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.
** The focus of a Captain’s Corner virtual signing was Chavo Guerrero Jr. He recalled Eddie Guerrero informing him that The Radicalz (Eddie, Chris Benoit, Perry Saturn & Dean Malenko) were departing WCW to go to WWF/E in 2000. Eddie asked Chavo if he wanted to come with them and when Chavo asked for his opinion, Eddie said he thought Chavo would be able to grow if he stayed in WCW.
So, at this time (when Misfits in Action was a stable in WCW), The Radicalz had just left to WWF at the time. They had called me and said, ‘Hey Chavo –’ I don’t think I was on that show when that happened. He says, ‘Hey, we just walked out.’ I’m like, ‘What? What happened?’ He goes, ‘Do you wanna go with us or not?’ And I’m like, ‘What do you think?’ And Eddie (Guerrero) said, he goes, ‘You know, I think there are four big spots opening up right here. We’re gonna go cut our teeth over there, we don’t know what’s gonna happen. But I think if you stay here, you’re gonna grow’ and that’s exactly what happened. So, we were kind of not doing much, all of these guys and Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara came in from WWF at the time and they put us together and put us in this little gang if you wanna call it and we kind of ended up thriving a little bit and doing alright. That’s where my first Cruiserweight reign (happened) and kind of really cutting our teeth in that so I remember being on the plane one time with the main booker at the time, it was Johnny Ace or the Head of Talent Relations and he’s like, ‘Chavo,’ with his raspy voice, ‘Hey, what’d you think of that Misfits in Action?’ And I was like, ‘You know, before that, I wasn’t on TV and now I’m on TV every single week’ and he went, ‘Smart kid. That’s true.’ So that’s it. Love those guys, miss them to death. Good time in my life as well.
In 2002, Chavo and Eddie formed Los Guerreros. He explained why Vince McMahon split them up and his reasoning was that with them together, he has one match but with them separate, he has two matches.
The reason we (Los Guerreros) ended up breaking up is because Vince McMahon goes, ‘Hey, you guys together, I have one match. You guys split up, I have two matches…’ We don’t really have a choice when they say they wanna split you up. But there was a valid reason for that so he’s like, yeah, and if you see what happened, we split up, of course Eddie had that rise, I was killing the cruiserweight division and so the one night at No Way Out in the Cow Palace, it was a pretty big night for the Guerreros. So Eddie won the championship from Brock Lesnar. Two matches before that, I won the championship from… me and my dad beat Rey (Mysterio) and Rey had the boxer Jorge Páez with him and then the next night in San Jose I believe, I challenged Eddie for the WWE Championship. Kind of cool, right?
Guerrero Jr. expressed his feeling that when Los Guerreros were tagging, they were the best tag team in the world. Chavo recalled Vince McMahon telling him Los Guerreros was the best team he had seen since Pat Patterson and Ray Stevens.
I think, and you know, some people debate me and that’s totally cool but that time, right there, there were a lot of other tag teams. There was The Hardys, The Dudleyz, (Chris) Benoit and Kurt (Angle), Edge and Christian (Cage) I think were broken up at that point. But you know, Steiners still around so, you know, all those guys but I think at that moment, when you take in being babyfaces, being heels, the promos, all the vignettes, I think we were the best tag team in the world at that time and not taking away from any other tag teams because I love them all because they were amazing but I think at that point, we could have hung with anybody in the world. Not saying that we could’ve beaten up The Steiners because that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying as far as pro wrestling, all the things encompassing pro wrestling: promos, again, vignettes, heel, babyfaces, all the stuff we would do in the ring, calling it on the fly. I think that we were the best at that time.
Vince McMahon told me one time, he said, ‘Hey –’ and that’s coming from Vince McMahon which is a huge compliment. He doesn’t give a lot of compliments out at that time. He said, ‘Chavo, you two are the best tag team I’ve seen since Pat Patterson and Ray Stevens.’ That’s from Vince McMahon.
Circling back to the split of Eddie and Chavo in WWE, Chavo had a feeling it was coming when he returned from injury to help Eddie defeat John Cena in their Parking Lot Brawl. Chavo was told to say him and Eddie were both WWE United States Champion. He went on to add that Vince McMahon did not want them wearing the exact same tights.
I had just come back from my first bicep tear and came back after we (Los Guerreros) had a really good run and I think this is where he had his fight with John Cena in a car yard and I ended up running in and hitting John with a hubcap that actually busted him open the hard way and when I was back and that’s when I was saying, ‘Yes, we’re the Tag Team Champions and we’re the U.S. Champion’ and they had kind of stressed to me, ‘Make sure you’re saying you are the U.S. Champion too’ and I’m like, ‘Okay, what’s that?’ And that’s when I kind of knew the ending was coming. They didn’t tell us but that was our, kind of like, oh, they want something going on with us because they were getting ready to really put the rocket on Eddie and make him the champ so that’s where we’re at.
And if you see, we never wore the same tights. Vince (McMahon) did not want us wearing the same tights. He didn’t want us to be in the same color, or sometimes we would do the color scheme and he would do black, purple, yellow. I would do yellow, purple, black. Sort of stuff like that. But Vince didn’t want us in the same tights. So we didn’t and he was right. Vince was right on a lot of things. Not everything (Guerrero Jr. laughed).
** Episode #74 of the Café De René livestream featured Stallion Rogers a.k.a. Curt Stallion. He shared that after he was released from WWE in 2021, he was contacted by IMPACT Wrestling about coming in. Rogers told the company in the ‘most polite way possible’ that he has no interest in working with them and never will. He has not heard from IMPACT since.
So, when I got released (from WWE) and got that Japan news, I literally had a message from IMPACT, asking me to come in and I literally told them that I literally had no will or want to ever work there in the most polite way possible. I still feel sad about it at the end of the day because anytime I tell anybody that works there, they’re just like (shocked). I just think it’s funny as f*ck but nobody else really does… That was June 2021. I haven’t heard from ‘em since.
Stallion told the story of how he got a $20k bonus added to his salary in his first week with WWE. He got into a disagreement with a talent at the P.C. about how their match would be structured. The other talent tossed Stallion into the turnbuckle with force and Stallion suffered a broken rib. He got back in the ring and the talent clotheslined Stallion which caused his eye contact to fall out.
Rogers then charged at him and started swinging. Matt Bloom got in between them and calmed the situation down. Bloom had a talk with Rogers and told him to meet him halfway because he knows the other talent is not up to par in the ring. Later in the day, Stallion received a phone call from former Senior Director of Talent Development, Canyon Ceman, who told Stallion that he impressed the higher-ups at the P.C. with how he handled the situation and was offered a $20,000 salary bump. In that same conversation, Ceman convinced Stallion to sell WWE the ‘Curt Stallion’ name.
You wanna hear a cool story about how I got a $20k raise in my first week in NXT? So, I showed up to work, it’s my first week there and we’re just doing drills in the ring and then we selected to do matches and I get paired with this dude twice my size, fresh off the football field. He’s been there for five years but he’d never had a match… Anyways, we’re putting the match together and I’m like, ‘This, this, this. I’ll slip behind, I’ll give you a German’ and he looked me up and down and he goes, ‘You? You give me a German?’ And I literally like, I don’t know what happened, I just started seeing red and I got in his face and I said, ‘Yeah motherf*cker. I’m gonna give you a German and you’re gonna take it’ and he was just looking down at me, started (having fast breaths) and I was like, ‘Look, we can be professional about this or we can go in there and just beat the sh*t out of each other. It doesn’t matter to me because I come from the indies. That’s what we did’ and he didn’t know what to think, what to do and he’s like, ‘Every year I’ve been here, it’s three of the years you’ve been on the indies or five years,’ whatever he said and I was just like, ‘Well maybe you would’ve had a couple matches by then huh?’ We’re literally just jousting each other, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, Anthony Greene remembers it verbatim. Just the entire (exchange) and he’s so good with memory, it’s crazy but anyways, we get in the ring and we have this match and this dude literally breaks my ribs giving me a hard buckle because I had so much momentum, I couldn’t turn and I remember collapsing and feeling like, oh my God and Drake Younger threw up the ‘X’ and this is the training match at the PC. Just the coaches and the class. He throws up the ‘X’, I go, ‘Drake, no! Chill.’ He goes, ‘Brother, you cussed. You said f*ck. I gotta stop it…’ Anyways, I tell everybody I’m fine, I can go and so, because I’ve done f*cking dumb sh*t on the indies. I’ve dove into guardrails, broke my ribs before and had to work through that sh*t so I’m like, this is the WWE. I can’t f*cking b*tch out here. So I get back in there and I start having this practice match. Again, this dude clotheslines me in the f*cking face, knocks my contact out, like literally and I remember it was another one of those just seeing red moments for me and I just f*cking slapped the mat and I said, ‘You stupid motherf*cker’ and I ran at him and I started swinging and (Matt) Bloom just goes, ‘That’s enough!’ And I’ll never forget being like, I go, ‘What the f*ck dude!?’ And he goes, ‘That’s your one’ and I just, like a child instantly, just shut me down and I felt like a f*cking two-year-old and I was just like, I’m f*cking up. I’m making a Goddamn ass of myself. I’m trying to fight this motherf*cker, I’m telling Bloom, ‘What the f*ck?’ This is not good. So everybody’s just quiet. I’m like, ‘What the f*ck is going on?’ And I can see on this black canvas, my contact is just laying there. Somehow, it’s just there and I was just like, ‘Here’s the deal, I’m gonna go to the bathroom and put this dirty ass contact back in my eye and we’re gonna come out here and try this one more time if that’s okay with you guys?’ I don’t let anybody respond. I just grab my eye contact, I go to the bathroom, I put it in my eye and right when I open the door, Bloom’s just there in my face and I was just like, oh f*ck, it’s just me and him and he’s like, ‘Look man, I don’t gotta tell you this guy f*cking sucks, okay? I don’t gotta tell you that you’re f*cking good. I’m not asking you to f*cking come down here, I’m not asking you to bring him up here. Just please, can you meet me in the middle?’ And I was just like, ‘Absolutely sir. F*cking let’s do this.’ He’s like, ‘Thank you.’ I go back in there, we finish out this haymaker, f*cking hellish match that just destroyed my f*cking body the first week at the PC. Whatever. I remember the finish was a spinebuster and this dude’s a giant and he spinebustered me through the roof and then Bloom’s like, ‘No more TakeOver bumps on Tuesdays’ and told everybody. That was the line that stuck with everybody, ‘No more TakeOver bumps on Tuesdays,’ because that was when NXT was on Wednesdays. Anyways, so I go home from training and I’m sitting on my couch and I’ll never forget dude, my phone starts ringing and I look down and it says ‘WWE Canyon Ceman’ and my heart’s just in my f*cking stomach dude. I’m just like, I’m done for. What have I done? So I answer the phone and I’ll never forget, I didn’t say hello, I didn’t say what’s up. I just go, ‘Seeing your name pop up on my phone is the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. What’s up?’ And he just goes, ‘Scary!? Today, I’m Santa Claus’ and I was just like, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Apparently, you’ve garnished the respect of those you needed to garnish it from and we wanna keep you around a little longer. How’s $20k on top of your annual salary sound?’ And I was just like, ‘Are you f*cking kidding me?’ And he just starts laughing. I was just like, ‘Dude, what do you think I’m gonna say? Let’s do it’ and then he goes, ‘Alright, cool. Also, we wanna buy the Curt Stallion name from you so that we can use it for merchandising and whatnot’ and that was my name on the indies that I used for ten years plus — it was like nine years at the time plus. Anyways, so he’s just like, ‘Yeah, so we’ll give you 1,000 bucks for it right now’ and I go, ‘What if I don’t sell it to you? And then I get super over and then I wanna sell it to you guys when it’s worth a lot more money?’ And he goes, ‘Well we’ll just give you a name that you don’t like-like Timmy Johnson or something and we’ll go from there’ and I was just like, ‘Dang. Well alright, take it.’ So that’s how that happened… Yeah (they own the name). I’m gonna get it back.
Further reflecting on his experience in NXT, Stallion feels his biggest downfall was when he started getting injured by the people he was teaching how to wrestle. Stallion added that Shawn Michaels loved him.
I stuck to my guns while I (was in NXT). I just was me the whole time like, ‘What’s up Triple H?’ Dude, just f*cking being a jackass all the time, Shawn Michaels loved me, it was awesome. I f*cking immediately got pushed when I was there and it was so sick. My downfall was I kept getting hurt in training by dudes that I was trying to teach how to f*cking wrestle, constantly.
** D.S. Shin of Ring The Belle conducted an interview with NXT’s Zoey Stark. Zoey’s name was brought up when Mercedes Moné was doing a Q&A and the former IWGP Women’s Champion said she’d like to share the ring with Zoey. Here is Stark’s response:
Amazing (Stark responded when asked what she thought of Mercedes Moné naming her as a talent she’d like to face). One of the best in the world saying that she wants to work me. What a life, right? I get Charlotte Flair tweeting something out, saying that I did a great job that week and like, I’m doing something right. I’m doing something right.
Despite her back and forths with Sol Ruca on NXT TV, Zoey believes Sol has the best finisher out of everyone on the brand.
I don’t wanna say her name (who has the best finisher in NXT) … Pretty good (finisher that Sol Ruca has). It’s pretty good. I gotta give her-her props. She did a good job of finding something completely different. Viral sensation with that move.
** While doing an ‘Ask Me Anything’ on his podcast, Kurt Angle shared that he was able to get in contact with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige about appearing in a Marvel film. Feige did get back to Angle but nothing else came of that initial contact.
I did get a — who’s the Executive Producer for the Marvel movies? Oh gosh. Why can’t I — Yeah, Kevin Feige. I ended up getting his contact information and I reached out to him and told him I’d be interested in doing a Marvel movie and he actually responded to me but nothing ever came of it… But I got his contact from my nephew-in-law, Jon Bernthal. He actually gave me his contact information so I talked to him but unfortunately, nothing has occurred since then.
In the early 2000s, Angle guest appeared on the MTV series ‘MADE’ and helped a high schooler prepare to make it onto the school’s wrestling team. Angle reflected on that experience.
It was pretty cool (being on MTV ‘MADE’). I mean, this kid didn’t know a lot of wrestling and I was teaching him wrestling moves and it was different. I remember that MTV — I don’t believe it was when I was in WWE. I think I was in TNA at the time. So MTV called TNA and said they wanted Kurt Angle to be on the show and I was happy to do it. You know, doing these things gave TNA a little more publicity. Spread out beyond wrestling and you go out and do these other shows, it gives your company more traction so, I didn’t mind doing it and I actually enjoyed myself doing that show.
** The KOPW Championship match between Shingo Takagi and Taichi at NJPW ‘Wrestling Satsuma no Kuni’ is going to be a Takagi Triad match.
** As a part of Himeka’s retirement tour, she’ll be competing at the Bushiroad Fight x Pro Wrestling WAVE show on April 28th. She is scheduled to take on Sakura Hirota.
** NJPW Road to Wrestling Dontaku Results (4/23/23) EDION Arena Osaka in Osaka, Japan
– Oleg Boltin vs. Ryohei Oiwa – Time Limit Draw (10:00)
– House Of Torture (Dick Togo, EVIL, SHO & Yujiro Takahashi) def. Hirooki Goto, YOH, YOSHI-HASHI & Yuto Nakashima
– United Empire (Aaron Henare, Francesco Akira & TJP) def. Kevin Knight, KUSHIDA & Hiroyoshi Tenzan
– United Empire (Great-O-Khan, Jeff Cobb, Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis) def. TMDK (Kosei Fujita, Mikey Nicholls, Shane Haste & Zack Sabre Jr.)
– Hikuleo, Jado, Tama Tonga & Master Wato def. BULLET CLUB (David Finlay, Gedo, KENTA & Taiji Ishimori)
– El Desperado, Minoru Suzuki, Ren Narita, Shota Umino & Tiger Mask def. Kazuchika Okada, Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano, Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma
– Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) def. Just 5 Guys (DOUKI, SANADA, Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru) (w/ TAKA Michinoku)
** The latest video from Thunder Rosa’s YouTube channel:
** Guest appearing on Busted Open Radio was Rickey Shane Page.
** There’s an interview on Jim Varsallone’s YouTube channel with IMPACT Wrestling’s Johnny Swinger.
** Lucha Libre Online released their in-person conversation with D-Von Dudley.
** April 23rd birthdays: John Cena & Moose.
** The Gunns (Austin & Colten Gunn) were interviewed by WhatCulture Wrestling.
** Danny Limelight was welcomed onto episode #114 of The Mark Hoke Show.
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.
