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.
** Next week’s edition of Monday Night Raw from Madison Square Garden is going to be centered around celebrating Rey Mysterio’s 20 years as a part of WWE. Rey was interviewed for Sports Illustrated’s ‘This Week in Wrestling’ column and said his next goal is to eventually look for a great retirement plan and make sure Dominik is set.
My next goal is to eventually be able to look for a great plan of retirement. I also want to make sure my son is set. I’m really enjoying his evolution. We’re still seeing a lot of growth with Dominik. He’s applying all he’s learning into his work. I always have to remind myself he hasn’t been doing this for very long. He’s doing very well, and I push him to do better every single time he’s in the ring. I want to hang up the mask down the road, and hopefully see Dominik carry that mask and continue with the Mysterio legacy.
Rey and Dominik Mysterio are teaming up on 7/25 to take on Judgment Day’s Finn Balor and Damian Priest. Rey touched on how much he admires Balor and hopes they can have a big singles match one day.
I respect Finn to the fullest. I admire what Finn has done from New Japan all the way to WWE. He is a superstar. No doubt. He’s one of the guys I wanted to work with when I came back to WWE. I believe it finally happened in 2018 in a Survivor Series match. I love the chemistry I have with him in the ring. He’s a hard worker, he’s passionate, and I want a big singles match against him.
** The National Wrestling Alliance is bringing back the United States Tag Team Titles at NWA 74 weekend. FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) were talking on the Battleground Podcast about the idea of competing for the NWA and IMPACT Tag Titles when Wheeler showed interest in the U.S. Tag belts.
Harwood: I mean, we’ll go wherever will add to our legacy and if the fans think and if we think NWA and IMPACT will add to our legacy, we have to do it. Money has to be right too [Harwood laughed]. We gotta get the ‘OK’ from the boss, but yeah, right now, we’re in a good place financially. Right now, we’re in a good place mentally, kind of physically. So, everything that we’re gonna do from now on to the end of our careers is for our careers. For our enjoyment and for our careers and that’s it. So, yeah, if it’ll add to our legacy, absolutely.
Wheeler: If everything lines up perfectly and it is something where it’s gonna do good for bringing spotlight to tag team wrestling and bringing spotlight to us trying to make history and possibly add another star to the collection, then I’m not gonna rule that out, especially, you know, seeing that they’re bringing back the U.S. Tag Titles.
They ran down a list of matches they would like to have and Dax mentioned that he wants a one-on-one with Sting. He has pulled Sting aside and told him that.
Harwood: I still wanna have a freakin’ singles match with Sting. I actually pulled him to the side and I said, ‘Look, I know what you think your limitations are but if there’s ever a time you want to go 30 minutes…’
** New WWE signee Valerie Loureda spoke with the HOT 97 outlet and further expressed her interest in working with Charlotte Flair. Loureda shared that Flair reached out to her as well.
Charlotte Flair [is who I’m excited to work with in WWE]. She actually followed me and she messaged me and I felt a lot of support because when I went to WrestleMania [38], I was watching her and I just saw her star power, you know? The way she was able to engage people, bring it in and I just thought it was so amazing so I’ve been studying her a lot and when I was at my tryout in Orlando, I was like, ‘I’m nervous.’ She was like, ‘You’re okay. Tell coach Smiley I said hi’ and she was so cute. So I really like her and I’ve been watching a lot of her promos and the way she works the mic and wrestles and just, I love her.
** As WWE backstage interviewer Sarah Schreiber was about to introduce her guest on the 7/18 Monday Night Raw, Veer Mahaan appeared and startled Schreiber by saying ‘boo!’ He commented on that interaction during his chat with Daily Star and said they’re trying to show the audience a different side of his character.
Why say so much when you can get it done saying so little, right? If that works, what else do we need? The reaction and support has been great [and] has created a buzz around the world. The world hasn’t seen my other side yet. Yes, we’re trying to show the world that Veer Mahaan isn’t just a scary guy that walks around in the ring. We’re trying to show our audience that Veer Mahaan is not just a beast and an angry man, he has other sides.
For months, vignettes aired on WWE TV to promote the arrival of Veer. He appeared on the Raw after WrestleMania 38. He said any frustration he felt during that waiting period was channeled to his work ethic.
At the end of the day, I’m human as well. I waited and at times, it can be frustrating when you want something and you don’t get it. But for me, all the frustration and waiting went towards my work. I would watch clips of all the other superstars and educating myself on what they are all about. But I never let that bother me. I just let it motivate me even more because this isn’t my first ride, coming from track and field, to baseball, to coming here. Everything I have been through in my life, and my struggles, has prepared me for better things. It gets me here and there but it never really bothered me. It made me stronger.
** Wrestling Entertainment Series which is the start-up promotion ran by Gzim Selmani and Sunny Dhinsa, formerly known as ‘Rezar’ and ‘Akam’, had two show postponements/cancellations in the past several months.
Dean Muhtadi (Mojo Rawley) is heading the Paragon Talent Agency and a handful of talent who were booked for WES events are signed to Muhtadi’s agency. He told Sports Illustrated that all the Paragon talents were paid in full and now have additional flight credits for the cancelled trip to the United Kingdom.
I actually went to England early to enjoy a vacation with my fiancé, and thought if we could make sure every single talent with a signed contract was paid, regardless of who they are represented by, that would be a total win. In the end, WES sent additional funds for the U.K. talent with signed contracts, and the meet-and-greet was able to sort out the rest.
All the Paragon Talent who had signed contracts were paid in full. Now they have additional flight credits, too. Afterwards, all the talent we don’t represent said they’d love to work with us for how the situation was handled.
Bottom line, there are promoters that take advantage of desperate talent who need these checks to survive. We know many promoters are very shady; they don’t believe in contracts, and some short the talent. We want our talent to wrestle only because they want to, not because they need to. We want to put them in a situation where we’ve secured them annual incomes comparable to or greater than their highest WWE salaries, and for several we’re doing exactly that. I don’t want to see my friends I shared a locker room with for a decade being cheated and shorted, and destroying their bodies in later stages of life because this is the only way they can pay their rent or feed their families. The brand deals and partnerships we have created for our talent are far more lucrative than wrestling show rates, so we hope it allows the talent to be more careful with their bookings. The primary motivation for Paragon was to show the outside world what professional wrestlers are capable of—to take our guys with their own unique abilities and talent for entertainment, and create a mainstream market for them. And the most important element of Paragon is to finally have someone to protect the talent.
When it comes to the possibility of WES wanting to collaborate with Paragon for a future show, Muhtadi stated that if a show is indeed happening and the process is smoother, it could happen. He said Gzim and Sunny faced a lot of factors that were out of their control.
If we could ensure the show was going to happen and that the situation was going to proceed smoothly, then yes, I would love for us to be part of it. Those guys faced a lot of unfortunate factors and not all were within their control. They had a very unique global approach to wrestling that we loved. We weren’t just looking for a payday; we really wanted to see them succeed. We pride ourselves on our contracts, our timeliness and going above and beyond.
If we feel the next show is in line with our vision, we would certainly have open ears. We would just have to have extra assurances for our talent and for the fans.
** Ahead of challenging for the ROH Women’s World Title at Death Before Dishonor, Serena Deeb appeared on Busted Open Radio. She further spoke about her time as a coach at the WWE Performance Center and feels her role was to uplift and encourage. She brought up that various women at the P.C. would get down on themselves as the mental part of being in the wrestling business is just as tasking as the physical part.
It’s cool to watch WWE and see Bianca Belair and Rhea [Ripley] just, you know, two people that I was side-by-side with for years and I remember various women when I was at the P.C. just going through kind of those same lows, like low self-esteem, nothing’s happening and just constantly having to — I felt like my role as a coach there — because I feel like every coach kind of checks a different box, you know? Like maybe this person is not so emotionally connected but they can teach the technical parts to a tee, or a character or whatever but I always felt like my role there was to lift people up and to encourage people because the girls would get really down and I totally understand it and you know, it happens constantly with like, girls would be upset and Tommy [Dreamer], you said the mental part is harder than the physical part.
At AEW Double or Nothing 2022, Serena Deeb went one-on-one with Thunder Rosa. Deeb said in her 17-year career, that was her first-ever match on pay-per-view.
Circle forward, two years later, Double or Nothing, wrestling for the AEW Women’s Championship against Thunder Rosa, someone I greatly respect and you know, it was — and to be on the main card, that was actually — the reason why that match is particularly special to me is in my entire 17-year career, that was my first-ever pay-per-view match. I have never wrestled on a pay-per-view. I’ve managed… Yeah, never wrestled on a pay-per-view. Managed, but that was really special for me in that sense and again, crowd was great and I think we made some magic that night and I’m proud of that. I’m proud to, you know… it’s ebbs and flows as we all know in this business but in that sense, if you look at that Double or Nothing [against Riho] and then Double or Nothing two years later, that’s ebbs and flows but boom, definitely an ascension in that sense.
** While in Chicago for AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door, Chris Jericho sat down with Clark Connors and recorded an episode of Talk Is Jericho. Connors told the story of being at the L.A. Dojo and Katsuyori Shibata telling Alex Coughlin to continue doing squats after the group finished their set. Shibata did not stop Coughlin until he got over 3,000.
One of the days [at the camp], we weren’t really given any instruction of like what to do after camp or whatever it was. But one of the days, Alex [Coughlin], he was friends with some of the guys at camp so he went to the beach afterwards, we’re in L.A., you know? And I remember Shibata-san was just like, ‘Yesterday, why you no come back to your room?’ Or whatever it was and he was out a normal time but he went out afterwards and so we do our squats, the 500 squats as a group with the whole camp and then Shibata-san points at Alex, he’s like, ‘You, keep squat’ and he goes, ‘Yes sir’ and he keeps squatting and we start doing rolls, whatever it was. We start doing bridges and you can just hear it from the corner of the room. You just hear, ‘One thousand twenty one…’ because you have to scream after every rep. ‘One thousand twenty two’ and to the point you forget. It was just noise, you know? I forgot he was even doing ‘em and we go, we start doing — and everyone’s sort of looking over there going like, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s killing it. He’s at 1,000 right now,’ whatever it was and then we’re doing the next drill, we’re getting water, he’s still squatting and then Shibata-san goes, ‘Okay! Lunch time!’ And we all go to lunch and Alex is still — you just hear, ‘Two thousand two hundred forty-one.’ [He didn’t stop] because Shibata-san didn’t tell him to stop. He said, ‘Keep going’ and no sh*t, we go out to lunch and Shibata-san comes out and I remember he looks at me and he goes, ‘Oh! Alex still squat?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘Oh, how many?’ I go peek my head inside and he was like, ‘Two thousand nine hundred forty one.’ I was like, ‘Maybe 2,941.’ He goes, ‘Hahahahahaha!’ He starts laughing and he goes, ‘Okay, maybe 3,000 he stop’ and he said okay. So he did 3,000-plus squats.
** Steve ‘Finga Stylz’ welcomed Beer City Bruiser onto “Da” Podcast and Bruiser recalled the first big ‘name’ he worked with in the wrestling business being The Honky Tonk Man and that experience not going so well.
I remember the first ‘name’ I wrestled was Honky Tonk Man and he was a complete asshole and I was like, okay, I get it, and that was pretty much — I was like, okay, so — it was one of those things where you don’t wanna meet your idols kind of thing but thank God, all the guys I looked up to are amazing guys like Mick Foley, one of my idols and when I met him, he was amazing. Steve Corino is amazing. Harley [Race] was a Godsend. Harley was probably the greatest guy on the planet and didn’t have a bad bone in his body.
In the pre-Tony Khan Ring of Honor, Bruiser was one-half of The Bouncers with Brian Milonas. Bruiser explained how they came together and stated that referee Todd Sinclair had been pitching for them to be a team.
So with Brian [Milonas], Brian had done the tryout and I had met Brian because he had been coming to the Ring of Honor shows because he’s friends with a lot of guys in the locker room and just talking to him back and forth, we both realized we have the same interests. We’re both fathers, we’re both married men, we both just clicked. We have the same interests and we’re just friendly and then we — he did the Top Prospect tournament and then him and I wrestled in Lowell, Massachusetts and we had this huge match and Ian Riccaboni on commentary, he said, ‘Can you imagine these two together?’ How unstoppable we’d be. Well, what we didn’t know was ‘pants’, Todd Sinclair, the referee was pitching the idea of us tagging together and him [Milonas] being the third guy for me and Silas [Young]. So then, that’s how he got put with us. So he wrestled Kenny King in Philadelphia, we ran out, we beat up Kenny, Brian’s now with us. Some stuff happened backstage with Silas where they were like, ‘We’re gonna separate you guys and get you guys away from him’ and that’s how we became a tag team and that’s how we became The Bouncers.
** The latest guest on ‘Out of Character with Ryan Satin’ is Madcap Moss. He detailed how the suspenders, no shirt and shorts look came about for his on-screen character while teaming with Happy Corbin. Moss said people in WWE were coming up to him and telling him that they’d get him out of that attire, but he said it was fine and enjoyed dressing like that.
So the initial design [for the Madcap Moss gear] was their [WWE] idea. But, it matched up almost exactly with what I had just bought for the character by chance that week and I’m not a style guru at all. I don’t know a ton about fashion or style and [Happy] Corbin was out here in these great, fancy suits and tailored shirts and all these great looking — and he’s got his watch collection and his fedoras and so it was a bit intimidating. But then when they sent me the design that they had in mind, I thought, yeah, this is different than what Corbin’s doing and I can make it my own and pull it off and then as — so what happened was there was a SmackDown after Corbin and I had put Drew [McIntyre] out for a month and I came out and pretended to be Drew, I dressed as Drew and so along with that, I had no shirt on and from that point on, as predicted by some of the guys in the locker room, it was decided that I should no longer wear a shirt and that I should also switch from pants to shorts and so then it went from the original design of long pants, long sleeve shirt with suspenders, kind of like an old-timey jokester cracking jokes and pranking people and I thought it kind of hit with the name ‘Madcap’ and ‘Happy’. We were kind of like old, 1930s gangsters and then suddenly, I was just wearing shorts and suspenders and I wasn’t entirely sure what the look was but the coolest thing was that people could easily dress-play — or cosplay, sorry. Dress up as me and Corbin. One guy wears the fedora, one guy wears the suspenders. It was very unique and a lot of people online complained about it but I think a lot of people liked it too and people would come up to me and be like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of this soon’ and I was like, ‘You don’t have to get me out of this. I love this. This is great. I love dressing like this.’ I just thought it was fun and unique and it got a reaction and I enjoyed doing it.
** Episode 585 of The Shining Wizards Wrestling Podcast includes an interview with independent talent AKIRA. He explained what the death match style of wrestling means to him and said if he is to get signed to a contract, he’ll still do death matches at the same rate he does now.
The deathmatch wrestlers of today are some of the best wrestlers in the industry. I mean even a guy like [Jon] Moxley out there who is a death match wrestler at heart and he’s going out there and he is one of the best in the world. Jun Kasai, Masashi Takeda, take away the death match, they’re still one of the best in the world.
I don’t view it as my ticket to get booked. I view it as death match wrestling was the vessel for AKIRA to evolve and evolution-nize himself into the person that he is today. I would not have met the people I’ve met, I wouldn’t have met Masha [Slamovich] and my life become like the best thing ever without death match wrestling. I’m never going to not death match wrestle, I will say that. I don’t care if I get signed to IMPACT, Ring of Honor, AEW. I’m putting my foot down when I say I’m doing these because this is what I love and this is what brought me to the dance and it’s my job, it’s other people’s jobs especially in this generation to elevate the art of death match wrestling and show that, hey, we can go in a one-on-one setting without any weapons. We can do just as good, if not better because we have more battle scars, we have more, I guess, aesthetic than other people could bring to the table just with their hair. We have scars, we have marks on our bodies and when you look at us, you know that we’re real.
** Newly crowned AEW World Tag Team Champions Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland are celebrating their title win on tonight’s Fyter Fest edition of Dynamite.
** Following Cora Jade’s segment on the 7/19 NXT 2.0 which concluded with her dropping the NXT Women’s Tag belt in the trash, Alundra Blayze (Madusa) tweeted at Jade and noted that it was a great promo.
** Keiji Muto posted a picture of Shinsuke Nakamura, Kazuchika Okada, actor Kenji Sakaguchi and himself out together.
長身四天王。
俺が1番身長低い？？ pic.twitter.com/0kkkOKQHUS— 武藤 敬司 (@muto_keiji) July 20, 2022
** Along with Ryusuke Taguchi, Togi Makabe also appears in the film ‘Kingdom 2: To the Far Land’.
** Prior to The Miz versus Logan Paul being made official for WWE SummerSlam, Miz was interviewed by Los Angeles Magazine.
** July 20th birthdays: Evil Uno.
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.
