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.
** Two-time NFL Super Bowl champion and former Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison appeared on Busted Open. He explained why he never pursued pro wrestling on any level. Harrison was featured in season one of ‘Heels’ on STARZ.
For me, it was like you said, the longevity of my career. When I got through playing and I was done, I didn’t wanna put my body through the ridders of actually having to do what it takes to be a professional wrestler, and when I actually got into it and realized, like, you know what? It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, to be 100 percent honest with you, and the atmosphere is controlled but you still gotta take those real hits, you still getting hit, you still hitting that mat. It’s things that can go wrong. Even when we were filming (Heels), we had a situation where one of our actors actually hurt hisself and we were shut down for a minute because he had to go through some things to get himself back together. So for me, the longevity of my career made it to where me jumping into that wasn’t my next. My next thing was to be able to watch my kids do the game that I love to play and that they were getting into and loving to play and making sure that they were taught it correctly and that was why I didn’t really pursue it until afterwards. I got to get a few years of realizing they’re being taught right, they’re getting the right training and getting into this and I’m like, this is something I could really do and I thought the acting part was gonna be the hard part to be honest with you. With all the people that I had around me and the leadership that they gave me on what to do to get yourself prepared and ready, that ended up being the easy part, and the wrestling was the hardest part of it.
** Sitting down with Chris Van Vliet for an interview was Stephen Amell. As their conversation went on, Amell recalled CM Punk informing him of his arrival to AEW two weeks prior to it happening.
Does not take any sh*t from anyone, period (Amell said about CM Punk). That’s another one that I regret not being at. I got the text from him, like… because I said, ‘Look, if you ever come back, I gotta be there’ and I got the text from him like two weeks before he came back and it just said, ‘United Center…’ and I couldn’t get to it. I had a commitment in Kansas City that weekend but, I mean, that pop was so loud that you couldn’t actually hear anything… That was a cool moment.
Amell’s first wrestling match was at WWE SummerSlam 2015. He teamed with PAC to defeat Cody Rhodes and Wade Barrett. He shared that initially, Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque was a ‘naysayer’ as it pertained to the match taking place. After the match, Levesque gave Amell his props.
Cody (Rhodes) fought really hard for our match and I think that there were a lot of naysayers. I think that Hunter was a big naysayer. Like, didn’t like the idea from what I understand. But then, came up and sought me out after the match and we took a photo with, you know, he’s doing the too sweet and he was like, ‘Respect, man.’
** Dave LaGreca, Bully Ray and Tommy Dreamer welcomed former Ring of Honor C.O.O. Joe Koff onto Busted Open. During the interview, he spoke about the late Jamin Pugh a.k.a. Jay Briscoe. He remembers asking Pugh to go to the ring and apologize in front of a live crowd after sending out insensitive/homophobic tweets. Koff added that he feels Briscoe could have been one of the biggest stars in WWE.
I must say about Jay Briscoe, because he really was Ring of Honor, and of course, sad of his passing, and kind of glad that Mark’s getting a little bit of flowers, you know, with it. But I wanna tell you a story about Jay Briscoe because he was such a good soldier and when I needed him to go into a ring in Pittsburgh and you talk about social media. I’m talking about 2011 or 2012. That thing haunted him forever. But I wanna tell you something, he went into the ring, he apologized to that crowd. He was so genuine and real and I just felt that he could have been one of the biggest stars in the WWE. No question about it. He had size, he could carry on, and I’m just glad we gave him a place where he could live that legacy, create that legacy and now has that legacy. So it’s really special…
Looking back at his time overseeing ROH, Koff said those were some of the greatest years of his life. He spoke about being given permission by Sinclair Broadcast Group to buy a company. Koff dove into the process of bringing ROH to Sinclair. He added that he did not know what the promotion was until 2010.
You guys asked about the five top moments (from my time overseeing ROH). It would be impossible. It would just be impossible. They were 12 years, the greatest years of my life, from a business perspective of what we achieved to do. When I had my first meeting with Cary Silkin to when we had to shut down the company. But in that period of time, there were so many milestones. I don’t wanna disappoint the (Busted Open) Nation and just talk about the matches. But I wanna talk about the process and what Ring of Honor meant to me and what it meant to the industry. We made a plan. In 2010, the WWE said (no more) over-the-air TV. I said, ‘I’m a TV guy.’ Everybody knows that. You can see it — Sinclair. I’m a TV guy. Understand it totally, understand wrestling totally and I saw an opportunity to get back in a regional situation using our distribution platform. Because even to this day, we all talk about it, we all listen to it. Without TV, nothing’s happening, and without large-scale distribution, promotions wouldn’t exist. So, I had a company that understood wrestling because we came out of independent roots, and I was given permission to find a company to buy and create programming which is content. Now, up until this time, Sinclair content on TV was syndicated programming and it was news. This was the first — we’re talking 2010, guys. We’re talking about the first-owned content. Not rented, not bought, not day of. Longevity. Something called streaming didn’t even exist, but content was gonna be king. I’ll recognize that. Gave me the go-ahead. Made a deal with Cary who was terrific for the whole process and we built a plan and we built a plan to build a wrestling company that provided content to our television stations, and that was really the whole genesis of it. We were gonna supply our own content, own the content, own all of the IP. It was great. What happened though is the company was greater than that. The company was amazing. Bully (Ray), I see you nodding. I mean, I can’t even go before 2010. I really didn’t know what Ring of Honor was. But then I got to meet people like Gary Juster and Jim Cornette, Delirious. These guys showed me that we could really do something big, as long as we did it right and as long as I had the — I had the responsibility to do it right, and then I remember that first TV taping in Chicago. Oh my God, it was a litigated disaster. But you know what? We owned the content and we learned from it.
** During Bobby Steveson f.k.a. Damon Kemp’s appearance on Casual Conversations with The Classic, he spoke about the Ambulance match he had against Julius Creed in NXT. Steveson stated that originally, it was supposed to be Roderick Strong versus Julius.
Like I said, I was thrown in the deep end so, that match, that Ambulance match, it wasn’t supposed to be me. It was supposed to be Julius (Creed) versus Roderick (Strong). Because if you go back and watch, everything is kind of Roddy’s fault and we’re slowly figuring it out and we were doing it, but I think something — I think he had an injury or something or there was something else going on that I’m not too familiar about so I’m not gonna touch on it so, all the matches we were doing against Pretty Deadly, The D’Angelo Family, Gallus, there was always something in the match, it was blamed on Roddy. But then when the time to — we finally found out he’s doing this, he’s causing the imploding… Something bad happened with that and then it was literally, we were filming one night. The writer came up, he was like, ‘Damon’s gonna make the turn’ and then I was like, ‘What do you mean make the turn?’ He was like, ‘You’re making the turn on the group. You’re going to turn heel on everyone’ and at the time, I didn’t know how to take it because I’m so new, I didn’t know what the opportunity was. I was like, ‘Am I doing good things? Am I doing bad things? Do they like my work? Do they not like my work?’ And like, ‘Why am I turning on the group if I just got in the group?’ We were doing great things. Now all of a sudden, I gotta change because I was supposed to be with the group for a while or whatever, and they’re like, ‘Yo, something’s wrong with him so, you’re gonna make the turn.’ Keep in mind, we already filmed all that stuff months in advance. It was like months of stories. Months of stories of stuff. So we were planning on this big thing to turn. But, how they did it, the writers are so good at flipping it.
** Guest appearing on Straight Talk Wrestling was Kelly Kelly.
** The AJ Awesome Show released an interview with Ethan Page.
** Brad Gilmore’s chat with L.A. Knight.
** September 12th birthdays: Holger Böschen (WWE Germany commentator), Carlo Cannon, Danni Bee and Hayato Tamura.
** J.B.L. (John Bradshaw Layfield) and Gerald Brisco welcomed Terri Runnels onto Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw.
** Moose was interviewed by Sid Pullar III of Sports Illustrated.
** There was an A.M.A. session on Reddit that Drew McIntyre participated in.
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.
