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.
** IMPACT Wrestling’s Johnny Swinger guest appeared on Allan ‘Kwee Wee’ Funk’s ‘Get Funk’d’ show and Swinger spoke about his current run in IMPACT. He feels he’s doing the best work of his career.
Yeah, I guess everything comes full circle. I got to go to all the big leagues and now actually, this is the first time I’ve gone back to one [IMPACT Wrestling] that I’ve already been to and doing even better this time which is unbelievable that when I was there at 28, 27, 28, I had what I would consider a really good run, we’re the tag team champions [Swinger & Simon Diamond] and all that but this time around is just, oh man, I’m just loving it. It’s just — I’m having a blast with it. I think it’s the — now that I’m older in age, I kind of relax a little more and don’t get as nervous and you know, stressed out about it. I just have more fun with it and they give me a really fun thing to work with so it’s the best work I’ve ever done.
At IMPACT’s Bound For Glory pay-per-view, Swinger competed in the ‘Call Your Shot’ Gauntlet Battle Royal. ‘Demon’ was a name listed on the run sheet for the match and Swinger along with fellow talents thought Bray Wyatt was going to show up until they saw The KISS Demon (Dale Torborg) backstage.
I think he [The KISS Demon/Dale Torborg] was surprised there two weeks ago [at Bound For Glory] with the reaction. I wasn’t. I wasn’t surprised.
Bro, I didn’t know until he was standing there. I’m standing up on the ramp, I got a bodyguard, real good guy, his name’s Hernandez. Yeah, Hernandez, great guy, he plays my bodyguard. Awesome guy, I love working with him. He’s been with me for about seven, eight months now and dude, we’re looking at the rundown going, ‘Okay, we’re doing a thing with The Demon.’ Dude, I didn’t know who The Demon was because there’s some other guys that go by ‘The Demon’. It was [a] guy, that Bray Wyatt, I thought maybe it was him. They call him The Demon sometimes. But all it said on the sheet was ‘Demon’. It didn’t say ‘KISS Demon’ and until we saw Dale, Hernandez is the one [who] pointed him out and said, ‘There’s the Demon’ and I was like, ‘Holy sh*t, it’s Dale.’ Dude, that’s how I found out.
On IMPACT’s weekly show on AXS, Swinger hosted his ‘Swinger’s Palace’ segment and recently, it was closed down in storyline. Swinger says IMPACT sold a lot of Swinger’s Palace-related merchandise and questioned why the segments would come to an end. He said regardless, the company is still featuring him on their program.
I had my own thing called Swinger’s Palace for about eight months. It was like a glorified interview segment. You know, where guys would come on to further their angles. I had like a makeshift casino and all that. Man, it just got a great response and — we storyline closed it up but, it may come back, it’s open to come back. I’ll tell you what, we sold a lot of t-shirts and we still are so, I don’t know why you’d — probably not wanna shut that part down but they’re keeping me as a really good character on there anyway.
Swinger detailed how his return to IMPACT came to be. He had several conversations with Scott D’Amore but that stemmed from Swinger’s name being brought up in a creative meeting and then the powers that be wondering what he was doing at the time.
And then Scott [D’Amore] was also in charge of TNA — well he wasn’t in charge but he was on the committee in 2003 and that’s how me and Simon [Diamond] got brought in so, he’s always been a great friend and in my corner as a backer of mine and he took control of IMPACT I think in like 2018 maybe, when it was bought by a Canadian company and man, he sent me a text message on the fourth of July in 2019, said — he’d always keep in contact, we always talk and stuff through the years and he knows I kept working. He goes, ‘Swinger,’ he goes, ‘Got an idea for you in IMPACT. It’ll be fun and easy’ and I responded, ‘When do I start?’ It doesn’t matter what it is, you know what I mean? We can make it work and I didn’t hear from him for like three weeks and I was just like, ‘Man, I wonder if he forgot about that or –’ when I said, ‘Hey, when do I start?’ He actually said, September at the latest’ and that was the last I heard and then maybe the end of August, he actually calls me, ‘Hey, did I tell you what the idea is?’ I said, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘We want you to be like an old school 80’s wrestler with the promos and the look and the lingo’ and I said, ‘So just be myself pretty much?’ He goes, ‘Yeah!’ But he goes, ‘I’ll tell you where the idea came from.’ He goes, ‘We’re sitting around in a booking meeting and Dreamer brought your name up or something and someone else said man, what’s Swinger doing? Well let’s look up on his Facebook and see what –’ and they went on my Facebook and saw me doing all these little 30 second promos for independent shows, you know what I mean? When I do an independent, the promoter asks me for a little 30 second and I did like 80’s [style]. ‘This Saturday night’ and you know, ‘Atlanta, Georgia, I’m gonna be a’ blah, blah, blah. It’s just — and they were like, ‘Man, we want that. We want that on TV. We want old school, you know, promos and look and everything’ and I was like, ‘Oh man, this is gonna be great,’ right?
Allan Funk told the story of when Paul Orndorff voiced his unhappiness with Les Thatcher for doing the MTV series ‘True Life’. Orndorff felt that Thatcher contributed to exposing the wrestling business and here’s how that exchange unfolded according to Allan:
So Les [Thatcher] did the TV show where he talked about, you know, exposing the business a little bit so Paul [Orndorff] comes up to me because me and Paul were pretty tight when we were in the [WCW] Power Plant. So he comes up to me, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Paul sit there like this [index finger over nose, thumb under chin] and he’d be like, ‘F*ck yeah kid, sh*t yeah. That’s a f*cking shoot’ and so he comes up to me and he’s standing there and he looks at Les Thatcher and he looks at me and he’s like, ‘F*cking Les Thatcher.’ He goes, ‘What the — that f*cking guy exposed the business. F*ck this sh*t. I’m going over and saying something to him.’ So he beelines right to Les and he looks at Les and Les holds his hand out to shake his hand and Paul’s like, ‘F*ck you!’ Right in his face and he goes, ‘F*ck you. You exposed the business. I’ll beat your f*cking ass’ and Les is like, ‘Oh sh*t.’ So, Paul comes walking over to me and he’s pacing back and forth and he kept looking, he’s like, he goes, ‘Did I do the right thing? You think I did the right — f*ck it, I did the right thing. F*ck him,’ and it’s just like God dang Paul, just calm down.
** Ronda Rousey recently shared that she is not aware of her contract status with WWE and said that is a question for the lawyers. While doing her Facebook stream on 11/23, Rousey said there were a lot of WWE-related questions in the chat but she could not answer any of them.
A lot of WWE questions in here. I can’t answer any of them, I’m sorry.
** During episode 41 of MC! True Long Island Story, Matt Cardona recounted his interaction with Stephanie McMahon after she saw a YouTube video of his that included Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque.
She [Stephanie McMahon] said, ‘I watched your YouTube show.’ I said, ‘Oh, thanks.’ She said, ‘I didn’t say I liked it.’ That’s also the episode where Triple H says that nobody wants to see me, and I play it, unedited, just played [it].
Cardona spoke about the checks that he received from WWE when they were collaborating with THQ for their video games. Cardona said the royalty checks got significantly smaller once WWE started working with 2K Games.
That’s when the royalties for video games went [downhill]. So, the royalties for these video game checks were insane. Like, my first ever one, I was just downloadable and I got it, I was like — I literally, my dad — it’s WrestleMania week because of like, you know, it’s a quarterly check. You get it the next quarter and my dad read me the amount over the phone and I dropped. I dropped to the bed. I was like, ‘What?’ I couldn’t believe it. So those were some nice, nice checks but then when they switched from THQ to 2K, the check was like a fourth of that, like a quarter of that and I was like, ‘What?’ And the excuse was, ‘Oh, we switched companies,’ blah, blah, blah. But then they never went back up. So it was kind of like — so yes, being in the video game is cool. I would be in a video game for free. I shouldn’t say that but I would. But it’s a lot cooler when you get that big ass check because we would count — I don’t know about everybody else but for me, someone like me, I would count on that check to pay my taxes for the year, you know what I’m saying? And in that one year, the check comes as a quarter of that. What? With no warning?
John Morrison and Cardona have been friends dating back to their early days in WWE. Cardona was with Morrison the night before WWE released him. He can’t wait to share the ring with Morrison again and is not worried about how he’ll transition into the free agent market.
One of the most hardworking and creative people I know [John Morrison] … I was actually with him the night before he got released and we were just talking about life and stuff like that and his future plans and like, the next day, he gets released.
I can’t wait to work Johnny Major. I think this is the best thing for him right now. Obviously, you know, I’m sure he’s missing that fat WWE paycheck he was getting, but they weren’t really doing much with him, his wife [Taya Valkyrie] just got let go. Now they can do things together and move back to L.A. He was living in Orlando. So I think the sky’s the limit for him. He puts his mind to so many things and makes them all work so, I’m not worried about him.
** WWE Survivor Series 2006 was the focus of Bruce Prichard’s latest Something to Wrestle with podcast. Prichard talked about Michael Hayes leading the SmackDown creative team in 2006 and how Hayes presented the on-screen product different than Paul Heyman did.
I don’t know if it was necessarily Michael [Hayes’] approach. I think it was more — it was a different approach, that’s for sure from where SmackDown had been with [Paul] Heyman. More entertainment-based and a little more fun and a little more… a little more attention to story and to being different. But I thought Michael was really good in that regard.
I would say that Michael knows sports-entertainment. I think Michael knew sports-entertainment long before anybody else in the professional wrestling business. Michael was a sports-entertainer, Michael was doing albums and… so, Michael got that. Michael understood and Michael liked the gaga, Michael liked the over-the-top presentation of everything. So, yeah, Michael got it, Michael gets it and is able to present the product in that way. ‘Let’s find out what else can you do. What else is gonna make me connect with you?’
CM Punk was a fresh face in WWE at the time and Prichard touched on the perception of Punk from the viewpoint of his colleagues. Some felt that he was not the top guy he was made out to be and Prichard added that it took Punk a little while to connect with the audience.
I think from the day that [CM] Punk stepped into a WWE locker room that there was that perception from a lot of people [that Punk wasn’t a top guy], until Punk actually did it and even then, I think that there was still the doubters in that regard. But at this time, I don’t think it was just Triple H, I think it was a lot of the old timers that viewed him, ‘What the hell’s this guy?’ Punk was brand new here.
They hadn’t seen it, they hadn’t experienced it and frankly, I don’t know that… I don’t know that Punk got it yet. Took a little while for him too. The connection with the audience, yeah… It’s a different animal [connecting to the WWE TV audience].
The late ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper was a part of Survivor Series ’06. He also competed on WWE’s tour of Europe but was sent home after discovering discoloration near his kidneys. It was later diagnosed as Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Prichard recounted having a conversation with Piper and encouraged him to get checked out.
Well, I think and I don’t know, knowing Roddy [Piper], he might have told a few people but I remember Roddy telling me and showing me because I think Roddy wore a shirt for his matches over there [in the UK] and so nobody saw him, nobody saw his body and he pulls me into a bathroom, he goes, ‘I gotta show you something’ and he pulls up his shirt, down by his kidneys and everything was all just purple and I said, ‘Damn Roddy, what’d you do man?’ I said, ‘You gotta get checked out’ and he was like, ‘So help me God man, if you tell anybody.’ He says, ‘I know, I need to get home.’ I said, ‘Okay, but you need to get checked out now because that’s not normal’ and so I actually brought the doctor in to him and the doctor checked him out and he’s like, ‘Yeah, you need to go get CAT scans, you need to do this’ and he didn’t want to do it in the UK, just flat out refused and he went home right afterwards and it was something — they didn’t diagnose it as lymphoma at that time. It was — they — bad bruise and maybe some damage to the kidney and all that. They did a myriad of tests but, at that point, had not made the diagnosis. They did not diagnose this for a little while. But he was a hurting puppy and Roddy is one of those that the show must go on. ‘I’ll tape it up.’ That’s literally what he did but it was — and he made sure not to show me. Again, another Roddy, he didn’t show me until after the match too, because he was afraid I’d pull him from the match. That one was crazy because I was scared. I was scared just looking at it and I said, ‘I can’t not tell somebody about this. I gotta get the doc in here. You could be hurt bad Roddy and you need to go to the hospital,’ and we get him off the tour right after that but it was like, ‘You need to go home and go.’
There was a conversation held about the PRIDE Fight Championships organization and Prichard said he and Victor Quiñones once met with the powers that be in PRIDE. This occurred early on in PRIDE’s existence and Prichard said their pitch to him at the time was that their fights were fixed but would be presented as legit. There have been allegations throughout the years that PRIDE’s product is predetermined.
Yeah, I think it was just a courtesy more than anything [WWE’s meeting with PRIDE Fighting Championships]. I met with the guys with PRIDE in Japan when they first started and the presentation at the time [was] that this is a shoot group and, ‘Oh my God, everything’s gonna be a shoot’ and it was a work. I mean it was all a work. I don’t know if that continued after the fact because I really didn’t follow it. But, in its initial stages, Víctor Quiñones and I went and met with them on one of my trips to Japan and they were looking to bring some of their guys in and possibly do something with us in the States to get the PRIDE name out there but it was way in its infancy.
Yes [PRIDE was a work], because that’s what they told me. Yes, they said, ‘We’re working here.’ He says, ‘We work really snug and we want to present this as a shoot.’
It wasn’t a big deal and I don’t know what they evolved into. I don’t even think they had a show yet. No, no, no, no, I’m saying in the 90’s. I’m saying from their formative years that — whoever the hell it was. I went to a Japanese dojo and met with whoever the hell was the head of PRIDE at the time. I have no idea. It was a Víctor Quiñones deal and they wanted to do something with us and the pitch was that they were a shoot fight group and when I said, ‘Well, we’re not interested in doing –’ he goes, ‘No, no. It’s a work, it’s just very stiff. It’s presented as a shoot.’
That’s probably around the time I was there [beginning of Attitude Era] because they weren’t a big — they weren’t a thing. I don’t even know if they’d had a big major show yet. But their presentation to me was that it will be presented as a shoot but, ‘We’re working. We work very stiff and it’ll be presented as a shoot.’
Monty Brown joined WWE shortly before Survivor Series 2006. Prichard thought Monty’s ceiling in WWE was limitless and felt that he would be a breakout star for the company.
Limitless [Monty Brown’s ceiling in WWE]. I thought that Monty Brown — I was a huge admirer of Monty Brown’s work and I thought that this guy could come in and be a breakout star for us and unfortunately just didn’t happen. I think there was an issue with his brother or something that he had to leave and never came back.
Around that time, Natalya, TJ Wilson and Cesaro were offered WWE developmental contracts. Prichard reflected on what he thought about those respective talents at the time. He mostly remembers Natalya and TJ because it was a case of when they would finally be coming to WWE.
First of all, I’ve always been a big fan of Nattie and TJ [Wilson]. From the time they were kids, it was like it was just a matter of time. ‘When are you gonna be old enough to be in the ring?’ So, you know, for me, those two I think was just a matter of when. You know, timing. With Claudio [Cesaro], frankly, I really don’t remember Claudio being considered at that time. Claudio didn’t make his way up to the main roster until after, you know, 2009 or 2008, whenever it was. But I remembered Claudio from his days in ROH and I always remember thinking, ‘Hey, here’s a big guy that could do something on the roster’ but I really don’t remember Claudio being a part of that. I definitely remember TJ and Nattie, just because of the Hart connection.
In the five-on-five elimination match, Mike Knox was quickly eliminated by Shawn Michaels. Prichard said Knox was a name that Paul Heyman pushed to the point where it may have done harm to Mike. Besides that, Prichard feels that there was not much personality there.
Again, I think that in storyline, that pretty much everything is fair and to that point I think that this is another unfortunate example of someone plugging for someone so much so that it’s to their detriment. Yeah, he [Mike Knox] was a [Paul] Heyman guy to hey, first night in, have him win the world title and Vince [McMahon], I don’t even think had ever seen the guy at that point and I’m sure J.R. signed him and hired him but I brought the guy in from California, from UPW and Mike was a hard worker, really, really good guy, but there wasn’t a lot of personality there. You see someone in training and you talk to people and you base your opinions on that and then you go off of that and then that’s what you make your decisions on. But he was also a guy that played a convict where I saw him in his work and then, he comes in and you’re, ‘Who is this guy? What is he?’ And he just frankly never connected with the audience and I think there was a general feeling that-that was shared by the audience and I think that’s pretty accurate.
** Ryan Satin welcomed Ricochet onto his ‘Out of Character’ podcast and Ricochet expressed that he feels more comfortable on the microphone and in backstage segments. Pre-WWE, he feels he was often slotted in the “attraction match” so there was not a lot of opportunities for him to verbally build a program or story.
Yeah, I think totally [I feel more comfortable on the microphone] especially nowadays. Obviously beforehand, I always said, ‘Ricochet beforehand,’ especially before getting to the WWE, I traveled the world as an attraction match. I was always the attraction, you know what I mean? So I never had any long-running stories at any specific company other than like Japan when I was over there but no one can really watch that stuff. Obviously I can’t really speak Japanese so I didn’t get the chance to talk a lot so, but, so coming up in my world, in my experience, I never got to be in these long storylines with somebody and hash everything out, you know? It’s like I was always the attraction here and then I’d fly over here and be the attraction then fly across seas and you know what I mean? So I was always just that guy. So obviously, the talking, the promos, it was a slow burn but now I think I totally found my pocket. I think I found who I am, I know how I speak, I know what I wanna say now. So I mean, to everybody — everybody got their opinions but everybody don’t know, kind of everything that goes into it. So, basically I feel like nowadays I’ve kind of, like I said before, I found my pocket and I think I just know my voice now so I’m just more comfortable with things like that.
When asked about the idea of turning heel, it is something Ricochet knows he can channel, but he feels that he can still show a higher level of aggressiveness while still having the crowd support him.
Well I mean, the thing about Ricochet is one of the key things that kind of drives him is the WWE universe especially at the moment, you know? And being with guys like Sheamus out there, guys like — Ricochet wants to go out there and show, ‘I don’t care how big and bad you think you are, it don’t matter.’ Look at Drew [McIntyre]; I’m gonna come out there, I’m gonna look you in your face, I’m gonna smack you in the mouth, you know what I mean? So, it’s like, I think at this moment, especially because you got so many guys out there; you have Roman [Reigns], you got Sheamus, you got all these guys out there who are, you know, heels essentially but it’s like, I want to shut all them up. All those guys out there talking all this talk, I’m about to shut them up. That’s my goal right now.
Oh definitely [there are times when he wants to verbally remind people he’s one of the best wrestlers]. I gotta have people put some respect on Ricochet’s name for real because like you said, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I have — and like you said, back in PWG, being the bad guy was kind of my bread and butter there for years, you know what I mean? That’s where I kind of got my popularity at so, if I need to be a bad guy, I can be the bad guy if I need to be but right now, I don’t think I need to be. Right now, I think I can still go out there and tell somebody to shut up and smack ‘em in their face and still have the universe behind me, you know what I mean? I mean, Stone Cold Steve Austin did it for years. So, but like you said, if I need to be the bad guy, we all know that I can do the bad guy for sure.
While WWE were running shows out of the ThunderDome, Ricochet began to sport jeans to the ring. He said that was done to add more grit to his on-screen character. He said he wanted to take away the flashy gear and still showcase himself in the ring on a high level.
That’s another reason I started wearing jeans for a while because I felt like jeans was adding a little bit of grit to the gracefulness that is Ricochet, you know what I mean? The jeans and the black and everything, jacket, kind of attitude was adding some real — some grit, some backbone to a character that I felt like needed a little push, you know what I mean? That’s all what I was thinking in the process.
It was kind of a statement for a second, you know what I mean? Trying to… just show a different side, show a different avenue that’s Ricochet. A different feeling, a different, I don’t know, emotion coming from him. More of a, I don’t know. Take away the gear, take away the everything, be basic and then still show that I can be spectacular.
** Mick Foley did a virtual signing with Highspots Wrestling Network and they raised over $22,000 to help Jimmy Rave with his medical bills. Rave’s left arm and both legs have been amputated.
Thanking EVERYONE who participated in tonight’s @Highspots signing and auction. We raised over $22,000 to help @TheJimmyRave with his medical bills – and showed what a difference the wrestling community can make!🙏🙏🙏 pic.twitter.com/5fb29IL2Uv
— Mick Foley (@RealMickFoley) November 29, 2021
** GHC Heavyweight Champion Katsuhiko Nakajima wants to defend his title against a New Japan Pro-Wrestling talent at the NOAH vs. NJPW show on January 8th. Next in line to challenge Nakajima is the returning Go Shiozaki and that match is scheduled for January 1st.
** AEW uploaded the following video to their YouTube channel:
** GCW L.A. Fights Results (11/28/21) Los Angeles, California
– Adrian Quest def. Lucas Riley
– Titus Alexander def. Midas Kreed
– Matt Vandagriff def. Damian Drake
– Juicy Finau def. Bad Dude Tito
– Six Way Scramble Match: Jai Vidal def. D-Rogue and Hunter Freeman and Ju Dizz and Lil Cholo and Ray Rosas
– Delilah Doom def. Mazzerati
– Jack Cartwheel def. Brandon Gatson
– Dark Sheik def. Sandra Moone
** Eiji Ezaki (Hayabusa) would have been 53 years old today. He passed away in March of 2016.
** Tammy ‘Sunny’ Sytch appeared during The Shining Wizards Wrestling podcast ten year anniversary show.
** Alex Coughlin of the New Japan L.A. Dojo is scheduled for the TERMINUS debut show on 1/16. Dante Caballero is competing on the show as well.
** NJPW Best of the Super Juniors Results (11/29/21) Korakuen Hall
– Kosei Fujita vs. Ryohei Oiwa – Time Limit Draw (10:00)
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: Ryusuke Taguchi [8] def. DOUKI [4]
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: Robbie Eagles [6] def. BUSHI [6]
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: YOH [6] def. Taiji Ishimori [8]
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: SHO [12] def. Master Wato [4] by referee’s decision
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: El Desperado [9] def. Yoshinobu Kanemaru [8]
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: El Phantasmo [6] def. Hiromu Takahashi [7]
** Dutch Mantel turned 72-years-old on 11/29. WWE 24/7 Champion Dana Brooke is celebrating her 33rd birthday today.
** Gunn Club (Billy, Austin & Colten Gunn) did a virtual signing with The Asylum Wrestling Store.
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.
