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.
** A.Q.A., the former ‘Zayda Ramier’ joined Ella Jay’s ‘A Wrestling Gal’ podcast and spoke candidly about her departure from WWE. She was medically disqualified by the company because they believed she was dealing with a medical issue that they were not able to diagnose. To read more about that, head over to this link.
She also shared several ideas and pitches that were made concerning her on NXT. Before being medically disqualified, there was an idea in place for her and Ember Moon to win the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships and that would eventually lead to them feuding with one another. A.Q.A. was going to start a program with Sarray as well.
There was some plans for me that just irks me. Literally, the week that I got pulled, the next week, my plans were supposed to take off. So there was like a whole — I was supposed to do a program with Sarray. I was supposed to do a program with — it was supposed to be me and Ember [Moon]. We were gonna become tag champs and then end up — she turns heel and we end up feuding with one another. It was just a bunch of cool stuff that they were coming up with. They were like, ‘Oh, we have all these ideas’ and then they kind of just [went away]. I was like, ‘Oh no!’ But I’m not angry at anything. I had a great experience, my coaches were great, medical staff was great. Like I said, no one made a mistake, no one made a bad call. It was just everyone being overly cautious and it was just like, ‘Okay, for the safety of you, let’s just take you out now then let’s see what happens later on in the future’ because it was made known to me, a lot, by some very important people like, ‘We want you back and we’ll have you back when we can have you back but you know, figure this out first.’
She was medically disqualified on October 5th and released on November 4th. Between those two dates, WWE allowed her to try out interviewing, commentary and ring announcing. She had spoken with several members of NXT creative and the idea of her being an on-screen character alongside William Regal was discussed.
Even after I was [medically] disqualified on October 5th, the last two or three weeks of the month, they gave me a bunch of opportunities. They let me audition to be an interviewer, they let me audition for commentary. They let me audition for ring announcing, they let me audition for a bunch of stuff and we were coming up with a bunch of plans for me to be an on-screen character. One of the plans, it was never set in stone but just thrown around between me and like two or three people on creative was like me and William Regal, we’re gonna be on-screen characters and I was so excited about that because I was like, ‘Ah! I get to work with William Regal.’ But you know, that didn’t end up happening and but you know, they gave me a chance because they realized what I could do. Like I said, I had stepped up in my promos and everything like that and they saw the character that I was becoming and so they were like, ‘We can use this some way on NXT.’ But, it came down to like, at the end of the day, I was here to wrestle, not do the extracurricular stuff so, that’s why all those ideas ended up being turned down but, no, there wasn’t anything bad. No bad experience.
The Reality of Wrestling alumni further dove into the proposed pitch for herself and William Regal to work together. She explained that it would’ve been a comedic approach to start, as she would find herself upsetting or annoying Regal by causing issues with other roles until he made her his personal assistant. The plans were not concrete, but she wanted it to lead to her in-ring return where wrestlers would become irritated with how she spoke to them now that she had power.
Oh, that would have been great [being paired with William Regal on-screen]. I wanted — the plan — so, what I had pitched was — so, because when I got [medically] disqualified, it was like, ‘Okay, what can you do?’ So I came up with the idea of like Zayda [Raymier] 2.0. Like what does Zayda do now that she’s not a wrestler? And so it was gonna be like I’m doing all these — William, he’s in charge so he just says, ‘Go find something to do or whatever,’ because he wants me out of his hair because this is what Zayda’s gonna be doing so basically, I’m doing different jobs every week. Like one week, I might be a construction worker, one week I might be cooking in catering, one week I might be the referee. Just different things but I’m doing these jobs well but to the — I’m annoying my superior so like, if I’m doing refereeing, the head ref, he can’t stand me. ‘Okay, get her away from me. She clearly doesn’t know how to like –’ I would be the person like, I go for a count, ‘One, two, you know what? You bumped me in the hallway today and I don’t think I wanna count three.’ You know, doing stuff like that. You know, that was what the character was gonna be or I was gonna be in the production truck and like during someone’s match, I’d be like, ‘What’s that button doing?’ And boom, the power goes off, you know? And so now the production person’s like, ‘Get her out of here.’ It was gonna be things like that. Eventually, I’m doing things so badly that it gets back to William, they’re like, ‘William, get her away from us. We can’t stand her,’ you know what I mean? It was gonna be entertaining for the audience and everyone else is gonna love to see it but, my superiors are gonna hate it.
So eventually, we get back to me and Regal and he’s like, ‘Fine, you can be my assistant’ or whatever and then I’m like annoying him and I’m getting on him. I was gonna be doing the accent and everything and people would come in and, ‘Did you not see Lord Regal today?’ [in a British accent] You know? I’d just be doing things like that when he’d come behind me and be like, ‘Just stop,’ you know what I mean? It was just gonna be this fun — everyone was excited about it. When I would speak to people in creative, they were so excited to get with that idea. Like, ‘Oh yeah, we can think of a million things.’ One idea, it was never like in the plans or anything but just one idea was eventually, it would lead to me being the manager of 205 Live, which I think would’ve been great, and so all of these things were just basically put in place for me until I got cleared. It was just like, ‘Hey, let’s give her something to do until the comeback happens’ so, and then I’m like, I have some things. I’m backstage with some people. So I’m like backstage and I’m doing an interview or whatever and instead of being like professional like how all the other interviewers are, ‘Didn’t you get beat up last week? Like literally?’ Just being annoying, you know what I mean? And then eventually, the wrestlers, they’ll get mad because it’s like, ‘You know what?’ They’re not afraid of me so they’re gonna step to me and then that’s when you would see like my wrestler side come out and like, ‘All right, what you wanna do then?’ But yeah, it was just a lot of great ideas and like I said, me getting in the wrestlers’ face and calling them out on their stuff then they wanna fight me but they can’t but there’s that tension there that the fans will remember so eventually when I would get cleared and come back to the ring, it was already all these set match ups, you know what I mean? So that was like the ultimate plan but it didn’t end up working out. But you know what? I’m still excited for what I can do now because like, all the ideas that I had for that, I’m now taking and applying for what I’m gonna be doing on the independent scene.
While A.Q.A. had a multitude of ideas to present, she admits that she feels she was not ready for a prime-time spot at the time. She said she was easily stressed and lacked confidence. She did appreciate the down time she had while being out of action because it gave her time to think about what she wants out of her life and career.
So that was my road to release [from WWE]. It wasn’t a bad road. It was just, in that time — oh, that’s what else, you were talking about what I learned. I see the good and bad in it because honestly, when they were getting ready to skyrocket me off, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t, at all. I didn’t have the confidence in myself. If I was there right now and then they told me, ‘Oh yeah, we got plans to do X, Y, Z,’ I’d be like, ‘Let’s go.’ But at the time, I wasn’t — I was easily stressed out about a lot of stuff. I didn’t — like I said, still trying to figure out who Zayda [Ramier] was and who I was and I wouldn’t have been ready so, it was a really big blessing in disguise, even though the outcome of it was unfortunate, it was a really big blessing in disguise because during that time I was out from July on down, it really gave me a chance to figure out what I wanted, both in my career and in life. ‘Do I always wanna be sitting here with these anxieties? Do I always wanna be sitting here with no confidence? Everyone else believing in me more than I — do I want that? No.’
Early in the conversation, she brought up an unreleased promo video that she has waiting in the wings. She’s been working on it for a full year and expressed that it is the most confident she’s felt while speaking into a camera.
The one [promo] that I am the most proud of is the one that I never did in class. It’s a small promo, but I had been writing it for over a year just switching up because I’m like, ‘I just really feel like this is the promo.’ Even if — I just feel like if I do this promo, people are gonna really know what I’m about and I always wanted to do it in [promo] class [at the WWE P.C.] and I was like, ‘Eh, I don’t like that. Let me switch this up. Should I put an opponent’s name in it? No’ and it’s just basically me describing in a way — it’s me describing myself as a bullet. I’ll give you that because I’m gonna drop it one day, and it’s just how I’m comparing myself to a bullet, both in size and strength and power and speed and like how you look at a bullet and you don’t think much about it, right? It’s like, okay, a bullet in your hand is nothing. It’s harmless, right? But you load it up in a gun, that’s when it’s most powerful and that’s basically an analogy that I’m using throughout the entire promo is like basically, ‘Hey, until it’s cocked and loaded, you know what? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Boom! I’m finna take off’ so, I’m really excited about the — I’m very overly critical of things so that’s what I’ve been working on for a year. I’m not saying it’s gonna be this promo that’s just like (A.Q.A. gasped), knocks everybody out the park, you know what I mean? But it’s just one that I’m proud of because I found my top level of confidence in that because I get chills. Like I’m getting goosebumps right now thinking about it because like, I get in your face in the camera. I’m using analogies out of the world. I just can’t wait to drop that promo. That’s the one that I want everyone to see. The ‘Bullet’ promo so, look out for that one. You’ll know it when you see it.
** The focus of Bruce Prichard and Conrad Thompson’s latest Something to Wrestle with podcast is WWE Royal Rumble 2005. As the conversation rolled on, Prichard reacted to the idea that WWE dislikes when viewers go against plans that they’ve set in motion. He says there are certain things he wishes fans reacted differently to but described the notion that they resent fans for doing it as “ludicrous”.
That is probably one of the silliest comments I’ve ever heard [that WWE internally dislikes when fans go against the direction the company heads in product-wise] because from a writing standpoint, from a promotional standpoint, from a talent standpoint, I’ve never resented a paying customer in my life. I appreciate everyone that pays and supports and promotes. I appreciate everyone that supports this podcast. So, to make that inference, to me, is just absolutely ludicrous. Do you wish that they would react in different ways to certain things? Of course you do. Resent? Absolutely not. That is — couldn’t be further from the truth. Never. I’ve never, ever resented an audience for participating in the show, good, bad or indifferent.
At the ’05 Rumble event, The Undertaker went one-on-one with Heidenreich in a Casket match. The pair worked a number of house shows together and Prichard expressed how bad those matches were. He apologized to Undertaker for the feud with Heidenreich.
I’m sorry man. I gotta take exception [to The Undertaker and Heidenreich house show matches being referred to as “really bad”]. That’s an example of being completely wrong. Those matches stunk to high heaven. They weren’t ‘really bad’, they were awful. They were worse than awful. They were — I mean, if you saw that, it would take you weeks to get that stink out of your clothes.
I would publicly like to say to The Undertaker, I’m sorry.
Going into the Royal Rumble, WWE was preparing for a tour of Japan. While doing media, Shane McMahon touched on the possibility of WWE running the Tokyo Dome. Prichard does not think it would have come to fruition if attempted and feels that at the time, the business in Japan was much different than how it was presented and discussed outside of the country.
You know, I think that the politics in Japan were such that it possibly could have [WWE hosting an event at the Tokyo Dome] but at the time, I think that, I don’t know that it would have been a big money deal. I don’t know that we would have been able to go over there. Again, with what has been written about Japan and Japan’s business and everything, so much of it is fantasized about. People think one thing when in reality, the business over there was something completely different and trying to do business there as an American company is difficult as well so, it just was challenging to say the very least.
Circling back around to the topic of Heidenreich, Prichard told the story of when Heidenreich and Alabama Doink the Clown (Shannon Dwaine Henderson Sr.) got into a fight over money at an autograph signing during WrestleMania week.
Here’s the crazy thing and we make fun of Heidenreich and have fun with him and Jon is super — I mean he’s almost child-like in his innocence sometimes and just being nice, and I don’t remember if you [Conrad Thompson] were there when it happened and you might’ve come by afterwards but I was doing an autograph signing in Orlando at WrestleMania, for an Orlando WrestleMania and the contract signing — the autograph signing was someplace else and Heidenreich and the Alabama Doink guy [Shannon Dwaine Henderson Sr.] got into a fight. But he wasn’t dressed up as Alabama Doink. He was just whoever the guy is that was Alabama Doink, running the thing and he and Heidenreich got into an argument over money and Heidenreich broke a table and threatened to beat the crap out of the guy and the guy, you know, took off running and all this stuff and people were around and I just happened to be like across the aisle and down a little ways and as Jon came down and he saw me sitting there and he stops. He looks like he’s ready to kill someone and he probably was if he could’ve got his hands on the guy that portrayed the Alabama Doink. He just stops, looks at me and goes, ‘Aw, hey Bruce. Hey man, how you doing? I’m so sorry you had to see that. This f*cking guy stole money from me and promised me X amount of money. When I asked him for my money, he told me he didn’t have it. I said well you better get it’ and he starts getting all worked up again and then he just puts his shoulders down and goes, ‘Man, I’m so sorry you had to see that,’ and throws his hands up in the air like, ‘Aw, dammit’ and then just walked off into the crowd and disappeared and I didn’t see him for the rest of the time and that’s, you know, Jon was kind of a very innocent, very nice soul. But, a little crazy.
The conversation turned over to former two-time WWE Tag Team Champions The Basham Brothers (Danny & Doug Basham). Bruce feels that the reason they never found long-term success in WWE is because they lacked personality despite being talented in-ring performers.
Lack of personality [was why The Basham Brothers didn’t find long-term success in WWE]. Tremendous in the ring. Doug Basham, I think was [an] absolutely tremendous worker and a very good teacher as well. Danny Basham was — I think he went by ‘Damaja’ in OVW. Another one, very good worker. They just didn’t have a lot of personality separate or together. The idea was to put them together, make them a part of JBL’s Cabinet. JBL provided the entertainment and the personality and you knew that they were always gonna have good matches.
** Renee Paquette welcomed former WWE writer Kazeem Famuyide onto her renamed podcast, ‘The Sessions’. Kazeem recounted his first interview with WWE concerning the position he was about to take on. He asked if there were any plans to bring more people of color into the space and he was told that they were aware that the team was pre-dominantly white and they were working on fixing that.
I’m so glad you asked that because I feel that’s a huge topic right now [diversity in wrestling], especially with both companies [AEW & WWE] and before I say anything, I definitely wanna give props to the fact that this isn’t a taboo conversation anymore, you know what I mean? When I first got my WWE interview with H.R. when they first asked me a question, they were like, ‘Is there any questions you wanna ask us?’ And I was like, ‘You know, it’s a little light in here. Are we gonna try and get some more folks that look like me?’ And to their credit, they were like, ‘You know what? We’re very aware of this. We’re working on it’ and I saw a couple of the creative folks, gosh, what was it? SummerSlam in Vegas and definitely way more women, definitely way more people of color, and I think that’s where it starts, right? I think WWE and AEW and IMPACT have all done some really good jobs as far as like taking steps forward into changing that. There could always be more done. But I think it really starts [with] the people making the decisions to be honest. At the end of the day, this is an entertainment product and a lot of times, you try to pretend that this is anything more than a scripted content series every single week and if you wanna connect with certain people in a genuine and authentic way, you gotta have people in there who are either making those decisions or speaking or being able to convey, you know, what certain folks want to say without sounding like you’re putting on a costume or something like that so, I think it starts there. I think this year, a small part of me wishes I was still there because I would have loved to work with The Street Profits, I would have loved to work with a Bianca Belair, I would have loved to have a hand on Big E’s WWE Title run. I think that could’ve been a little bit different, you know? And to their credit, it’s so good to have discussions about Black wrestlers in the main event scene.
The first solo segment Kazeem worked on was when Booker T appeared on SmackDown to knight The New Day and welcome them to the ‘five-timers club’. Famuyide said Vince McMahon was pleased with how the segment turned out.
The first project I really got to go on my own was when The New Day became five-time Tag Team Champions and I wanted to do a five-timers club kind of send-off from S.N.L with Booker T coming in and knighting everybody, right? Yes [I came up with that] and that was the first time I got like a real, you know, Vince [McMahon] comes up and is like, ‘That was good. That was good, that was smart,’ you know? And we got the Booker Spinaroonie, we got to make fun of [Byron] Saxton a little bit, we got the Big E joke. Like it was just really fun and it was the first segment. It was the first segment on SmackDown so like, it was a lot of pressure but once it’s done, it’s like you get a week to just be like, revel in it ‘till it’s like, ‘All right, back to next week.’
** Tokyo Sports has a feature story about the rivalry between Shinsuke Nakamura and Hiroshi Tanahashi in New Japan Pro-Wrestling. The publication spoke with both talents. Tanahashi feels that Nakamura is going to finish his career in North America and thinks it is unlikely they’ll have another match together.
We’ve fought many times, but… when it comes down to the very end, there’s a theory of who will win. I think there will be a lot of things to see in this match, such as a clash of values based on what we’ve done in New Japan and what we’ve done overseas. I think [Shinsuke] Nakamura may be thinking about finishing his career in the United States, so I think it’s unlikely that it will happen. I think it’s unlikely to happen, but you never know what can happen in the world of professional wrestling.
** Episode #103 of D-Von Dudley’s Table Talk podcast features Scott Garland (Scotty 2 Hotty). Garland was a coach at the WWE Performance Center for over five years and said it was frustrating to see Kona Reeves be released from the company. He explained how he watched Kona grow from a young adult into a man.
Even a Kona Reeves, who’s a guy who was there for seven years and I worked closely with and I watched him literally grow from a young man to a man. Like over seven years, I just saw him grow and mature and get better. You know, you got this six-foot-something Hawaiian kid that can go and I’m just like, you know, to me, that — it was a bit frustrating to see him get cut so I’d love to work all these guys that were, again, my guys that for whatever reason got cut.
Garland is often associated with ‘The Worm’ that he used throughout his pro wrestling career. Current WWE talent Otis uses the move and Garland said that Otis did ask for his blessing to use it. Garland recounted Otis becoming emotional when he approved.
He did. He did [Otis asked for permission to do ‘The Worm’]. When I first met him, he asked and I said yeah. I mean he hadn’t started on TV yet, so I said, ‘Yeah, it’s cool, do it.’ He’s a great dude man, I love him. He’s like — I have certain people I call my guys and my girls and he’s one of my guys there. But he did. He asked me when I first met him and then they started — they were getting ready to start on TV, Heavy Machinery was getting ready to start on NXT TV and I thought about it more and I was like, ‘Why don’t you guys get a little steam behind you first before you start doing The Worm? And then once you start to get that established and get over, then add it back in,’ you know? So one night, after they’d be on TV a few months, I pulled him aside and I said, ‘Dude, why don’t you add the worm back in there now?’ You know, and dude, I thought he was gonna cry. It was so awesome, you know? His eyes got all watery and he was so appreciative of it and dude, that’s all you can ask for, right? And it’s not my move. Like dude, you know D-Von [Dudley], The Worm was around before I was doing it. When we were little kids, they were doing it. I just made it my own in the ring. But yeah, Road Dogg [Brian James] was doing it in the WWF ring before I was ever doing it so, you know, so, I just kind of stole it from him.
D-Von chimed in on the conversation while discussing signature moves. He and Bully Ray would regularly set up the ‘What’s Up’ headbutt. D-Von was afraid of heights and was not comfortable going to the top rope to do the move, but Bully Ray expressed that since they were in WWE and no longer in ECW, they had to take the move to the next level.
We [Bully Ray & D-Von] did the ‘What’s Up’ from the second rope. I was on the second rope, not the top, because I was scared to death of heights. I’m still scared to death of heights. But I didn’t wanna do it, I didn’t wanna go to the top. I didn’t feel comfortable on the top rope and if you’ve ever seen my stuff in ECW, you can see my legs start shaking every time I start going to the top, and we got to WWE and we did the ‘What’s Up’ for the first couple of times and he goes, ‘D-Von, you got to make this special. We’re not in ECW anymore, we’re in WWE. You gotta make it bigger.’ I said — and I knew what he was thinking. I was like, ‘What are you trying to get at man?’ Tears starting to roll down my eyes. Yeah, and he goes, ‘You need to go to the top rope.’ I go, ‘Bubba, I don’t know about that man.’ I was like — and then I tried to play it off like, ‘You know, I’m a little wobbly on the top and you know, if I go on top, I might hit the guy really in the nuts.’ He goes, ‘D-Von, don’t hit the guy in the nuts number one and number two, try to do it.’ I was like, ‘All right.’ So I did that little what I like to call the Nikolai Volkoff dive. The one leg and roll into it. That’s what I did until I finally got comfortable with it.
** While appearing on Glenn Clark Radio, Mark Henry expressed that the group formerly known as Hit Row (Shane ‘Swerve’ Strickland, A.J. Francis, Briana Brandy & Tehuti Miles) should be signed to an organization and reunited on-screen. Henry said he has done his due diligence when it comes to putting that out there.
That’s my guy [A.J. Francis/Top Dolla]. Awesome rapper man and I’ve said that [Hit Row should be signed and reunited], I’ve done the due diligence. When the time comes of something of that nature to be looked at, you know, that’s an option.
** Mickie James, Lisa Marie Varon and SoCal Val welcomed Sharmell Huffman onto their GAW TV YouTube show. Sharmell wrestled in a total of 24 matches throughout her career in wrestling and explained that she did not pursue the in-ring portion full-time because of self-doubt.
You know what? You know what happened? I got in my own head [when it came to pursuing wrestling full-time]. I’m gonna be quite honest because you’re right, I have always been very athletic and just the movement in the ring kind of spoke naturally to me. But for some reason, I got in my head and told myself that I could not do this, and it just started going downhill from there so that was a great lesson to myself. If I believe I can do it and I work at it, then I can. But if I’m fooling myself — what’s that saying? Whether you think you are, you aren’t, you’re right. So at that point, I was thinking, ‘I’m not a wrestler. I can’t do this’ and I got in my head and I just became, in my opinion, very clumsy and awkward and just whatever. Just trying to do matches and got in my own head so then I gravitated more towards managing which, you know, like you said [SoCal] Val, was a lost art but yeah, if you have the confidence in yourself and you work hard at it, keep going. Don’t let yourself get in your own way. That was my problem. But yeah, just go after it. Sky’s the limit.
The film ‘Wonder London’ is releasing in August 2022 and Sharmell will be in it.
I got back into acting. I just did a regional commercial so it’ll be in the Texas — in the southern region rather so I just did that. I did a mini-series that’s gonna be on Hulu. Can’t say too much about it until it comes out but hopefully you’ll have me back so I can give you the scoop. I did a movie that’ll be out in August of 2022 called ‘Wonder London’ so yeah, I’ve just been doing my thing.
** During his ‘Hall of Fame’ podcast, Booker T spoke about the idea of his trainee, former ROH Women’s World Champion Rok-C joining WWE. He hopes that the preparation she’s had up to this point is enough for her to go into the company and find success.
In Reality of Wrestling, she [Rok-C] was a, literally a 13-year-old kid wishing to be the Reality of Wrestling’s Diamonds Champion and right there was what was so impressive to me and then she got out and showed me exactly how good she was and from that point on, she has skyrocketed to the point where she’s at right now to where she can get picked up and the thing is, man, I just hope… I just hope that she remembers the little bitty things. The one thing I always try to tell my girls that come out of Reality of Wrestling, I say, ‘If you ever run into a trainer that treats you differently than I treated you, you give me a call,’ you know what I mean? So I try to make sure they have that tool bag to know exactly what it means to go out there and succeed more than anything. Thing is, she’s very, very, young. She’s gonna be one of the youngest in the bunch if she is to get signed with the WWE and my thing is I just hope that the preparation that she has got over these past few years has been enough for her to actually go there and really take that business by storm. Stay focused. That’s what I always think about more than anything. You gotta stay focused in this business.
** On the most recent ‘Talking Tough’ podcast, Rick Bassman welcomed Rob Van Dam and former American Gladiator Deron McBee onto the show. McBee shared that Vince McMahon attempted to recruit him to the WWF/E and wanted him to go train with the Hart family. McBee felt that being on the road would be too much for him.
McBee: There was a short period of time when Vince [McMahon] was trying to recruit me to go up and train with The Hart Foundation and I just thought, after talking to a couple of guys, I thought, ‘Man, the road would just be too brutal’ because I’d just gotten married, I had a baby and so I thought, ‘I’ll just stick with the movie situation.’
There was a point during Rob Van Dam’s career where he inquired about a pro wrestling/American Gladiators crossover. He could not recall if he tried to establish that partnership while he was in TNA or ECW.
RVD: There was a time when I was — you know, the American Gladiators had the dinner show in Orlando. I was talking to them for a while, trying to hook something up for a promotion with the wrestlers. We could like, I don’t know, do a run-in, you know? And then challenge them. In my mind, it seems like it was ECW guys but it would make more sense if it was when I was in TNA because TNA was right down the street in Orlando, you know? So maybe it was — somewhere around that time period though, those were different gladiators that were on the road or whatever I guess but…
** Slam Wrestling published the written version of their conversation with Ricky and Kerry Morton. Kerry recounted telling his father that he wanted to venture into wrestling full-time. Initially, Ricky laughed and questioned if Kerry truly wanted to be in the business on a full-time basis.
When I finally came to him in February 2020, and said, ‘Dad, this is what I want to do as my job, full time,’ he laughed at me at first and said, ‘This is not for you, son. You’re in the acting world. You’ve been in this business your whole life, but are you sure you want to dive deep into this?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I do.’
** Beyond Wrestling promoter Drew Cordeiro was a guest on the Pro Wrestling Illustrated podcast. He dove into his thought process when it comes to seeking out new fans and introducing them to Beyond. As far as the independent scene goes, Cordeiro feels that a focus should be how can promotions gain the attention of those who aren’t aware of what independent wrestling is.
When we first started Uncharted Territory in 2019, the $10 tickets was like the sweet spot in terms of what people are willing to pay in order to check out something and we made a lot of new wrestling fans and I don’t think that independent wrestling thinks enough like that where it’s just like, ‘What can we do to get people that go to WWE and now AEW to come to our shows that we can make enough money to cover budget?’ And it’s like no, what can you do to introduce people to independent wrestling that don’t even know what wrestling is? And people in Worcester, they’ll pay $10 to go to a bar to drink. As far as the cover, live entertainment, that’s how we hook ‘em. We get ‘em through the door the first time, they see these shows, unbelievable quality. They don’t know anything about wrestling but they see somebody like Masha Slamovich and they go, ‘That person is cool. I wanna come back and see them again.’ They don’t know the difference between a $50 wrestler or a $5,000 wrestler because they don’t know wrestling, so nobody’s a draw to them, but the idea of coming to wrestling and experiencing it for the first time and having fun and feeling the energy in the room is what’s gonna then introduce them to, ‘Okay, I like this person. Where else do they wrestle? Okay, I’m gonna check out these other places online. Oh wow, this person’s doing a match on AEW Dark. Let me check that out on YouTube’ and that’s ultimately my goal of wrestling is not only to help these newer wrestlers be able to get their reps in and be able to get a platform, be able to get some pay for it. But I wanna be able to try and get some new wrestling fans [as much] as possible and I don’t think that’s a goal that seemingly anybody has and that just kind of blows my mind. It’s like, there’s only so many people that like wrestling. You can either bleed them dry, or we can try and find new people that might like wrestling. We’ll see.
** Asbury Park Press has a feature story on their site about AEW’s QT Marshall. Marshall visited the high school he went to and purchased new warmup uniforms for the wrestling team. Marshall also extended the offer of coming to train at the Nightmare Factory once students have graduated high school and either gave college a try or picked up a trade.
** Sony Sports Networks in India has launched a new campaign titled ‘WWE Superstars with Rana Daggubati’. Daggubati is going to narrate feature stories about The Undertaker, John Cena, Bianca Belair, Drew McIntyre, Roman Reigns, Becky Lynch, Randy Orton, Big E, Seth Rollins and Charlotte Flair. It will be narrated in English, Tamil and Telugu.
** Independent wrestler Debbie Keitel was a guest on ‘Wilde on’ with Taylor Wilde.
** Pittsburgh City Paper published a story about the ‘Enjoy Wrestling’ promotion and their January 21st event.
** Bandido did a virtual signing with Highspots Wrestling Network.
** NJPW New Year’s Golden Series Results (1/22/22)
– Great-O-Khan def. Kosei Fujita
– Hiromu Takahashi def. Yuta Nakashima
– Tiger Mask & Yuji Nagata def. Jado & Taiji Ishimori
– Master Wato, Ryusuke Taguchi & Togi Makabe def. Suzuki-gun (DOUKI, El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru)
– Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii, YOH & YOSHI-HASHI def. House Of Torture (Dick Togo, EVIL, SHO & Yujiro Takahashi)
– Los Ingobernables de Japon (SANADA, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) def. Hiroshi Tanahashi, Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Kazuchika Okada
** DDT Pro Wrestling ‘Sweet Dreams’ Results (1/22/22) Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
– Four Way Match: Yuji Hino def. Kazuki Hirata and Naomi Yoshimura and Toru Owashi
– Akito & HARASHIMA vs. Danshoku Dino & Yuki Ino – No Contest
– Chris Brookes & Saki Akai def. Maya Yukihi & Soma Takao
– Antonio Honda & Jun Akiyama def. Yuki Ishida & Yukio Naya
– MAO, Shunma Katsumata & Yuki Ueno def. Hideki Okatani, Kazusada Higuchi & Yukio Sakaguchi
– Minoru Fujita & Yasu Urano def. Daisuke Sasaki & MJ Paul
** Tully Blanchard is celebrating his 68th birthday today.
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.
