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.
** WWE’s Kayla Braxton joined Isaiah “Swerve” Scott and Teasy on the Swerve City Podcast. During the beginning portion of the interview, Kayla revealed that she initially turned WWE down when they offered her a job. She was an entertainment reporter based out of Orlando and she said she had no idea what WWE was because she didn’t watch wrestling growing up and it wasn’t long after she decided to take the job, that she fell in love with the company.
“So that was the first gig out of college and then, I got engaged and I quit my job and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and that engagement didn’t work out. Around the exact same time, WWE just randomly reached out to me and I was like, ‘No thank you.’ I said ‘no’ to WWE because I was in the entertainment — I wanted to be an entertainment reporter because I’d been doing that, and I had no idea what WWE was about. I had never watched it in my entire life. I didn’t, and then they’re like, ‘Hey, just fly into Orlando for a Full Sail taping and let us just…’ And two days later, I was in love with it. Like this is such a cool world and it combines sports-entertainment obviously, so yeah. It just worked out. Three-and-a-half years later, here I am.”
** Tampa Bay Times published a report that Hulk Hogan has reached a settlement in his lawsuit against Cox Radio Inc., talk host, Mike Calta who was accused along with several others of leaking Hulk Hogan’s sex tape on-which he made a handful of racist remarks including saying the n-word. The lawsuit filed, demanded damages in excess of $15,000 but a specific amount was not listed. When the Tampa Bay Times reached out to Mike Calta, he responded with the following:
“My understanding is the lawsuit was amicably resolved by Cox and Hogan on terms that are confidential. I’ll address the rest Monday on my show.”
Mike Calta said he was no longer a part of the lawsuit involving Hulk Hogan and he did not reach any agreement with Hogan, per his talk show on 102.5 The Bone. He said for the past four years, he was hesitant to talk about the lawsuit but as far as the final result of everything, he did not pay or reach an agreement for anything. He added that he was considering taking a settlement offer to avoid further spending money on lawyers but did not want to give his money up for something he didn’t do. Calta stated that this situation ruined his love for “Hulkamania”.
** Per Showbuzz Daily, ESPN’s airing of WrestleMania XXX this past Sunday drew 839,000 viewers. That pay-per-view was headlined by Daniel Bryan capturing the WWE World Heavyweight Championship by defeating Batista and Randy Orton in a Triple-Threat match. In the 18-49 demographic, WrestleMania 30 averaged a 0.31 rating and ranked 30th for the night on cable.
** Rusev took to Twitter to announce that he’s pledging $20,000 of his own money to WWE employees that are out of work right now.
** Cody announced that he’ll be joining Tony Schiavone on commentary for AEW Dynamite.
** A GoFundMe has been set up for Koko B. Ware who needs a knee replacement. Koko does not have insurance and he’ll have to take on the bill solo. He’s aiming for a goal of $10,000.
** Anthem appointed Ariel Shnerer as the new General Manager of Fight Network.
** Brian Pillman Jr. appeared on The Wrestling INC Daily Podcast and Pillman Jr. talked about the idea of his father, Brian Pillman Sr. possibly going into the WWE Hall Of Fame as a part of the 2021 class in California. Pillman Jr. said it has been something that his family has communicated with WWE about and it’s all a matter of it coming to fruition.
“Yeah I think that’s a possibility. I wanna say my mom’s talked to them about it in the past, but it’s not something that we talked about with them everyday. It’s something we’d have to revisit, revisit that conversation but yeah, obviously with Davey Boy getting in, then there’s a lot of good press towards that, right? So if they’re gonna let Davey Boy in, he’s in the faction with me. Maybe they save my dad for another year, maybe they bring my dad in-in Los Angeles [WrestleMania 37] in Hollywood so, The Hollywood Blonds and that would be a really cool thematic… maybe The Rock comes in so, I had somebody say that. Like Pillman and The Rock, and if you look, they always try to do — as weird as it sounds, they try to do one dead person a year, to try to keep it balanced.”
** WWE has made a great portion of the WWE Network free to non-subscribers to promote WrestleMania 36 which will be taking place on April 4th and April 5th.
** Chris Van Vliet hosted a live Q&A session with Ryback.
** Kansas City outlet ‘The Pitch’ profiled independent wrestler Anthony Gutierrez.
** Metro chatted with Drew McIntyre about his forthcoming WWE Championship match against Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania.
** Edge participated in a conference call with international media outlets and he listed off several names in NXT who he’d like to work with and/or share the ring with (Quotes by way of Sportskeeda):
“There are so many talents, you can seriously point to everyone on the roster. Obviously [Tommaso] Ciampa and I have a very close relationship. We’re both ‘neck’ guys for a lack of a better term. So he’s picking [my] brain a lot and I love it because he cares a lot and he’ll try the ideas too. I love [Johnny] Gargano. To me, the guy who is dialed in and completely found what it is that he’s supposed to do is Finn Balor. It’s exciting to watch him right now. To me, he and Gargano set the template for what an NXT match should be going forward. You got your workhorses like Adam Cole who’s just out there week-in, week-out, night after night in the grind and you just got to tip your hat to that guy. Keith Lee is so impressive, I’d love to be able to get in the ring with that guy and just show him exactly what he is and how he can be. Velveteen Dream to me is just this raw, completely natural character. He has just found his character and that’s so exciting to watch. It’s not just all about moves, about 84 superkicks. He has tapped into his character and it’s really fun to watch and to see where he takes that. The future is good.”
** Lio Rush announced that during the week of WrestleMania, he’ll be going live on Instagram with multiple independent wrestlers so that they can tell their story and promote themselves while they are currently out of action due to the Coronavirus outbreak.
** Newsweek conducted an interview with Chris Jericho to promote the premiere of Chris Benoit’s ‘Dark Side of the Ring’ full-length episode on March 24th on VICE. Jericho said that if Chavo Guerrero didn’t ask him to be a part of the series, he wouldn’t have participated at all.
“If it was anyone else that wasn’t Chavo Guerrero, I would have said no. But when Chavo said what the plan was, I was all for it because he was just as close to Chris and Eddie as I was, and then I was able to bring Dean Malenko, and David and Sandra were involved. There’s no way I wouldn’t have done it once I found out they were involved. There’s no way I wouldn’t have done it once I found out all these people who were super close were involved in it to tell the story the right way.”
Jericho agreed that Chris Benoit does not deserve to go into the Hall Of Fame but he does feel that Nancy Benoit should be inducted into a Hall Of Fame for her contributions to the business prior to meeting Chris Benoit.
“Will Chris Benoit ever get into the Hall of Fame? Absolutely not, nor should he. There’s too much baggage to discuss. But if you’re looking from a professional and ability standpoint, he’s one of the greatest of all time. Nancy had a great career before she ever met Chris. She was great at what she did and it gets lost in the shuffle because people always focus on her death. But when you focus on her life, she’s the one career that should go into the Hall of Fame because she deserves it. All the baggage will make it hard for her to be in, but I still think the right thing to do is put her in. She deserves that as a person and a professional.”
** UPROXX released their interview with Chris Jericho. Jericho spoke about David Benoit wanting to pursue a career in wrestling. Jericho said he has heard David speak about making the move on various occasions but feels that it’s time for David to put some action behind his words.
“I don’t know. I know he’s thought about it for a while, kind of dabbled in it. I mean, he trained a little bit with Lance Storm, but never really got into it as much as he needed to, to really embrace the business. I think the concept of it, for him, is something that he’s very interested in. I think the actual training, and the life, and the actual sacrifice that you have to make… I don’t know. I’m not sure. That’s completely up to him. I know he’s been talking about it for a long time. So there comes a point where you have to stop talking about it and do it. If he’s going to, I mean, he needs to take that leap sooner rather than later for sure.”
** This Friday, a new episode of ‘WWE Day Of:’ will premiere on the WWE Network focused on the 2020 Elimination Chamber pay-per-view.
** Below is UFC Hall Of Famer and former RAW Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey’s latest video game stream:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7385lO-3hw[/embedyt]
** Part two of Kota Ibushi’s interview with NJPW1972.com is up and in this portion of the interview, Ibushi talked about wanting the IWGP Tag Team Titles that he and Hiroshi Tanahashi are currently in possession of to headline the Tokyo Dome to make people upset.
“What’s wrong with having the tag titles headline at the Tokyo Dome? Maybe a lot of fans don’t see the titles that way, but I want to elevate them to the point where it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. I want to get some of those fans mad. Get them complaining, ‘The IWGP Heavyweight Title should be the main event no matter what!’ Then that’s when I take that title too. I’m greedy that way.”
** Here’s the latest Road to Dynamite episode:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDK1-msRjEk[/embedyt]
** Sports Illustrated chatted with Drew McIntyre and they dove into McIntyre’s backstory, more specifically his relationship with his mother who passed away over five years ago. Drew’s mother was diagnosed with a condition that left a part of her brain inoperative.
“This match is dedicated to my mother and wife. They’re the two most important people in my entire life. My mother instilled that fire in me and taught me to never give up, and my wife has pushed me as a person and helped me fill my potential as a man. She [Drew’s mom] said she’d rather die than not have kids. That’s why I am here, and the same for my brother. I’m not where I am today without my mother. The lessons I learned growing up, I didn’t even realize I was learning. She taught me to never give up. No matter if a doctor tells you that you have a disease only one or two other people have in the U.K, she kept pushing forward and never complained. I still think about her all the time, and I feel her all the time, even in the ring. She’s in my ear, my head and my heart. I would never be here now without her.”
With WrestleMania being split into two nights, McIntyre does not know if he’ll be headlining night one or night two. Regardless, he feels that he should be headlining the final night in the last match of the show and made his case for why that should pan out exactly as he wants it.
“I don’t know where I’m positioned on the card, but I do hope it’s the last match. I think it’s very important that the Royal Rumble winner earns that right to be last in that big title match. Roman Reigns vs. Goldberg is also a big match. I don’t think that’s going to go very long. I saw Roman getting all those tweets after he said, ‘I’m next,’ with people voicing that he didn’t have to win the Rumble to get a title shot. Realistically, he never lost the title, so I think he earned that right. Randy Orton and Edge have a more compelling case. Edge has been out for nine years. Its been so personal, they’re both phenomenal storytellers, and this is an opportunity for creative people to provide some unique content. I’ve seen some of our superstars try things that didn’t work, like walk out and talk to imaginary fans. I don’t know if I’d approach it that way. With Randy Orton and Edge, I guarantee you they’re going to approach it like a movie and they’ll thrive in that environment. But the title is not on the line, so it’s not quite the main event. This has been a 19-year journey for me, and with Brock being the beast that he is, we’re going to lay into each other. That match should, and I believe will, be last.”
** Per F4WOnline’s Daily Update, talents that are traveling to Japan from the U.S., U.K. or Mexico can travel to the country but have to be quarantined for 14 days when they arrive. Davey Boy Smith Jr., who’ll be in competing in All Japan Pro Wrestling’s ‘Champion Carnival’ tournament was used as an example.
** Gail Kim, Christy Hemme and Lita joined Lilian Garcia’s ‘Chasing Glory’ podcast to chat about their respective careers and their new project, KAYfabe.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfU-i–yRK8[/embedyt]
** Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada’s IWGP Heavyweight Championship match from Invasion Attack 2013 is up on New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s YouTube channel.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uj-EvmECtI[/embedyt]
** The official ‘Ask WWE Network’ Twitter page responded to a Network subscriber in Saudi Arabia and noted that the WWE Network will not be available in Saudi Arabia until further notice. On the WWE Help page, it reads: “WWE Network will not be available in the Middle East and North Africa until further notice due to contractual obligations with OSN.” POST Wrestling reached out to WWE for a comment about this specific topic.
** Chris Charlton, Kevin Kelly and Gino Gambino linked up for a new edition of the NJPW Official English podcast. During their chat, Kevin Kelly spoke about his time in WWE and the trio were talking about someone behind the scenes being in announcers’ ears. Kelly said that Vince McMahon never yelled at him but added that speaking and/or yelling into the announcers’ headsets is never a good thing for said announcer[s].
“But I can say, they’re not doing those announcers any favors. There are ways to take some of that talk out of their headsets, because a lot of that is directorial and doesn’t need to — it isn’t necessarily benefiting the announcers. The less talk that we have in our ears, the better we will do, and you know, when I was in WWE, I never got screamed at by Vince. That’s of course the famous story that Vince will scream at the announcers. He never screamed at me once. He would say a line to me and then he would tell me to say it, and I would do my best to try and get it in but if I didn’t, I just moved on and he never yelled at me.”
While speaking about staying true to the audience watching from home, in regard to not describing every talent as “great” or “good”, Kevin Kelly shared that he was very critical of Tomoaki Honma. In 2017, Honma injured his cervical vertebrae during a match and was not able to move his arms or legs. He underwent surgery on his spine and made his return in the Summer of 2018 and has been a part of New Japan Pro-Wrestling since.
“I was very critical of Honma, and not for any fault of his own, but the guy’s come back from catastrophic — a neck injury and it’s just, to me, isn’t where he needs to be, but it doesn’t mean he hasn’t worked his ass off to try to get back and has done incredible to come back from where he has, but we can’t shy away from the reality of what the fans at home are seeing. So we have to call attention to it. We can’t beat it over anybody’s head, but we also can’t be worried about any blow back if it comes our way if any of the wrestlers get their feelings hurt, which I’ve never experienced in New Japan at least. Nobody’s ever said anything to me.”
** Inside The Ropes released a clip from their stage show with current Universal Champion Goldberg. In the clip, Goldberg spoke about his match with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania XX. Goldberg joked about Vince McMahon hating him less than Brock Lesnar at the time and that’s why he won their match.
“Here’s the thing though: If you’re presented with that scenario and you’re Vince McMahon, what the hell do you do? Who do you let win? Who do you hate less? I just wonder how he came to that decision. I really do because it’s like he wanted to kill me and then I know he wanted to kill Brock so I guess he wanted to kill Brock even more so that’s why I beat him. Which thank God because I don’t think they never would’ve brought me back 13 years afterwards, but it was a weird deal man. I mean, everybody knew I was leaving. They didn’t appreciate any of the fact that we had both worked our asses off to make it to the point where we could provide a good match, at least we thought. But nobody cared. They just wanted to yell and boo and do all that stuff but I’ll be damned if you tell me that a match where you got me pressing Brock Lesnar up over his head and him pressing me up over his head, you can’t tell me that-that’s [not] one of the coolest things you could ever see in one match, because nobody’s ever done it to me and nobody’s ever done it to him since, that I know of.”
** The newest episode of New Day’s ‘Feel The Power’ podcast can be heard at this link.
** Channel 24 interviewed Charlotte Flair to promote WWE’s tour of South Africa that is coming up later this year. The company was set to head to South Africa in late April/early May but due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the tour had to be postponed. During the interview, Charlotte Flair stated that she sees why her father Ric Flair had such a hard time retiring because she can’t even imagine stepping away from the ring.
** Kylie Rae joined Scrump and Stank on the Pro Wrestling Tees podcast.
** Chris Jericho joined Jeffrey Harris on the 411 Wrestling Interviews Podcast to chat about Dark Side of the Ring and Chris’ match with Jon Moxley at AEW Revolution for the AEW World Championship.
** Booker T and Brad Gilmore’s throwback interviews with David Arquette and Sean “X-Pac” Waltman were uploaded to the Reality of Wrestling YouTube channel.
** Lana turned 35 years old on March 24th. Former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Hiroyoshi Tenzan turned 49-years old on March 24th. The Undertaker also shares a birthday with the aforementioned names and he turned 55-years old. Christopher Daniels turned 50-years old today.
** Ring of Honor put together a bracket with current and former Ring of Honor wrestlers and voting to break down that bracket’s winner is live.
** Part one of a two-part interview with Young Lions Yota Tsuji and Yuya Uemura was posted to NJPW1972.com. Both Tsuji and Uemura did not agree with fellow Young Lion Alex Coughlin getting a spot in the 2020 New Japan Cup field before the tournament was cancelled.
Tsuji: “I don’t. He’s hardly been in Japan, and I certainly never heard him once say he wanted to be in the cup. My record is what it is, but I’ve been in the ring every night, and then afterward saying how much I wanted in. So for him to get there instead… I did beat him in Kobe last September by the way.”
Uemura: “Maybe [Karl] Fredericks earned it after he won the Young Lion Cup, but Alex was definitely tough to hear about. I definitely want to beat the LA guys. They’re natural rivals.”
** Darren Paltrowitz published an article for Sportskeeda and it features quotes from MLW’s Gino Medina, Bronx Wrestling Federation’s Dominick Denaro, Gabriel Skye and Create A Pro’s Patrick Fitzpatrick and CPA. All five wrestlers opened up about how the Coronavirus situation has impacted their growing careers.
** Gary Cassidy of Sportskeeda interviewed Drew McIntyre.
** New Jack’s episode of Dark Side of The Ring will be the next episode following Chris Benoit’s episode.
** On the latest edition of Arn Anderson’s podcast, he and Conrad Thompson reviewed WrestleMania 31. Arn spoke about the traditional Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal and shared his idea of how to keep the match relevant every year. Arn feels that Big Show should’ve won the first three or four battle royals and someone should’ve came close to throwing him over the top every year, until it finally happened and he believes a star could’ve been made from that and from that point forward, then the battle royal becomes an established match on the WrestleMania card.
“This would be my opinion: Why would anybody ever win that, except Big Show? He’s a real giant and I would go a step further and say OK, Big Show starts, he wins the very first one, and he wins the second one and now it’s established he’s the favorite. By the third one, whatever guy that you’re trying to get hot that has not had a match on WrestleMania, but you have plans for, let him be the next-to-last guy and make it look like one of those scenarios and he’s gonna upset the giant and then he gets eliminated anyway but you made the guy because he almost got the giant out in a one-on-one situation. It ain’t rocket science to figure out how to build guys within that Battle Royal but the key has gotta be — even though people say, there’s gonna be those that say, ‘Well it gets boring with Show winning every year.’ No it doesn’t, he’s the giant. He should be winning. That’s his match, above and beyond everybody, and can you imagine when you’re three or four or five years down the road and somebody finally takes that victory over Show and that match now means something and what did you do? You invested some time on the pre-show in it? That’s all you invested in it and you have a WrestleMania moment for a guy, even though it’s on the pre-show in the Battle Royal. There it is.”
** Below is the trailer for Big Show’s Netflix series, ‘The Big Show Show’:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA0_sQ5r8Qg[/embedyt]
** Jeremy Lambert and Joe Hulbert welcomed former NWA World Television Champion Ricky Starks onto ‘The Distraction’ podcast. Ricky spoke about the video that made the rounds of himself and Aaron Solow receiving advice from The Undertaker at a barbecue spot. Ricky detailed how that came to be and his experience[s] chatting with “The Deadman”:
“So this is the weird thing, that was filmed in 2017 with me and my partner Solow, Aaron Solow, and just to give you a quick background; so I used to train at this gym in Austin,[Texas] called Onnit, and Taker was there one day. He was there one day training and there was a guy doing a documentary on Taker for his match against Shane [McMahon] in Dallas, and so I would always be there when he’s training and he’s doing like box jumps and things like that. Mind you, this is after his knee surgery. So he’s getting prepared and I guess he was just filming a documentary because maybe he thought this would be the last match, and so the guy Brandon who was filming it knew that I was a huge Taker fan and wanted to interview me and get some comments about it and that’s how I kinda start talking to Taker. Just a really cool dude, just so surreal. I remember going up to him being like, ‘I don’t wanna bother you. I just wanna thank you. Etc. etc.’ So, that happened and then like a year goes by or whatever. It’s essentially we get up to the point where now Taker’s coming back to do that match with [John] Cena, and he actually asked for me and Solow to come and do the WrestleMania — he rented a ring in this little building and then he was just in there practicing so we were helping Taker train for his match at Mania. In addition to that, at the time, we were also doing a documentary on me and Solow as far as just two dudes trying to make it in wrestling and that had went from Mexico to Laredo and he wanted to get a scene with Taker at a barbecue spot where we just sit around and ask him [for] advice and talk to him. So that’s where that came from, was that documentary on us.”
** Here are the latest uploads to Asuka and UpUpDownDown’s respective YouTube channels:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4lRjljx-7g[/embedyt]
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfkGXv9PXX4[/embedyt]
** Scott Fishman of TV Insider interviewed Gail Kim, Lita and Christy Hemme.
** While speaking with Brian Campbell on the State of Combat podcast, Chris Jericho said that he and Chris Benoit’s WWF Tag Team Championship match against Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H from May of 2001 is one of the greatest Monday Night RAW matches of all-time.
“The one that comes to mind that people have said is the best RAW match of all time is Jericho and Benoit versus Steve Austin and Triple H for the WWE Tag Team Titles when Hunter tore his quad. That is one of the best matches you will ever see, in my opinion, and it’s one of the best matches you will never see because of Chris’ involvement. If there’s any way you can find that match and watch it through, it’s unbelievable.”
** Enzo Amore joined Chris Van Vliet for a live Q&A session and Enzo revealed that he’ll be launching a podcast soon entitled ‘How You Doin?’ Enzo also spoke about his time in NXT working with Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder of The Revival. He said that The Revival are in the conversation for greatest tag teams of all time.
“Dash and Dawson, I can honestly say are two of the greatest wrestlers, as a tag team duo, ever. Not of old, not Road Dogg Jessie James, Badass Billy Gunn, not Legion Of Doom. I’m talking about ever. I’m talking about up there, like ever. People can say what they want but they’ve never been in the ring with them and put their life in these guys’ hands and had these guys execute on a dime.”
Continuing speaking about his time in WWE, Enzo said that Vince McMahon was about to shut 205 Live down but he asked Vince to go to 205 Live to work with PAC (Neville). Amore also praised PAC and spoke about the type of schedule that the now-AEW star was working in WWE.
“We were at a point in time where they were gonna cancel 205 Live and I stepped in and told Vince that I wanted to work with Neville so he could get the opportunity to get back onto the main roster and stop carrying this work load. He was my best friend and the hardest working man in pro wrestling for a year. Having worked Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. We all went home on Monday.”
Enzo shared that he is friends with The Weeknd and he put WWE in contact with The Weeknd and that led to them using his song for the 2016 Survivor Series pay-per-view. Fast forward four years later and The Weeknd is the primary artist for the WrestleMania 36 soundtrack.
“Starboy was an album that was dropping that week [Survivor Series 2016], and I was buddies with The Weeknd. Cash, his manager and I introduced him to WWE, literally and we put Survivor Series soundtrack, that sound was Starboy off the album. Now The Weeknd is doing WWE again. He’s the premiere song for WrestleMania. The Weeknd’s song off of his new album is the lead song for WrestleMania this year.”
** The band ‘Fozzy’ had to reschedule their upcoming tour due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
** Sporting News pushed out their interview with Chris Jericho. Jericho said while filming Dark Side of the Ring, the story of New Jack was one that completely caught him off guard and he couldn’t believe what he was hearing/reading about New Jack.
“The New Jack story blew my mind because I knew him a little bit from ECW. Just the stuff that he did, you know, attempting to murder guys in the ring, stabbing guys during matches and just literally not giving a s—. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this guy isn’t in jail or didn’t get murdered because of the things that he did.’ So, that was pretty heavy. The one that I really enjoyed though, that I didn’t think I would, was the ‘Brawl for All’ because I remember the ‘Brawl for All’ but I wasn’t in WWE at the time. But just watching the whole storyline behind that and just how it basically ended Bart Gunn’s career in the States, even though he won it, it was just a really interesting kind of time capsule of what wrestling was like only 20 years ago, 23 years ago, and it was really interesting to watch it.”
** Seth Rollins, Sami Zayn, Tyler Breeze, Daniel Bryan and Drew Gulak are guest appearing on the 3/25 episode of WWE’s ‘The Bump’.
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.
