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.
** Four years after their first interview, Flash Morgan Webster welcomed Tegan Nox onto his ‘Wrestling Friends’ podcast. Tegan and Flash discussed Tegan’s knee injury that she suffered during the 2018 Mae Young Classic that kept her out of action until June of 2019. It has been reported that Nox was scheduled to go to the finals of the 2018 Mae Young Classic but she confirmed it during the interview. The finals of the tourney took place at Evolution where Toni Storm defeated Io Shirai.
“Yeah. That’s what made everything that much more heartbreaking for me. I don’t know how much I can say but, definitely going to the finals, and I think knowing that the finals would be at Evolution and I think the most heartbreaking thing was knowing that Molly Holly was gonna be there. I’d get to wrestle in front of Molly Holly and have her watch my match. I think that’s what was such a heartbreaking — thinking I was gonna go wrestle Toni [Storm] who [when] the last time we had wrestled in front of maybe 15, 20 people? And that’s a push to wrestling at the first-ever women’s Evolution in front of thousands and also in front of a ton of legends. It was heartbreaking. I think that’s more so than the injury was not getting that opportunity.”
Tegan recalled all the support she received following the Mae Young Classic injury. She mentioned names like Shayna Baszler, Candice LeRae, Sarah Rowe [Logan] and Tommaso Ciampa who were there with her every step of the way.
“I think the part that really sent me over the edge was Tommaso Ciampa was 100% one of the first people in the room. He was there with a bag of ice and he was telling me, ‘This is not it. You’re so young. You’ve still got this’ and he was holding the bag of ice on my knee. So he just sat on the floor talking to [me] and then I saw Shayna and Sarah come, Sarah Rowe come running in and they were just sobbing and I’ve never seen those two women cry in my life. So I think that’s what affected me a lot was seeing two people who are the strongest people I’ve ever met sobbing, and then they carried me to the back of the medic’s car, and Candice [LeRae] was there too and she was in the makeup chair because she was crying from me getting hurt as well. She did this interview about it and I’ve seen the full curtain, seeing how much it affected her was also hard. But she went out, she had her match and the medics were nice enough not to drive the car away until she was able to see me again, and she was like, ‘I’m gonna be strong. I’m not gonna cry.’ She knocks on the window, rolls it down and we just meet eyes and we both just start sobbing again. Like I just stopped crying and now I’m crying again. But she was hugging me and she kissed the top of my head and she was like, ‘Go to the hospital, get checked out.’ Just telling me how much she loves me as well which was nice and then, went to the hospital and before I even got there, there was a room full of people waiting for me to come in. I was like, ‘Ah! Wow.’ There was Nikki Cross there, Sarah [Rowe] was already there, Shayna, Tommaso was there. It was crazy to know how much people cared about me. But, in a nutshell, it was intense and it was heartbreaking but the most heartbreaking part was seeing all the people that cared about me so devastated. Like that hurt way more than the injury and it always hurt way more than the injury for me.”
Tegan was scheduled to be a part of the first-ever women’s WarGames match at TakeOver last November. Initially, Tegan was slightly down about not being able to compete in the match but hindsight being 20/20, she thinks she and Dakota Kai made more of an impact with the story of Dakota turning on her.
“As soon as we came back through the curtain, Triple H was there, Stephanie McMahon was there. They were all there going, ‘That was such a good job,’ and Kevin Owens was there going, ‘That was incredible.’ These people that never have to say a good word about anything were like, ‘That was the business. That was really, really good’ which definitely helped with not being in the match because we were able to make such an impact in the space of a minute.”
** Referee Aubrey Edwards joined Chris Jericho on the ‘Talk Is Jericho’ podcast. Aubrey revealed that she is working on the AEW video game with Kenny Omega and while the game is in its infancy, she and Omega have been discussing what they want out of the game.
“I’m working on the AEW video game. I can’t actually talk too much about it. I don’t know what I can say. I mean, we’re very, very early on, there’s a lot of things that we’re talking about. I talk to Kenny a lot about what he wants out of it, but it’s definitely a ways out. I’m not gonna put a number on it because I don’t want the internet to get mad at me but…”
Aubrey spoke about Michael Nakazawa’s contributions to AEW. With multiple women in AEW’s women’s division having Japanese as their first language and in the process of learning English, Aubrey said that Nakazawa has been a massive help in regard to being that bridge of communication backstage.
“Its been interesting because a lot of the match planning involves Kenny and Nakazawa translating. So, it’s a little bit more heavy just because there’s that extra layer to it. But, I don’t know if people know but that’s a big reason Nakazawa is here. He does translating while match planning and it’s hugely helpful. I don’t know how we would do what we do without him.”
** Daniel Bryan joined Brie and Nikki Bella on a new edition of The Bellas Podcast. Bryan talked about the racial injustices in America in regard to how African Americans are treated in the country. Bryan is aware of his white privilege and wants to use that to empower the voices of those who may not feel heard and are dealing with said injustices.
“Even though I know some of the history, I don’t know the real issues. When you talk about white privilege, I’m it, right? I’m a white male whose parents loved him growing up and who has a good job and all that kind of stuff so how do I talk about it and I also, when I’m reading these books, I also don’t wanna put pressure. What I realize too [is], ‘Oh, if I have a question, I’ll just ask Big E!’ The last thing… I don’t wanna say the last thing, but your black friends are not your Google, right? They’re not there to answer all your white person questions about race and so, I wanted to do a lot of education myself and to look up to the black men and women that have been fighting this fight for a long time and so Big E actually retweeted a woman named Victoria Alexander. She put out like a list of books. Like, ‘Here’s an anti-racist book club.’ So like, not only do I wanna be not racist — being not racist isn’t good enough. Being anti-racist, right? And not just from an individual level, but from a structural societal level, I want to be anti-racist. I want to support things that bring the black community up because it’s not right and we’re seeing these videos. I think that’s one of the things that’s really sparked people’s imaginations is now there’s video.”
** Brian Cage spoke with Bleacher Report Live for an exclusive interview. Towards the end of the interview, Cage confirmed that he and Moxley’s AEW World Championship match will take place on the July 8th edition of Fyter Fest. Elsewhere in the interview, Cage discussed being pulled from last year’s Double Or Nothing event by IMPACT Wrestling.
“Oh man, it was a long time coming. I was supposed to be at the first Double Or Nothing and I was a surprise entrant in the battle royal and about 90 minutes from then, IMPACT Wrestling pulled me off the show and kinda created a big debacle and long story short, didn’t work out well for me and then, here we go, I’m done my contract with them. I was signing on over here and then I tore my bicep and then that delayed me again and then they were looking at Double Or Nothing this year to debut me and it finally happened, third time’s a charm but then unfortunately there still was no big surprise pop per se because we have no fans in attendance so, wasn’t exactly how I hoped it to go but it was so fantastic nonetheless and I was so excited to finally be here and it’s been — my short time here has been phenomenal so…”
** ICW World Heavyweight Champion Noam Dar spoke with Gary Cassidy of Sportskeeda for an exclusive interview. When asked about working with Alicia Fox on WWE TV, Dar mentioned that from what he’s heard, Vince McMahon did like the way he would say Alicia Fox’s name.
“As far as I’m aware, that is very true. I had a lot of friends that would be in the production meetings and stuff, and apparently he would do an impression of it, so I haven’t heard the impression of me.
I think that he might be scared to do an impression of me in front of me in case I’d beat him up. Because everyone knows I’m a bit of a ticket backstage…
I wish! But I know that there was a lot… There was a lot of fun… That whole storyline with Alicia, and working with Alicia, was a massive learning experience. I hadn’t done anything like that over my, at that point, 10-year career and to be able to use a whole different set of tools and do something completely different that I wasn’t used to was a real good experience.”
While conversing about the NXT U.K. brand, Dar says there have been Skull Sessions held where talents join in on a Zoom meeting to learn about and discuss a variety of topics. According to Dar, the sessions are weekly.
“Yeah. We’ve had a lot of good exercises and programs that we’ve been doing. WWE have also put us through a Professional Development Series – which is a weekly Zoom meeting, once a week, to do with a lot of outside stuff, not specifically to wrestling – which is so beneficial. WWE have… Certainly in the time I’ve been with WWE, coming up to five years, they’ve always been so well, so committed to developing the talent personally as well as professionally at any given opportunity – and now that that’s been offered during lockdown. It’s certainly helped give a lot of structure to days and there’s a lot of things we’ve been able to take from it that I know people are going to implement going forward.”
Noam Dar is the reigning ICW World Heavyweight Champion and when asked who he would defend the title against if WWE approved an ICW versus WWE main event at a show in Glasgow, Dar selected the current NXT U.K. Champion WALTER.
“That’s a difficult question. I love the idea of defending the ICW Title on a WWE show, certainly in the main event, but I also love the idea even more of – if I’m doing that and put my title on the line, then I deserve a chance to also win something. So in that case I would like to do myself vs Walter, NXT UK Championship vs ICW Championship, winner takes all. I’m a gambling man! The odds may not be my favor, but I like a gamble, I like a punt on the horses and I certainly like a punt on myself, but that’s the match I’m making in that fantasy situation.”
** The outlet ‘Queerty’ did an interview with Fred Rosser.
** Ahead of the next chapter of The Undertaker’s ‘Last Ride’ docu-series, he chatted with Corey Graves on the After The Bell podcast. Undertaker and Corey discussed Randy Orton and Edge’s match from Backlash that was promoted as the “Greatest Wrestling Match Ever”. Undertaker said the match brought a tear to his eye because it reminded him of what wrestling used to be and spoke about how wrestling has changed over the years from his perspective.
“Prime example, last night, Backlash, Edge and Randy, honestly, it almost brought a tear to my eye because I haven’t seen that kind of wrestling match in so long and I understand time parameters and everything else so they had a lot of time but my gosh, what a story they told. An unbelievable story and I sent Edge a text today, ‘Like the next time I go to the P.C. and work with guys, I’m gonna pull that tape up and show these guys and dissect it.’ Not that it’ll be dissected 100 times by then, but just the little nuances of the things those two guys did last night, it was phenomenal and it restored so much faith in where I think the business should be and could be. But that tape right there, that needs to be studied by our main roster guys. That’s what professional wrestling is, or is supposed to be is what they did last night, in my opinion and it’s great to be able to be as athletic as all these guys are, but really at the end of the day, it doesn’t mean anything because when you rely on all that athleticism and you rely solely on your athleticism, you continuously push the envelope to our audience, because they’re gonna get desensitized to the double back flip off the top onto to somebody onto the floor. They’re gonna see it a couple of times and then they’re gonna go, ‘Okay, I’ve seen that. Now what do you got for me?’ So what happens is, you have to continually push the envelope athletically which puts you at a higher risk for injury.”
While playing the word association game, Big Show’s name was brought up to The Undertaker. Undertaker recalled his experiences with Big Show and how Show grew over their years together in both a professional and personal sense.
“He has [come a long way], not only as a performer but as a human being. Paul, and I love him to death and I consider him one of my close friends now, but he came in riding off that big WCW hype train. So when he first came in, he thought he was the sh*t and treated people — he kinda treated people like they were less than him and I don’t tolerate that. He had to understand, one, what he was. He was a gift and the way he tried to work initially was just wrong because he had a gift. His size was his gift and the fact that he was so athletic. He wanted to be able to do all these things that just, for me watching it didn’t work because it took away all the things that made him special. It took away. It made him like everybody else. It took me forever to get him to realize that you are a giant. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean that you need to do something and now we’re back into the context of a wrestling match, and it took me forever to get him to realize that he was a giant. His heart in that part was in a good place because he wanted to work, and he wanted to show people how athletic he was, but he devalued himself, and then on the human being aspect, it took a while for him to realize that because we’re the talent, doesn’t make us any better than whoever is pulling the cables or whoever was setting up, and there were a few incidents where he treated some people pretty bad and he got the crooked finger pointed at him quite a bit. I didn’t do it because I was trying to be mean to him. I was trying to help him reach his full potential, not only as a performer but as a human being. Not necessarily that it was my role to, but I knew there was a lot there and I wanted him to excel on all levels.”
Over the past month as Undertaker has been making the media rounds, he has shared many backstage stories or shared memories that fans may not have had the opportunity to hear about. He recalled when he was working a European tour and in a match that involved him and The Great Khali, Khali tumbled over after having his heel pinched by Undertaker.
“So, I still to this day don’t understand how it happened. But, so when we were on tour in Europe or overseas, a lot of times, you would put your top guys in six-man tags and stuff. Just trying to — preservation really, instead of each guy having to go out and have a singles match and it’s smart booking. One, because you don’t ever see this group of guys together, working together. Anyway, I wanna say it was me, Triple H and maybe Batista. I don’t know who the third on our side was. I think it was Fit Finlay, Khali and maybe MVP? I’m not positive on all the players but, so anyway, I’m in the ring with Khali and he gives me the big chop on the head and down I go so, somebody in our corner said something to Khali so he moves into their corner, so he stood in the corner for a while and he starts backing up, and he’s backing up right into me. So all I wanted to do was just reach out and let him know, remind him that I was back there and I kid you not, I kid you not, all I did was take my fingers like that and I squeezed his heel, just to let him know so he didn’t step on me so he wouldn’t trip. So I squeezed his heel and all of a sudden, it was like a redwood getting chopped down. He fell. He fell like a giant pine tree. Of course and I look over in my corner and everybody’s on the top rope covered up, just laughing their ass off, right? And I’m standing in the ring just looking at my hand like, ‘Wow, how come I didn’t discover that years ago?’ I couldn’t figure it out but he fell, just completely fell and I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me.’”
** Scott Fishman of TV Insider interviewed former WWE Tag Team Champion Darren Young, real name Fred Rosser. Rosser was asked if he felt discriminated against in wrestling because of his sexuality and he stated that he has never got that feeling. He mentioned that much like he says on his podcast, if wrestling wasn’t scripted, he’d be one of the toughest guys in the locker room.
“I never felt discriminated against [in wrestling]. I felt like if someone was going to lose to me, they didn’t want to lose to me because of my sexual orientation. I always joke around on my podcast that if this was real, I would probably be one of the toughest guys in the locker room. I think there were times someone didn’t want to lose to me or take the pinfall. But it is what it is.”
When Rosser came out publicly, one of the first people that contacted him was WWE Chairman Vince McMahon. As far as converting his sexuality into a storyline, Rosser said he was fine with doing it or not doing it.
“When I came out, one of the first people to call me up was Vince McMahon. He was happy I was courageous enough to come out. One of his best friends, Pat Patterson, is also gay. He said he didn’t want it to be a storyline. I was cool with it either way because I was finally able to be myself and live my truth. Recently when I was at the Sundance Film Festival, I spoke to a representative for GLAAD. They heard me talk and said WWE just isn’t ready for such a storyline. Nothing against me or anyone else, they just said WWE wasn’t ready for it. We’re making moves and making waves. I can’t control what WWE puts on TV. I can only control what I put out.”
** Hasan Mulla chatted with former 5-time WWF Champion Bret Hart to discuss some of the greatest matches of Hart’s career. While speaking about working with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Bret shared what he believes he contributed to the development of Steve Austin in-ring wise:
“Steve Austin was another guy that was like that. If he forgot something or something went wrong or he screwed up a spot, the whole match could go completely south after that. He would be so mad at himself for not remembering what was, that he’d forget everything else that he had to do. You had to kind of stop him right in the middle of a match and take over and set him right back to square one again where we were. Say, ‘Now, just do it again. Like relax. Calm down Steve.’ I think that’s the one thing I taught Steve Austin was to calm down, and don’t get so racy. It’s not a speed race. We’re telling a long story. There’s no reason to panic, and the early days I worked with Steve Austin, he panicked a lot. Just panic and he’d be out of control after that where you just go, ‘What happened?’ He’d just start to panic and do all kinds of stuff. He’d just panic and do whatever came to his head. He wasn’t used to — like me, I laid out a whole match of this comes and then this happens and when this happens, this happens and then this happens and that happens and it’s like it was all spaced out, and it was an easy kind of space, not too complicated but if you trip up anywhere, he’d just escher sketch. Everything you planned out is forgotten. He doesn’t know how to go back and fix it, and I taught him to calm down, this is how you fix it. Let’s go back to square one and calm down and within about ten or 15 seconds, he’d start to remember everything that was coming up.”
Bret also discussed his WrestleMania 12 Iron Man match with Shawn Michaels. Bret stated that the only thing Michaels contributed to that match was an arm bar and the rest of the match was pieced together by him.
“When that match was over, it was Shawn’s moment, but when it was over they remembered me just as well, and in a lot of ways is what I love about that match is that, I take most of the credit for that match too. That’s my match, that whole match with Shawn, the Iron Man match. Shawn’s contribution to that [were] a couple of arm bars and he worked my arm or something like that.”
** Chris Van Vliet caught up with 8-time WWE Hardcore Champion Spike Dudley. The two spoke for over 40 minutes and during their conversation, Spike was asked if he feels he deserves to go into the WWE Hall Of Fame and here was Spike’s response:
“It’s not my decision to make. I don’t know. Probably not. Whether I pissed off too many people or offended people or my work rate was not Hall Of Fame — I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t make those decisions. You know what I mean? I was very happy for Bubba and D-Von. I really was and I actually watched that speech and it was very moving that they opened it up by talking about me and put me over and that brought a tear to my eyes. But for that, me, Hall Of Fame, I don’t know.”
Spike opened up about two of the more memorable moments from his WWE run. One of the two being when La Résistance did not lift Spike high enough over the rope so his foot clipped the rope and he landed neck first on the edge of a table.
“They were young and goofy and it’s funny… I had done the exact same spot with Jericho and Christian about two or three months before, and it was the easiest thing in the world, but they knew to lift me up and I had even — I’m not gonna dog ‘em. They were nice guys. You know, they’re great. I said, ‘Okay, I’m not gonna stick my legs straight up because that would look really, really fake’ so it’s you, you two 250-pound muscle bound guys to pick up 140-pound me and just make sure that I’m cleared of the ropes, and whatever, they got caught in the moment and they didn’t lift me high enough and my legs caught the top rope so [I] went down and to be honest, that was nothing. I mean it was the most devastating looking thing. I should’ve broken my neck. No big deal, it was nothing. But that was their being inexperienced and probably, it’s one thing to give somebody a spot but then to go work a match and say, ‘Here’s this heavy-duty spot at the end of the match.’ The adrenaline’s growing and… I never felt bad because one, it didn’t hurt me and two, they got their asses handed to ‘em because of it after so… stuff happens.”
The second of the two occurred with The Undertaker. With this spot, Spike had to convince The Undertaker to do it and said that Undertaker was not too keen on choke slamming him to the outside.
“I had to convince him to do that, just so you know. For the record, he did not want to do that in any way, shape or form. Not at all. He was like, ‘Spike, that’s crazy’ and I was like, ‘Take, come on.’ Like one, it was a hardcore match and I was relatively new. That was probably within my first six months in WWF or WWE, and I said, ‘Look, I can take it. Just put me through the garbage can. You do that to everybody.’ I said, ‘You got Spike. I can take stuff that nobody else can. Let’s do something different. Just chokeslam me to the floor.’ He’s like, ‘No, that’s stupid.’ ‘No dude, do it. It’s okay’ and to be honest, Taker is a totally cool guy, tons of respect for him — when I kinda had to twist his arm a little bit, but then we practiced it a little. We pulled out a crash pad beforehand and said, ‘Okay, let me just make sure I can control you’ and we did it a couple times and I’ll be honest, it knocked the wind out of me. That was the only thing that it did and you know that gut feeling? Aside from that, it was nothing. That was fine.”
** WWE posted a storyline update to their website concerning the Nia Jax and referee John Cone storyline that unfolded this past Monday on RAW. Both parties’ action are being “reviewed” by WWE after Nia shoved John Cone which led to Cone fast-counting Jax in her RAW Women’s Championship match against Asuka.
** Rusev watched back he, Kevin Owens and Cesaro’s three-way match from a 2015 edition of RAW. The winner earned a shot at John Cena’s United States Championship.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ybcaFKPlKo[/embedyt]
** RAW Tag Team Champion Montez Ford chatted with U.K. outlet ‘Metro’ and the two parties discussed the passing of Shad Gaspard. Ford praised both Gaspard and JTG as a team and as people in general and added that maybe in another life, The Street Profits versus Cryme Tyme tag team match could happen.
“Oh man. Cryme Tyme was one of the tag teams I watched growing up, like the Hardyz and a whole other bunch of guys. So, it’s cool – when I first met Shad, we just hit it off, real nice guy… Unfortunately, that’s one of the things that didn’t happen but I know that’s one of the things we always looked forward to. Watching what you’re watching as a child growing up, and not only becoming part of the dream but actually getting to work with some of the people you watched growing up. We may not get a chance in this life to have that match, but I know in another life we will. We’ll tear it up!”
** IMPACT Wrestling’s Chris Bey chatted with Alicia Atout of ‘A Music Blog, Yea?’ Chris stated that he does not plan on wrestling for a long time and wants to maximize his time in the business and is glad he’s doing that with IMPACT.
“That’s what it’s all about and my time here is short as in I mean that like wrestling because I don’t want to wrestle forever, so I want to maximize this time and go everywhere I wanted to be and right now, I want to be in IMPACT Wrestling and this is where I’m at, so, I’m very happy to be there, very fortunate to be there. Like I said, our locker room is crazy, best talent out there. The young guys, the older people, the Knockouts, Tessa being world champion. It’s history over there so we’re about to make some finesse history real soon.”
** On the most recent installment of Tama Tonga’s ‘Tama’s Island’ podcast, he further discussed when he had the option to leave New Japan Pro-Wrestling in 2016 and join WWE with AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. Tama shared that prior to WWE reaching out to Gallows, Anderson and AJ, TNA reached out to Styles and were adamant about him returning and AJ let them know that if he was coming back, Gallows and Anderson were going to have to come with him.
“Karl and Gallows and AJ were contacted by TNA. They wanted AJ real bad, and that kind of fell into AJ [going], ‘Hey, you gotta grab these two guys’ and that’s how that went, and from that, I think it was like December when it was hot, we thought TNA was the deal and then WWE came out of nowhere, like blindsided everybody and just kind of hit them up.”
** WWE’s Renee Young, Samoa Joe, Charly Caruso, Corey Graves and Byron Saxton hosted a ‘spelling bee battle’ and the video is up on WWE’s YouTube channel.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzsPQKe3Uzw[/embedyt]
** Taya Valkyrie joined The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast.
** Bill Pritchard of WrestleZone spoke with Matthew Rehwoldt, formerly known as “Aiden English”.
** Part nine of Hiroshi Tanahashi’s interview series is live on NJPW1972.com.
** Serena Deeb, who was a part of the mass WWE releases/furloughs this past April will be a guest on the ROHStrong podcast next week.
** The following video from the WWEPC YouTube channel spotlighted Shotzi Blackheart’s performance at NXT TakeOver: In Your House:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQfUjPYNsDw[/embedyt]
** Comicbook.com published their interview with Shotzi Blackheart.
** Below is the newest episode of Xavier Woods and Tyler Breeze’s ‘Battle Of The Brands’ series:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxo40fDBw7E[/embedyt]
** PJ Black was interviewed for Sports Illustrated‘s ‘This Week In Wrestling’ column. He talked about his base-jumping incident that resulted in two fractured ankles and losing the tip of a finger. While reflecting on that incident, Black wishes he had done a multitude of things different in that moment.
“I should have done everything differently that day. I should have taken a longer delay, I should have pushed off harder, I should have put my head up slightly more and dropped my right shoulder. I should have also listened to my gut feeling. That is very important, and I’ve learned to listen to that more.”
** The SWE Fury wrestling promotion in Plano, Texas is holding television tapings on July 3rd and the likes of Teddy Long and Jazz will be on the show.
** WWE’s Music-based YouTube channel uploaded audio of Io Shirai’s theme song:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbTwzMZ3u1k[/embedyt]
** ‘Comic Book Movie’ uploaded their chat with Stu Bennett to promote the ‘I AM VENGEANCE: RETALIATION’ film that releases on June 19th in the U.S. and next month in the UK. Bennett was asked about Cody Rhodes noting on Twitter that Bennett can still be a world champion in the pro wrestling business. Bennett said he appreciates Cody for the kind words but part of his issue with that is that he’s heading into his 40s in two months.
“Part of my issue is that I’m close to 40 now. I’m 40 in two months, so the prospect of going back and working a full-time professional wrestling schedule isn’t particularly high on my agenda at the moment. That might change. It was very kind of Cody to say that, I’m still very good friends with Cody. We’ve been tight for ten plus years, and he’s done an amazing job with AEW. I am really excited about the explosion in opportunities in the professional wrestling world. I work for NWA currently as a commentator, and there’s Ring of Honor which a friend of mine Marty Scurll is running the moment, obviously IMPACT has done some great stuff recently and grown from the ashes of where they were years ago, and then there’s all the Japanese stuff, and there’s some good stuff going on in the UK too. The fact is, there’s a ton of opportunities out there now for professional wrestlers which, when I was coming through, weren’t really there. The only game in town realistically was WWE, and it was very, very difficult to see yourself working anywhere outside of that. I think the digital revolution and the opportunity for smaller brands to get big platforms now is fantastic for professional wrestlers and professional wrestling in general.”
In regards to a possible return to WWE, Bennett said that if there was an offer made, he would approach it from a business standpoint and approach it the same way if a Ring of Honor, New Japan Pro-Wrestling or AEW offered him a deal.
“When I left there, I was of the opinion that I was done with working there. I was pretty angry with a couple of people from when I was working there and when I left, a couple of people in management — I think time is a great healer, shall we say, and I certainly don’t have much anger left in me in regards to that now. Similarly, I don’t feel like I have an automatic affiliation with the company itself or the people who work there. It’s not like I have any ingrained loyalty where I have to jump the second they call me, for example. If there were to be an offer, I would approach it as a normal business decision if it was an offer from AEW or Ring or Honor or New Japan, or anything like that. It’s simply a business decision: is it worth it, do I like the offer, do I like the pitch, do I believe what I’m being pitched is actually going to happen? That’s another big one. I would approach anything that came my way, the same I would from any other company to be honest with you.”
On the acting front, Stu said that in the film, he and the fellow actors were using real guns that just fire blank rounds. He talked about partaking in weapon training and getting used to handling guns as his film career progressed.
“I Am Vengeance: Retaliation is the fifth film I’ve been in, and in all five films, I’ve used guns quite extensively. I suppose, in some respects, you could say I’m quite typecast as the kind of guy who’s gonna have a gun or multiple guns in a film. Definitely the first one I did I found it pretty weird to be holding a gun and I couldn’t believe they’d given me a real gun. These are real guns we are using, and I know people think they’re just fake, but these are real guns that just fire blank rounds so there’s no difference between the kind of gun you use on set and one you’d have if you’re law enforcement or Army. It was weird and took a bit of getting used to, but now, I’ve used them so much, that it’s pretty natural for me on set and I don’t need too much guidance using them. There’s different ways of holding them depending on whether you’re in close quarters or from a distance if you’re hiding behind a barrel and stuff like that, and a lot of that I’ve now been taught. The paramount part is gun safety. Every time we’re handed a gun, we’re given a little lecture on not pointing it at anyone and all the kind of obvious stuff you would think would be obvious, but clearly in the past some idiots have made mistakes and you need to have those processes in place now. It’s something I’m pretty much used to at this point.”
** Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate were on Instagram Live with NXT U.K. ring announcer Andy Shepard.
** Kris “Kid Ref” Levin did an interview with ‘The Great Rabbino’.
** Shawn Spears was the most recent guest on AEW’s Unrestricted podcast. At AEW’s Double Or Nothing pay-per-view last month, Shawn Spears took on Dustin Rhodes and during the match, Spears’ pants were ripped off by Rhodes and it was shown that Spears had Tully Blanchard’s face on his boxers. Spears said that the only people that he clued in about Tully’s face being on his boxers were the camera operators.
“Now, the boxers I didn’t tell a lot of people about. I told our cameraman, I didn’t even smarten up the announcers. Tony [Schiavone], you know that. I didn’t smarten up anybody and that includes a lot of EVPs, they didn’t know. Tony [Khan] didn’t know either. It was just something I went out and did on pay-per-view, because in my mind I was gonna get people talking about me one way or the other. That’s just one way, in my opinion, trying to stand out, trying to have a memorable moment. Good or bad, whether it’s a swing [and] a hit or a swing [and] a miss, one way or another, I want people talking about me along with this pay-per-view so, in retrospect, that might not have been the best way to go or it might’ve been a very entertaining way to go. I felt, if you could find me a better entertaining five-day minute, knock yourself out. Would it have been suited better for TV? Probably. It was probably not a pay-per-view quality match or segment. Probably would’ve fit better on TV because at the same time, I have to remember people are paying a lot of money to watch this pay-per-view and that might not have been something that they were looking to see or expecting to see or wanted to see so going forward as a performer I need to keep that in mind but at the same time, I wanted to try it out for our audience, something different.”
** All Elite Wrestling’s Q.T. Marshall joined The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast. Q.T. currently runs the Nightmare Factory wrestling school and he used to be a part of Danny Cage’s Monster Factory school. One of the trainees that came through the Monster Factory is Matt Riddle and Q.T. spoke about what he saw in Riddle early on in Riddle’s career.
“He was like a prodigy, right? Because he was a giant fan of pro wrestling so that helps, and he wasn’t really getting smashed in the face like he was in UFC so, he was really easy to coach, he was a little knucklehead-ish with some of the stuff that he did back then but, he’s a good kid and I remember meeting him at a Ring of Honor camp and kinda pulling him aside because Danny [Cage] had kinda given me the heads up that he came by the Monster Factory first. I said, ‘Hey, if you really wanna learn, come to the Monster Factory. We’ll teach you the right way and then you’d find your own spin’ and he ended up working with EVOLVE but, 2015, I think he was about four months into training. I had like an 18-minute match on the fly, didn’t call anything and he was a natural, so he was gonna make it no matter what. It was just a matter of him finding the right connection and all that other stuff so…”
** Jim Ross, Taz and Excalibur recapped the 6/17 episode of AEW Dynamite on the All Elite Wrestling YouTube channel.
** Deonna Purrazzo was a guest on Busted Open Radio with David LaGreca and Tommy Dreamer. Dreamer asked Deonna to describe the difference between the feel and aura of the NXT locker room versus the IMPACT Wrestling locker room. Here was Deonna’s response:
“Everyone at IMPACT is people that I’ve known from before I went to NXT. Kind of people that I got to know as I was coming up and has kinda seen me in every stage of my life and they’ve just been so welcoming and everyone was so happy, whether they’re actually happy or not but seem to be happy that I was in the locker room and just wanted me to feel apart and feel comfortable and not be on eggshells and I think I never got to that point in NXT. I never got to the point of, ‘I’m comfortable in my position here and I know that others want me to succeed.’ So just that environment of feeling welcomed and feeling like everyone wants me to do well and everyone understands who I am and understands what I’m about and kind of how I see wrestling and how I see myself fitting into the picture here, was like the most liberating and freeing and the best feeling that I wanted when I came back and went somewhere.”
** During an interview with NJPW1972.com, “Switchblade” Jay White hinted that the storyline plan since he returned from excursion was to always have Gedo in his corner.
** During his interview with 411 Mania, Stu Bennett discussed how the National Wrestling Alliance is handling the COVID-19 pandemic and him being happy with not having to travel right now.
** A new Judo video has been uploaded to Ronda Rousey’s YouTube channel.
** Stephanie Chase of Digital Spy spoke with Corey Graves and Carmella about their ‘Bare With Us’ podcast.
** WWE put together a playlist of Goldberg versus Brock Lesnar matches.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw8ZRqKd_ZA[/embedyt]
** Today is the birthday of AEW’s Brandon Cutler.
** Ahead of Father’s Day, Natalya’s latest blog post for the Ottawa Sun was about her late father, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart.
** Deadline is reporting that the cast of the ‘Dune’ film starring Dave Bautista is heading back to Europe in August for additional filming. Warner Bros has the filmed scheduled to release in December of 2020.
** Darren Paltrowitz of The Paltrocast and Sportskeeda did an interview with Kiera Hogan of IMPACT Wrestling. Keira said she’s interested in going after the IMPACT Knockouts Tag Team Titles with Tasha Steelz if the titles were to return.
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.
