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.
** To promote the 12/8 AEW Dynamite at UBS Arena, News 12 caught up with Eddie Kingston. Kingston opened about the conversation he had with Jon Moxley before Moxley opted to enter an inpatient alcohol treatment program.
I told [Jon] Moxley before he went, you know and did what he had to do, I told him, ‘Man, none of this matters. Only thing that matters is your wife and your kid. I don’t even matter. You have to do this for them and I got your back regardless whether you go or not. I’m here,’ and he was like, ‘Okay man.’ He’s very one-word answer with everybody so, yeah, for someone like Mox, you gotta be able to read between the lines so when he says, ‘Okay man. Yeah, right,’ it’s not just that. It’s the other things he’s saying to you but no, I’m proud of him and he’s showing — he’s showing everybody, ‘Look man, we’re all flawed.’ Men can be flawed. We’re allowed to be. But what we’re not allowed to be is flawed and not changing, not trying to work on it. That’s not right, you know what I mean? So, I’m proud of him, he’s taking the right healthy steps so he can be around — me, I’m big into this — so that he can be around for his daughter. When it comes to kids, you know what I mean? Trust me, we’ll make money regardless, you know?
At AEW Full Gear, Eddie Kingston and CM Punk went one-on-one. Both talents are several weeks removed from their story concluding and are now in different scenarios on AEW TV. Eddie looked back on his feud with Punk and mentioned that along with Punk, WWE’s Cesaro is someone he’d have an issue with if Cesaro came to AEW.
First off, I didn’t see the thing with him [CM Punk] and MJF, because I don’t like either guy so I won’t watch. I’m not gonna lie to you. Plus I’m not gonna learn anything from it so I’d rather watch [Toshiaki] Kawada and [Kenta] Kobashi from 1998 for the 50th time. Anyway, that’s enough of me throwing shots at people. The thing with Punk, I guess you could say the ‘promo’ and I’m using quotations, it wasn’t a promo. He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him and we’ve had a lot of things to say to each other that we never had the chance to say to each other. We’ve either said to friends, mutual friends of each other or we just decided to ignore each other or whatever. There’s a lot of other things I’m not gonna get too inside baseball on it, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of stuff that went on behind the scenes that no one really needs to know but, yeah, that wasn’t a promo. That was something we both wanted to say to each other for 15 years. That was 15 years of build up for both of us. So then you think, ‘How do you follow that up with a match?’ It wasn’t a match, we actually fought. I hit him, he hit me, you know what I mean? And whatever, it was over. It was over, we didn’t shake each other’s hands after the match like people do. We didn’t go on Twitter and say how great and lucky we were to face each other. Punk don’t like me, I don’t like Punk, that’s it. That’s the end of it, there’s no promo, there’s no let’s make this up. This is reality and that’s it. When we have to get in the ring, we’ll be professional but you know for a fact we’re gonna take a lot of shots at each other and that’s it. If the fans enjoy it, they enjoy it. At that point, with someone like him who I don’t like, I don’t care if people like it or not at that point. It could’ve been zero people in the audience, I was gonna hit him. That’s really it.
No, it’s the same thing with like, there’s people in wrestling I do not like. Punk is one, Cesaro’s another one. The big Swiss idiot at WWE, whatever, Cesaro. I know him as Claudio. I don’t like him, I don’t respect him, you know what I mean? He ever comes here, we’re gonna have a problem or whenever his contract’s up. I don’t even pay attention to what he does. But guys like that, I just don’t like, don’t respect.
Kingston enjoys doing commentary for AEW. He said the company knows they are rolling the dice by putting him on live commentary.
I don’t know if they’re [AEW] gonna leave me on because I bury a lot of people on commentary. You know, I just have my own opinions and some people in the office might not like it but, they know you’re rolling the dice if you put me on commentary, especially live.
** Jonathan Gresham appeared on Cultaholic’s ‘Desert Island Graps’ show and he extensively detailed how the return of the Ring of Honor Pure division and Pure Championship happened from his perspective. Gresham feels that if the pandemic didn’t happen, he would not have been crowned Pure Champion in the original tournament. He believes it’s a case of him being the only option that made sense at the time.
When I did all this fighting to get to Ring of Honor, just relentless, just trying to get there, trying to get there, I got a chance to wrestle Hunter [Delirious] again, one-on-one in Pittsburgh at Stage AE. After the match, he gave me one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever gotten and he then said to me, ‘We’re gonna sign you. We’re gonna give you a contract’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s happened.’ So a couple weeks later I got the contract in the email, signed it, now I’m part of the company. They end up putting me with Search and Destroy which is Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin and some other guy [Jay White] that they were trying to put in the stable, and at that time, I’m starting to look around. I’m like, ‘Okay, all this traveling I’ve been doing, I haven’t noticed that Ring of Honor’s changed. It’s not the same Ring of Honor that I fell in love with.’ The style changed back in 2006 and I was so busy with trying to get here that I didn’t notice that the style had changed so, it was like, ‘Where am I gonna fit in?’ The style had shifted more towards like, you know, Dragon Gate but The Young Bucks had taken that Dragon Gate style and evolved it to something different and that was the identity of Ring of Honor at the time. I thought to myself, ‘Where do I fit in? Because I don’t do that stuff.’ So I said, ‘Well, why don’t I just try to bring Pure wrestling back?’ So I told myself, ‘I’ll be the Pure wrestler of the company because nobody else is doing it.’ That’s again, me, seeing everybody going right and then I go left. So, and it just fit me anyway. So I was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna do this.’ So anytime I got Hunter’s ear or Greg [Gilleland] who’s the guy who does all the big deals, contracts and stuff, I would talk to them about Pure wrestling. ‘Hey, we need to do this, we need to bring this back.’ I had did it so much that I think around 2018, they actually let me have a Pure wrestling match against Silas Young in Baltimore. But it wasn’t until 2019 that I got booked for [Best of the] Super Juniors and I went over to Japan and I was in the locker room with Brody [King] and Marty [Scurll] and Marty, I didn’t know — because I had no clue what he was about to start doing with Ring of Honor.
He came to me and said, ‘Hey man. What do you think Ring of Honor needs to do to differentiate themselves from everybody else?’ And so of course I took that opportunity to just pitch my idea of Pure wrestling; the way it should look and all this stuff and the conversation ended, I didn’t think anything else about it. A couple of weeks later, he hits me up on the phone and goes, ‘Hey man, check out this PowerPoint presentation I’m about to give to upper management’ and so I look at it, at this point, I found out with everybody else that Marty is taking over the book and so he sends me this file and I watch it and it’s literally everything that we talked about in Japan about the Pure tournament and I was like, ‘Bro, I don’t even need credit for it. I don’t care. Just get it done’ because it’s gonna save Ring of Honor in my mind, and so, then it got announced and I got announced and everybody was becoming a part of it. I truly don’t believe I would have been the one to win the belt if the pandemic didn’t happen. The pandemic took away loads of talent that was just — it would have done the company good to have someone like Yuji Nagata win it, you know? That would have been huge for us. But then when the pandemic hit, borders closed and Ring of Honor was still trying to be relevant at the time. I think I was the only person left that made sense to put it on. I was also a Tag Team Champion at the time and I mean, the odds of me getting two belts at one time was like, ‘No!’ You know what I mean? So, that’s pretty much how it came to be and I think I was just like the last choice. It was like, ‘Well, there’s nobody else. He’s been believing in this for years since he’s been here so, let’s just see what he does.’ I think that was pretty much it. That’s how it happened.
** WWE Armageddon 2006 was the focus of Bruce Prichard and Conrad Thompson’s latest Something to Wrestle with podcast. They discussed the Inferno match between MVP and Glenn ‘Kane’ Jacobs which led to Prichard sharing his thoughts about flaming table spots and explaining why he’s not a fan of it.
Why is it silly? It’s a God damn Inferno match, it’s surrounded by a wall of flames. It’s being — like you’re in Dante’s Inferno. There is no escape, you must walk through the flames if you can and if you attempt it and if you get set on fire, then guess what pal? You’re done! You’re burnt! It’s over! Not silly f*cking light a table on fire and go through it for no reason whatsoever, no. It was you actually set your opponent on fire very safely and — there’s a way to do it [Prichard said sarcastically].
Yes, I couldn’t stand it [Prichard the flaming table comment was in reference to The Dudley Boyz]. It made no sense.
You know, to me, it’s just, in the middle of a match, was it spectacular? Sure it was spectacular. But I just didn’t get it because it’s like, ‘Okay, now I’ve got you beat but first, hang on, let me get a table. Now let me put lighter fluid on it, now let me set it on fire but now I’m gonna go through it.’
During the Q&A portion of the show, Prichard was asked about MVP’s longevity and still being featured on WWE television today. Prichard said MVP has evolved throughout the years and has the natural ability to do so.
I think his chance to evolve and change and it’s that character has grown. So, he [MVP] has changed and he has evolved through the years and has the aptitude to do so.
On that Armageddon show, Joey Mercury suffered a broken nose and orbital bone when his face clashed with a ladder. Prichard remembered there being some trouble getting Mercury to the hospital because of a law that one ambulance must be always present at a venue and the first vehicle could not leave until there was another one present. Stephanie McMahon and multiple staff members eventually made their way to the area attempting to get the ambulance to pull off.
Well, I mean from my vantage point, it was just horrible [Joey Mercury ladder incident at Armageddon]. It was ugly and we were concerned. Having been in a situation where Brock Lesnar kicked a wall into my face and not knowing if my eye was there, I was afraid because we looked and Joey’s face was just a mask of blood and no one could tell other than he was badly injured. So we immediately sent the trainer down to see, ‘Hey, go assess what the hell’s going on in there and get him out of there’ and Joey didn’t wanna go. Joey wanted to stay in the match. But, the initial assessment we looked at and we got him back immediately and got him wrapped up because again, there was the fear of losing his eye and no one knew the extent of how bad this injury could be. So, we called for an ambulance and there’s a law, like when you’re in a building okay; we always have — first of all, we have our own medical team there but we also always have an ambulance service there. The building has — usually has an ambulance service and they can double so you can have the building and you can use it. The only thing is-is that you cannot — there always has to be an ambulance there so if someone goes in the ambulance, then you got to wait now for another ambulance to come and replace the ambulance that you’re taking that person to the hospital in. So when you have a dangerous situation like this for someone who’s injured severely and you’re looking at it and they’re going, ‘Well we gotta wait for the next ambulance to get here,’ it was like, ‘No. You need to go’ and Stephanie McMahon came. I remember Stephanie pounding on the window of the ambulance, just saying, ‘You’re gonna go and you’re gonna go now’ and they pulled up like they were gonna go but they didn’t leave and boy that brought all of us out and eventually got them to leave and the second ambulance showed up about five minutes later but, you know, it’s scary stuff like that-that people don’t understand and that… you have an ambulance there and that ambulance can’t leave until another one shows up. So now we’re trying to do two ambulances so that our ambulance, if something happens, it can go. It really is [crazy to think about]. It’s insanity man. Especially when you know there’s another ambulance on the way, it’ll be here in five minutes but, ‘No, I’m not gonna leave here,’ and I guess by the word of the law that they can’t but it’s very frustrating on the other side of that and you know, Joey was a trooper. He was coherent the whole time and just nobody knew how bad it was gonna be and thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. But it was an ugly one.
Prichard looked back at the members of the writing team at the time and he spoke about current MLW CEO Court Bauer. Prichard said Bauer primarily worked from the offices in Connecticut and was one of the company’s first ‘stay-at-home’ writers.
You know, Court [Bauer] pretty much handled our travel and would book the travel and he was like the first member of the home team that — he didn’t travel with us. He traveled with us I think maybe three times, four times maybe. I don’t really recall that much because I wasn’t in the office all the time but, from my experience, he handled the travel and was pretty much the first at-home, stay-at-home, not go-on-the road writer that we had.
He weighed in on where he stands when it comes to surprises in wrestling. Prichard leans towards promoting the surprise to let people know what they’re getting.
It’s a — that’s a tough question [if he prefers shock surprises or promoting a surprise]. It really depends on what the value of that surprise is versus the value of getting out in front of it and everyone know that person’s going to be there. So it becomes a catch-22 sometimes. I have always been one of, I like to promote. I like to let people know what they’re gonna get as much as we can and try to get those names out there. At least a hint for God’s sake.
** Denise Salcedo of Instinct Culture spoke to JONAH and during their conversation, he recounted being told by higher-ups in WWE that he’d have a job with the company for a long time.
It’s definitely not good for morale [mass WWE releases], I’ve spoken to people who are still there, it just puts people on edge, people walking around on eggshells and stuff like that. For example, when the first few rounds of cuts happened; which are never good when someone gets released. I was one of those people that never worried about it. I never thought I was going to be released. From speaking to some of the higher ups in WWE, they always said things like, ‘You’re gonna have a job for a long time’ and not to worry. Then when I was released, people that are close to me in NXT and WWE are now worried for themselves… I think a lot of people put their faith into the talent that, ‘Of course you’re not gonna be released, you’re too talented.’ But I don’t think it’s about that. I don’t know a hundred percent why they were doing the releases, they always cite things like budget cuts but it’s definitely not budget cuts {laughs}. I am not a hundred percent sure why but it can happen to anyone.
The former NXT North American Champion was let go from the company before the rebrand into NXT 2.0. He doesn’t think he would’ve fit in this current iteration of NXT.
Myself watching the product & it’s no disrespect to anyone that’s on 2.0 but that is not where I would want to be if that was the direction.. It’s never good to lose a job but I don’t think I’d fit in there anyway. I do think I had a lot that could have been done RAW & Smackdown wise. All us guys and girls that get into the wrestling business want to be at a WrestleMania or a Royal Rumble and I didn’t get to do those things.
** During the fourth episode of Freddie Prinze Jr.’s ‘Wrestling with Freddie’ podcast, he recounted his interactions with The Miz early in Miz’s WWE run. Prinze Jr. said Miz was not too fond of him when they worked together but there was a mutual respect there. He detailed the time when he and Miz went head-to-head in Freddie’s promo class while doing an exercise.
So the chip — and I don’t know this for a fact. This is just me applying my life experiences to these situations. But the chip on Miz’s shoulder, which is no longer there, was as big as a house, okay, you couldn’t miss it. He stood up [in promo class] before I could complete the sentence and I respect the hell out of Miz but he did not like me when we were there and he and I aren’t like buddies now, we don’t even wish each other Merry Christmas or anything like that but we respected each other very much and so he gets up and I say, ‘So you know the rules?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, I got it, I got it.’ Just so dismissive with me, right? And I go, ‘All right. Do you want me to start for you?’ And he goes, ‘No, no, no, no. I’m ready, I’ll start’ and I’m like, ‘Wooo’ and now my eyes go wide, right? It’s like a wolf seeing a rabbit with a limp because this isn’t his world no matter how good he can do — I’ve been humiliated in this exercise a million times in front of all my peers and I know how that pressure builds by the time you have to repeat the same sentence four times and he hasn’t felt this. But the dude is fearless and he does not care what obstacle you put in front of him and what you say he can’t do. He will do it and he will put it in your face and I love this dude so much for this. So he goes, ‘No, no, no, I’ll start’ and I go, ‘All right man, go ahead’ and excuse me if you hear me curse now but if you don’t wanna hear me curse, just, you know, mute this part. But he says, ‘What the f*ck are you gonna teach me about acting?’ And again, my eyes just — widest they’ve ever been in my life and I go, ‘What the f*ck am I gonna teach you about acting?’ And he goes, ‘What the’ and we go back and forth and eventually, he breaks because he can’t take it and so he goes about six rounds deep with me which is good man. That’s the normal amount of pressure and then he had to change the sentence and I pointed at him and I was like, ‘Ahh!’ And everybody was like, ‘Ah! You lost, you lost’ and he sat down and then other people started getting up after that and taking a shot without me being there. Now they kind of saw it happen so they were starting to go on each other.
Prinze Jr. spoke highly of Natalya. He feels Natalya was too nice to her own detriment and too good to her own detriment during that period of time. He added that Natalya was at her best when the women’s division was an afterthought.
And Nattie, to know her is to love her. You just can’t help it. There’s nothing evil inside her, she’s too nice and to her own detriment. She’s too good for her own detriment and her and I, I’ve seen her shed some tears. I was a shoulder that her head was on. I mean you’ve got to understand, this woman — when she was like her most over was when the women’s division was beyond [an] afterthought, okay? They received five-minute matches and two minutes of it was their damn intro so they get three minutes to tell a match and her finisher is a damn submission that she only gets to apply for about 20 seconds and you can’t tell a story of how much pain her opponent’s in because then they’d only have like 60 seconds left in the match so it limited anyone with a submission hold which is why very few of them did it and when they did, it wasn’t dramatic because they got no time, right?
** NJPW1972.com pushed out the written version of their interview with JONAH. He hinted at a potential reunion of The Mighty Don’t Kneel with himself, Mikey Nicholls and Shane Haste, the former ‘Shane Thorne’.
It’s definitely something on my mind. Shane and Mikey won Tokyo Sports’ Tag Team of the Year award, the first foreigners to do so since Hansen and Vader. So if I was part of that as the Top Dog? I think you’ll see those TMDK letters again someday.
** JONAH made the media rounds and along the way, he chatted with Forbes and told the publication that his only real judgement of his run in NXT was that mostly all of his vignettes and promos were filmed the same way. He said nothing felt inventive.
I’ve seen a few of his that he’s done [Darby Allin’s vignettes], and I love that sort of stuff. Anytime you can mesh worlds within wrestling I think is when it’s sort of the best. I would always tell people that I helped coach back in Australia, or younger guys in NXT, not to take from other wrestling. If you see something out there and you take from that, that’s cool. But if you can watch a movie, and there’s something in a movie you’ve seen done in a movie that you haven’t seen done on a wrestling screen, that’s the best sort of stuff to take from and explore because then the wrestling world hasn’t seen it before. There’s so many things that can be done, shot-wise, to make a promo different. My only real judgment of my last few years with NXT is that I’d show up and every promo was filmed exactly the same way, exactly the same set behind you. Nothing felt inventive, and when you had that chance to maybe do something a little bit different, it was only few and far between. I think they did a good job with Karrion Kross and Scarlett, sort of having different stuff there, but everyone else is sort of in that same world. If you can make the characters in wrestling seem like they come from different worlds, and then they meet in the ring, I think that’s something that could be special.
He was announced as the first entrant into the 2022 PWG Battle of Los Angeles tournament. It felt good for JONAH to be the first talent announcement and added that returning to PWG was at the top of his list of things he wanted to do post-WWE.
It feels really good [to be named as the first entrant]. When I first got released from WWE, there was a few things that I wanted to do. New Japan was on top of that list, and returning to PWG was definitely one of them as well. I’ve been in contact with them, and we wanted to make it something special and we thought Battle of Los Angeles is probably the best place to do it and what a better way than to be announced as the No. 1 entrant.
** Joey G. of Wrestling Headlines spoke to Matt Cross for an interview. Cross expressed his thought that Lucha Underground revolutionized wrestling. The former ‘Son of Havoc’ said there will never be another roster like the one Lucha Underground had. Cross is hoping to recapture some of that Lucha Underground essence with the MLW Azteca Underground show.
I mean, this is my opinion, but I think we revolutionized wrestling. I think as the years go by, five years or 10 years from now, certainly 20 years from now, only then will people have the perspective to look back and be like, ‘Holy crap. I mean, this genuinely changed everything.’ I think we’re still close to it even really now. I think people have a taste of that. You will never get a roster like that together again, ever. You had guys like Ricochet who had-had a WWE tryout and had been told no. Same for myself. So you had guys with a chip on their shoulder, who had been told no, who now we’re given a platform and we’re like, ‘Oh, okay, here we go.’ And we were trusted to do what we do. Our instructions were, ‘Go have a wrestling match.’ The people filming it, were told film it. The guys writing it, were told write it. No one was micromanaged. Everyone was trusted to be the professional that they are. And lo and behold, we came up with a groundbreaking program. So it’s so exciting. Every time I see anyone from that show, we talk about how much we miss it. It was so much fun. So to kind of capture that spirit of what we did in The Temple, and kind of carry it forward is certainly exciting, just to see a lot of those familiar faces, who I haven’t seen for a minute. And again, we all sort of were a part of something. So to — I liked what you said like the spiritual successor. I mean, that’s great. So to just kind of try to recapture that spirit. Every weekend, someone will tell me that we’ve brought them back to professional wrestling, which is the ultimate compliment. We were able to create fans through like a 45-minute action packed program. I mean, we made fans, we brought people to this thing that we love. So again, to kind of be able to hopefully do that again, now through Azteca Underground, and through MLW is great. What an opportunity.
** ROH World Champion Bandido, Bron Breakker and RUSH were all interviewed for Sports Illustrated’s ‘This Week in Wrestling’ column.
** Game Changer Wrestling announced Kevin Nash for their January 14th show in Detroit, Michigan.
** St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an interview with Bianca Belair.
** All Japan Pro Wrestling’s Jun and Rei Saito are scheduled for MLW ‘Blood & Thunder’ on January 21st.
** Malakai Black talked to Comicbook.com.
** MJF spoke to the New York Post about his on-screen feud with CM Punk.
** Pro Wrestling NOAH ‘Man Crush’ Results (12/7/21) Korakuen Hall
– King Tany, Mohammed Yone, Hajime Ohara, Kai Fujimura & Yasutaka Yano def. Kongo (Aleja, Hao, Manabu Soya, Nio & Tadasuke)
– Kotaro Suzuki def. Atsushi Kotoge
– Eita & NOSAWA Rongai def. Seiki Yoshioka & Yuya Susumu
– Kazushi Sakuraba, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kendo Kashin & Takashi Sugiura def. Daiki Inaba, Kinya Okada, Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura
– Keiji Muto def. Masaaki Mochizuki
– Go Shiozaki & Kaito Kiyomiya def. Katsuhiko Nakajima & Kenoh
– HAYATA & YO-HEY def. Daisuke Harada & Yoshinari Ogawa
– Masato Tanaka def. Naomichi Marufuji
** Edition #85 of Hiroshi Tanahashi’s Ace’s HIGH series is up on NJPW1972.com.
** A&E’s documentary about Andre The Giant:
** NJPW Best of the Super Juniors Results (12/8/21) Yawatahama, Japan
– Kosei Fujita vs. Ryohei Oiwa – Time Limit Draw (10:00)
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: Master Wato def. BUSHI
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: Robbie Eagles def. Yoshinobu Kanemaru
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: YOH def. El Phantasmo
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: Taiji Ishimori def. SHO
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: El Desperado def. Ryusuke Taguchi
– Best Of The Super Juniors Tournament Match: Hiromu Takahashi def. DOUKI
** 2point0 (Matt Lee & Jeff Parker) went live on their YouTube channel.
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.
