part. These people are producing at their own level and because of that, they’re free to be creative and because of that, you’re seeing them grow more and more every chance they get.”
** ‘Fort Hood Sentinel’ has a story up about WWE’s Tribute to the Troops special and it includes an interview with two soldiers that were a part of the WWE ThunderDome experience.
** WWE filed to trademark ‘New Year’s Evil’ on 12/6.
** Xavier Woods streamed CYBERPUNK 2077.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QBoRvXvLt8[/embedyt]
** Ronda Rousey broke down her WWE finisher in a throwback ‘Ronda on the Road’ clip.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9895EXjBQx4[/embedyt]
** Trey Miguel is a part of the Virtual Basement video game roster.
** Titus O’Neil is going to be distributing holiday food packages in Asheville, North Carolina.
** Chris Bey chatted with Kevin Kelly to promote the NJPW Super J-Cup.
** Wrestling Inc. has an interview with Johnny Gargano and during their chat, Gargano spoke about having Indi Hartwell and Austin Theory paired with himself and Candice LeRae. He likened the group to Evolution (Triple H, Ric Flair, Batista & Randy Orton) but not in terms of their success, but more so mixing the veterans and young talents.
“Theory was pictured to be with me. I wrestled him a few times in EVOLVE. I think [NXT] view[s] it as the Triple H and Randy Orton-esque relationship, which I agreed with. I thought Theory has tons of potential obviously. He was always in the mix to be one of those guys with me. Indi as well. Me and Candice both think very highly of Indi and think she has a very bright future. So we were very happy to have her with us as well.
We likened it to Evolution in a sense. Obviously, we’re not putting ourselves on that pedestal because they are an iconic stable for many reasons. Just the idea of being able to be in the ring and mold younger talent for the future. We think that is very important. Indi being able to be around us. Austin being able to be around us. It can bring out different elements of their characters and different things the people haven’t seen on screen yet.”
** JTG turned 36-years old on 12/10.
** Ronda Rousey is getting a sports series on ESPN+.
** This weekend, Ring of Honor is streaming RUSH-related content on their YouTube channel ahead of his ROH World Title defense against Brody King at Final Battle.
** Noam Dar gave his Slammy Award picks to GIVEMESPORT. Dar also spoke to Digital Spy.
** Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated caught up with JD Drake to promote Limitless Wrestling’s ‘Vacationland’ Cup. Drake emphasized to those reading to not let his physique fool them and there’s nobody that can do what he can do in the ring.
“Don’t let the physique fool you. There is nobody on the planet that does what I do. There may be some people that do the same moves that I do, there may be some people that do the same spots that I do, there may be some people my size just as athletic. But they’re not going to do it with my heart, my emotion, or my flair. You have to experience the emotion I bring to a match and the emotion I bring to professional wrestling. I take extreme pride in trying my best to connect with every single person that watches the product I put forth. So if you want to live vicariously through someone, please watch a JD Drake match. I promise you’re going to be entertained.”
** Neveah was a guest on Taylor Wilde’s podcast.
** The Bella Twins were on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
** talkSPORT ran their interview with Noam Dar.
** Digital Spy has an interview with A-Kid.
** The following video is from Ring of Honor’s YouTube channel:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXNhCX2sC7M[/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.
