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.
** Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Candace Cordelia spoke to NWA World Tag Team Champions La Rebelión (Mecha Wolf & Bestia 666). Bestia shared that his father, Damian 666 is getting ready to retire as he inches closer to 40 years in the wrestling business.
Bestia: Oh, he’s [Damian 666] super proud. He’s super proud [of me]. I can tell. He always supports me, he always supports me. He wants to go to the Crockett Cup but unfortunately, he’s booked somewhere else. He wants to be part of it. He’s — this year, he’ll be 40 years in the business so, he’s about to retire now but he’s super excited. Like I said, everybody knows what it means to be part of NWA. So, very proud of me and señor Mecha [Wolf].
In 2020, Mecha Wolf announced that he would be retiring at the end of that year. He explained that at the time, he was not happy with the state of the wrestling business and wanted to focus on his music endeavors.
Mecha Wolf: It was like one of those things — first of all, I never consulted it [retirement announcement] with him [Bestia 666]. So when you’re in a tag team, it’s kind of like you’re married, you know? So it’s kind of like your husband or wife dipping on you. You don’t even know. It was one of those things when you wake up and you’re just fed up with everything, you know? Honestly, I was just tired. The state of professional wrestling and what it had become and I wanted to work on my music. I have a band, ‘Monster Wolf’ that you know, I’ve been working on a record for the last couple of years. So I wanted to just completely dive into that but then I realized that there was a market out there for La Rebelión, there was a market out there for tag team wrestling, there was an opportunity to do more and I feel like if I would’ve just up and quit, we would have never won these belts [NWA World Tag Team Titles], we would have never stepped into the NWA, we would never be having this interview right now. So, it was one of those things that I had to sit back and be like, okay, what do you really want to do? You can do music and you can do wrestling. Just stay away from the bad people and I decided to just, you know, go ahead and keep following my dreams and also, it affects him so, I had to think about that too so, here we are, you know? La Rebelión is stronger than ever and we’re just gonna keep on going.
** On March 19th and 20th, the NWA is presenting their Crockett Cup shows which will feature the crowning of the 2022 Crockett Cup tournament winners. David Crockett is going to be in attendance and ahead of the show, he appeared on ‘FITE In Focus’. David hinted that he’ll be bringing the classic version of the NWA World Tag Titles with him to Nashville.
I’ve been watching from afar you might say and I have, you know… I know this is the NWA with Billy [Corgan]. It can go, it can make — that’s one of the reasons I’m going to Nashville. You know, you look at these two belts behind me [classic NWA Tag Title belts], I might talk to Billy and yeah, think about that. Now you’re the first [to hear about this] because I, you know, just us talking, why not? Right? That could be, that could be and I’ll take ‘em up there and just wait and see. So you got the scoop.
** During Natalya’s interview with Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, she was asked what she’s most proud of in her career and she stressed that giving back to the business is key. While giving her answer, Natalya mentioned that she’s been working with Xia Li and helping her improve.
What I’m most proud of is being able to take the knowledge that I have and pass it on to others. Like what good is having knowledge if you can’t pay it forward. We all need to be aspiring to do that. Every single girl that I work with — I remember when I first worked with Charlotte [Flair] in 2014, the night that we had that match at TakeOver which people still, thankfully, talk about to this day, I said to her, I said, ‘I gave — I left it all in the ring. I gave everything I had and I want you to do the same thing. I want you to do that, the same thing for someone else’ and I worked with Xia Li. I’ve been working with her in my ring, I’ve been helping her. I’ve been trying to help anybody that I can help with. I just need them to pay it forward. We need them to pay it forward, the industry needs them to pay it forward and what good is sitting at the top of the mountain when you can’t enjoy it with somebody else? To me, to be able to take all of my experience, to grab somebody that’s at the bottom of the mountain and to lift them up, it means more than a championship. It means that you’re inspiring somebody else to live their dreams and that they’re gonna look back with their kids and go, ‘Nattie really helped give me a chance to prove myself.’ Lacey Evans is another one that, you know, she… she was somebody that I think even WWE wasn’t sure what she was capable of and they knew she was athletic, they knew that she was beautiful, they knew that she was great on the mic and very gifted in that sense and she’s a former Marine but then, we had this incredible, game-changing match in Saudi Arabia that opened up a door for women around the world to have more visibility. Not just in a wrestling ring but in their lives and people now look at Lacey differently and I wanna be able to do that with every single girl that I wrestle with. To go, you know — to have somebody go, ‘Wow, Nattie’s really good but that other girl’s really, really good too.’ That’s the art, that’s the magic and I think my biggest inspiration for that is Bret Hart.
** Carton & Roberts on WFAN Sports Radio welcomed new All Elite Wrestling signee Paige VanZant onto their show. VanZant shared what drew her into pro wrestling and explained her decision to sign with AEW.
The whole show [is what drew me into pro wrestling], you know? I mean I’ve been asked about professional wrestling for a really long time. I’ve kind of always known that it was gonna be part of my journey and a part of my life. I just didn’t know when the opportunity was gonna take off and it got to a point where I showed up with Dan [Lambert] and the story kind of took off and I realized I wanted to be a part of the show, I wanted to continue this journey with AEW and ended up signing a contract.
** Episode #78 of ‘Your Story with Mike Wexler’ featured Shane Haste, formerly known as ‘Shane Thorne’ in WWE. Haste recalled how he would often take people’s water bottles or undo their shoelaces when he was laying on the outside. On one occasion, he unknowingly grabbed the shoe of Shane McMahon who was in attendance for an NXT house show in New York.
Any time I was on the outside, I’d take people’s waters or undo their shoelaces. I did that once at a… I think it was in [New York City] and it was during that Dusty Cup [2016]. It was us [Haste & Mikey Nicholls] versus SAnitY and I take something to the floor and I’m down there and I grab someone’s shoe and I look and it’s Shane McMahon’s shoe. I’m like yes… this was intentional. He was like this son of a b*tch. In four years, I’m firing him [Haste joked].
Haste’s last televised match for WWE was in April 2021 while he was presented as ‘SLAPJACK’. When he was officially moved to the SmackDown roster and done with the RETRIBUTION character, he pitched to be involved in the 24/7 Title picture with Reggie.
One of the ideas that I gave them was me and Reggie because Reggie had the thing where he kept parkouring and escaping and I’m like, ‘Well what if everyone’s always trying to chase him but I lay traps?’ We do this all backstage and he flips and he lands behind something and when we get to that, he’s wrapped in a net and like, we don’t have to have actual things. We just use camera cuts and stuff and then I take the 24/7 Title off him for a few weeks and then the next week, I’ve trapped everyone preemptively and then the next week after that, he flips and dives around my traps and pins me while I’m like asleep or something. I’m like, there you go. Three weeks, done and after that, I’m back on ‘Main Event’, putting over whoever you want. Who cares?
When Haste and Mikey Nicholls arrived to NXT, their names were changed to ‘Shane Thorne’ and ‘Nick Miller’. Haste spoke about the last name that he and Mikey initially pitched to have:
I think it was like the week before that TV taping [when our names were changed in NXT] or even like the day and we had given them a few different names, different names for us, things like that. We were thinking of something like — the only one I can actually remember apart from ‘+61’, which is the calling code for Australia, which we kind of put — it was more thought as like a t-shirt idea or something like that. Not the name but like, just a little logo. [The name we came up with] was ‘Waugh Boys’. Have you ever heard of Steve Waugh? Famous [cricketer]. It’s w-a-u-g-h, so like different ways of being ‘Waugh’ and then obviously the Mad Max tie-in with that so we’d both be different spellings of the last name ‘Waugh’ and I was like that’s a cool idea, and then we get there and they’re like, ‘Yeah, you’re TM-61.’
** Team Taz (Ricky Starks & Powerhouse Hobbs) is involved in an on-screen feud with Keith Lee. Although that program is ongoing, Lee told Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone on the AEW Unrestricted podcast that he thinks he and Starks would make for an interesting tag team.
I’ve never — the only person that I’ve been in a true tag team with is Shane Taylor back in ROH. So I don’t ever really think about the tag team division for myself necessarily. I think that if I was in a tag team, the thing is I don’t know everybody [in AEW] yet but I think I would try and drag Ricky Starks out of Team Taz and use him as a couple of Texas boys and I think we would have like an interesting dichotomy as a team.
Throughout their respective careers, Keith Lee and T-BAR (Dominik Dijakovic) have wrestled each other five times in singles matches. Keith dove into their chemistry, how their rivalry began and how much he enjoys T-BAR’s in-ring work.
I would say that I began branching out at around 2015 with my little bit of time in Ring of Honor tagging with my boy Shane Taylor. That bit of traction led to getting the attention of other promotions and kind of got me a very happenstance opportunity actually. It was a young lady that lives in Canada who does some writing and she would just talk me up to certain promotions that I was interested in because she watched a promotion that I worked for in Texas and that led to a match in 2016 and I actually still have the poster for it; that was at Beyond Wrestling. It was my first time-ever hitting the east coast. 2016, you’re talking 11 years in this industry without really venturing more than a couple states away from Texas. That’s like a recipe for disaster if you live in Texas because, you have to get out of Texas if you wanna make it. So I had this match with Dijak [T-BAR]. I don’t care what name he has out there, his name is Donovan. So we have this match and it is bananas. I’m like I have to make a statement and I’m gonna do some things I don’t normally do all in one match. We go in there and I’m leapfrogging and dropkicking a 6’7 man in the mouth and I think there was some point I pressed him and turned it into a standing moonsault. Like stuff I just don’t normally do because I don’t have to and it doesn’t make sense to do all that stuff. I should be flattening people but Dijak is a big fellow and he hits hard. We had never spoken outside of, ‘Hey, how you doing? Nice to see ya’ because he was in ROH and that’s locker room etiquette and then we have this match and it’s an instant bomb. Like instant because we’d never spoke outside of that and this match was nuts. We blew the roof off the place, the card was destroyed because after a match like that and we’re first after intermission, not a lot of energy left for the last couple matches. So, with that came a string and the praise that-that match got, that match became a thing that kind of traveled the nation. It led to that match at PWG and it was a real fortune because the guy was already signed with WWE. But I knew he wanted to work PWG and I’m like, ‘Listen, let’s make a thing out of it and let’s make this your last hoorah on the indies before you do your thing’ and then we went out there and had the craziest match that I’ve probably ever been in and we look back at it now, it’s like Jesus Christ. We did way too much. But, you know, the crowd was in it and for all 320 degrees in that building that it was, brutal, absolutely brutal but somehow, someway, we pushed through and made it and I still had two more matches after that. That match is something that will be special forever regardless of how ridiculous it was and it was ridiculous. But that guy, he’s just one of those guys that if you click with him, you’re going to have a knockdown, drag out, banger of a match every time and it doesn’t matter how often you say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna take it easy.’ Well we take it easy and it’s still an excellent match. The guy’s brilliant and I will always be a fan of his.
** While making the media rounds to promote ‘Young Rock’ on NBC, former WWE writer Brian Gewirtz chatted with Comicbook.com. Brian does not miss the grind of being a writer for WWE, but said he enjoyed the period of his life when he was in the thick of it.
No, I don’t miss the weekly grind of it. I definitely am still a fan of wrestling and always still keep in touch with a lot of the writers. WWE is a partner on Young Rock, producing partner, and it’s always good to go back and work with them, whether it’s on a television project or on occasion when I’ve gone in to Stanford again to do the Ruthless Aggression series or anything like that, it’s always super cool. I wasn’t around to go to the last live event at [Madison Square] Garden, but I did go right before the one in September, I believe, before I left for Young Rock. Everyone always comments how relaxed I look. Of course, I don’t have to run around with a stopwatch and timing pre-tapes and promos and getting scripts approved or anything like that. It’s all the fun of going to a show without any of the stress. I definitely enjoy that, but yeah it was a really cool period of time, but I’m glad to be with everything evolving and moving forward.
If ‘Young Rock’ is approved for a third season, Brian would be interested in showcasing Dwayne Johnson’s run during the Attitude Era. Gewirtz went on to state that he believes Uli Latukefu, who plays the young adult version of Johnson, would find success in WWE if chose to pursue wrestling.
Oh, definitely [we’d be interested in diving into The Rock’s Attitude Era run]. We strategically put just a quick little second of a clip in there in the new trailer, kind of like Princess Leia in The Force Awakens trailer. We just wanted to give a quick, ‘Oh my God, what was that?’ moment of seeing Rocky Maivia making his grand entrance at Survivor Series ’96. We get to that and potentially more stuff this season without really giving anything away. Hopefully Season Three and beyond, at least in that timeline with Uli (Latukefu), we could really explore that. Uli, who plays 23-year-old Dwayne, he’s really just an athletic freak. He took to wrestling so quickly that if Vince [McMahon] wanted to take a look at him and bring him into WWE, I’m sure he would achieve success really quickly. I don’t think he’s going to do that. But if he wanted to, he probably could.
** Vincent of IMPACT Wrestling’s ‘Honor No More’ group was welcomed onto Tommy Dreamer’s House of Hardcore podcast. Vincent expressed his thought that a pre-hiatus Ring of Honor could have saved money during the pandemic by running shows out of the ROH Dojo opposed to renting out the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena.
That [ROH] bubble kind of carried on for a long period of time, like with all the testing and the same routine all the way through and we were doing the no-crowd stuff and the thing that I didn’t understand is when we were doing the no-crowd stuff, why we were running these giant buildings or these giant, 20,000 seat arenas? My personal opinion, I think they had the ROH dojo located in Baltimore, you can just pipe and drape and just film — make a little entrance and just film right at the dojo and have these no-crowd shows there, which I think would have saved them a lot of money instead of renting out these giant buildings.
He recapped his road to being signed to Ring of Honor. There came a point when Vincent thought he was done with wrestling, but it was Mike Bennett who convinced him to return because he could see that Vincent missed being involved. He ended up signing with ROH in 2016.
And then I started doing a lot of enhancement stuff. Like I did a match with Tommaso [Ciampa] on a house show when I returned from injury and we had a good time, time limit for that and I got a lot of stuff in with that. Just a lot of matches where they could like, let’s see what this guy can do but putting over their guys and whatever and towards the end man, I kept feeling like something was gonna happen, nothing did and then 2014 and there’s no one to blame for this but myself. I got frustrated. I wanted to be there so badly, nothing was really happening but there was nothing, you know? There was no spots and even at that time, it maybe was like, ‘Oh well, what do we do with him? What is he?’ And at that time, I’m thinking, well I’m ready, I’m ready and truthfully, I was not, you know what I mean? But being young and naïve, I didn’t realize that. I’ve been getting all these opportunities. It just felt that way and 2014 or end of 2013 was like my last dark match on one of the Death Before Dishonor pay-per-views. I did a dark match. After that, I cut my hair, regular haircut, got married, was having my daughter and I took 2014 completely away from wrestling and I thought I was done. I thought I was completely done. I was running a couple businesses, you know, property manager and [Mike] Bennett was the one who actually talked me back into coming back. He’s like, you know, ‘I can tell you miss it’ because I would always talk about it and I would do like an indie here and there and I did, I missed it, you know what I mean? I was just lying to myself, thinking that, ‘Oh, this is not what I want to do,’ you know? And I was just, again, no one to blame but myself and I finally kind of — I was like, you know what? You’re right. I’m gonna get into really good shape, I’ll go to one more camp. I’m just gonna show them that I want to do this and I went to one more camp and I changed my body completely and I just kind of matured. You know, having a daughter and going through some life situations just kind of, I feel like matured me as a young man and I went to this last camp, they pulled me in a room, said they’re really interested. I didn’t hear anything for about two months then I saw Delirious at a show and he said, ‘Are you available this date in your hometown? It’s going to be you versus Jay Lethal for the Ring of Honor World Title.’ So I was super pumped about that, Jay’s awesome and he was so good to me in that match too and that was kind of after that was 2016, Kevin Kelly called me and offered me my first Ring of Honor contract and then I was there from 2016 until recent.
** Vicente Beltrán sat down with Doudrop for an interview. She shared that she would like to see former World of STARDOM Champion Mayu Iwatani in WWE.
I would love to wrestle Mayu Iwatani from STARDOM. I had a couple of matches with her back when I was there and I thought we had excellent chemistry and we worked really well together. So I would love to see her making her way over to WWE.
** The ‘Cut Pro Wrestling’ podcast spoke to Mickie James and during their conversation, Mickie thought out loud about where she would be career-wise if she opted to quit wrestling after being released from WWE in 2010.
At that time [being released from WWE in 2010], I was very — pretty devastated in the sense of like, oh, I lost my dream job, everything that I wanted and it was Kurt [Angle] who convinced me to come to IMPACT and Dixie [Carter] was telling him — Dixie had asked him to call me to come there and I’m so grateful for that because I was so heartbroken about wrestling in that moment that I just go like, God, what if I would’ve just been like, okay, that was it, that was good, in 2010. This whole last 12 years would have been… it’s wild when you think about it.
** Drew McIntyre told Las Vegas outlet ‘8 News Now’ that he wishes he could’ve had matches with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Bret Hart at WrestleMania while they were in their respective primes.
I mean my favorite wrestler growing up was Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart so I would love a significant match with Bret, just because he was always my favorite but, you know, I can remember back in the day or even when Stone Cold shows up these days and when he shows up, AT&T Stadium for WrestleMania, there’s nothing like the noise, the crowd reaction when the glass breaks, Stone Cold Steve Austin walks out there and the fact that he just crossed across every demographic. I remember being a kid, being the weird kid that watched wrestling and one day I came in and Stone Cold became popular and everybody was watching wrestling so to wrestle Stone Cold Steve Austin in his prime at WrestleMania, considering how influential and popular he was, that would be probably the number one match just because how big it would be.
** NWA World Women’s Champion Kamille has been reigning as champion since June 2021. She thinks the defining moment of her title run thus far is her match with Leyla Hirsch at EmPowerrr. Kamille feels that-that was a proving point for her and a message to her doubters. She expanded on this while on the Battleground Podcast.
Thus far, I would have to say probably my match with Leyla Hirsch at EmPowerrr [is the defining moment of my title reign so far], just because that was like a big proving point for me. I think when I got the title, just because I think that was my fourth or fifth NWA match, and so I know already that people were questioning like, well what is she gonna do with this title? Is she gonna be able to prove herself? And then me and Leyla — was me and Leyla right after? My first title defense on a pay-per-view? I think it might have been. Yeah, I think it might have been.
It was a big — it was a lot of pressure on me but I do thrive under pressure and me and Leyla are both newer wrestlers and to be able to prove that we can put together a badass match and it was a really big, you know, proving moment for me and that was the first time that I was in there and I really felt like everything was really firing on all cylinders and everything just came together. So that was a big moment for me and it proved to myself like, you deserve this and you’re gonna go far with it.
** NXT North American Champion Carmelo Hayes weighed in on the passing of Scott Hall during his chat with ‘The Mirror’. Hayes is glad Hall was able to receive his proverbial flowers while he was alive.
Scott Hall’s just a legend. He wasn’t on TV as much when I was watching as a kid. But I’m a student of the game and I’ve watched a lot of wrestling over time. He’s an icon who’s gonna go down in history forever and his matches have inspired a generation as well. If you can take a positive out of this, it’s that we’re all able to celebrate him while he [was] still alive in these last couple moments, to cherish him and give him his flowers.
** A petition was started so that David Smith (The British Bulldog’s) life can be honored in Wigan, England by way of the town’s Walk of Fame. Manchester Evening News picked up the story and chatted with Michael Finney who started the petition. Finney has gained the support of Bulldog’s family. A Town Hall spokesperson responded by stating that the Wigan Council is aware of the petition and has been in contact with Davey’s family to explore potential options for recognizing his life and the roots he established in Wigan.
** On behalf of WWE, Roman Reigns invited 8-year-old Andrew Sirleaf and his family to WrestleMania 38. Andrew is battling Leukemia.
** Shingo Takagi, Suwama, Great Kojika, Yoshiaki Yatsu, Masao Inoue, Shiro Koshinaka, Jun Akiyama, Atsushi Onita, Tatsumi Fujinami and Kim Duk (Tiger Toguchi) are scheduled for the Jumbo Tsuruta memorial show on May 31st.
** The Associated Press caught up with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson during his press tour to promote his NBC series ‘Young Rock’.
** GHC Heavyweight Champion Kazuyuki Fujita was interviewed by Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso.
** Charlie Morgan was a guest on ‘A Wrestling Gal’ podcast.
** Mike Johnson of PWInsider spoke to Booker T.
** Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling school spotlighted one of its students, Dan Miller.
** ‘Metro’ published the written version of their interview with Drew McIntyre.
** To promote WrestleMania 38, Charlotte Flair spoke to the Hindustan Times.
** March 17th birthdays: IMPACT Wrestling’s Gia Miller, Brody King, Billy Corgan, WWE’s Aliyah.
** Vickie Guerrero welcomed The IInspiration (Jessica McKay & Cassie Lee) onto her podcast.
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.
