Stallion Rogers speaks about his friendship with AEW’s Eddie Kingston.
Coming out of his release from WWE, Stallion Rogers, the former ‘Curt Stallion’ has wrestled for GCW, Black Label Pro, Glory Pro Wrestling, AAW, All Elite Wrestling and has done several training seminars.
Rogers was a part of the AEW Dark tapings at Universal Studios in Orlando and he believes that opportunity came about because of Eddie Kingston throwing his name out there. At the tapings, Stallion had a conversation with AEW President Tony Khan that led to Khan asking him if he wanted to wrestle a second match at the tapings. In Stallion’s first bout, he and Anthony Greene took on FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) and FTR requested that instead of eight minutes, Stallion and Greene get 15. Stallion shared this story during his interview with Lucha Libre Online.
Man, I… I’m still not really sure how it happened other than the fact that — I’m just gonna say Eddie Kingston. He’s one of my best friends and there’s — I just assumed he said something because the person that hit me up was Sonjay Dutt and Sonjay Dutt was my coach at the [WWE] PC. He quit WWE right before all the firings happened because he didn’t like the way the company was going and he got out while the getting was good. He’s smart, I assume because he went off and made a real good choice working for AEW. As soon as I walked to the back, everybody’s just like, ‘That was so awesome. Y’all are so good’, blah, blah, blah and I was like, ‘What? What?’ And apparently, we were only supposed to have eight minutes but FTR [Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler] went up to Tony Khan specifically and were like, ‘Hey, we wanna give these guys 15. We’ve heard good things about ‘em.’ So he’s like, ‘Okay, whatever you want’ and they gave us that, we went out there, we killed it. When I walked to the back, Joey Janela’s standing there, he goes, ‘I wanna wrestle you.’ I was like, ‘Okay, again? Because we’ve wrestled before’ and he was just like, ‘Yeah, today’ and I was like, ‘What?’ And he’s just like, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna happen so don’t get out of your gear’ and I was like, ‘Okay’ and I went up to Tony and Tony Khan, it was my first time to like meet him-meet him and I was just like, ‘Dude, you’re Tony Khan. You’re the –’ I can’t even call him the Vince McMahon of AEW because he’s his own person but you know what I mean. I was just like, ‘I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking to you.’ It was just crazy to me and I thanked him for what he’s doing for pro wrestling right now and thanked him for paying my bills for that day and and he just goes, ‘You wanna wrestle again?’ ‘What!?’ He’s just like, ‘Yeah. You killed it man. If you want, you can wrestle Joey Janela on the second show coming up that we’re recording’ and I was just like, ‘Yeah’ and so, I went and wrestled Joey and after that match, he was super nice to me. Just like, ‘Dude, thank you so much. You’re awesome’ and I was like, ‘You’re awesome!’ It was just this big pow-wow of everybody’s happy with each other’s work I guess.
After being released from WWE, Stallion was “numb” and was worried about having to tell his family that he lost his dream job. He called Eddie Kingston for a pep talk and Kingston stopped Stallion from getting emotional and got him to focus on the future.
I gotta go back inside and tell my grandma and my great grandma who are so proud of me, that I just lost my dream job and I’m not gonna be able to pay her bills anymore like I’ve been doing for the past year since I’ve had this job. Like what the hell? So I call Eddie Kingston and I said, ‘Eddie’, because Eddie’s another one of my best friends. Eddie, [Rey] Fenix, Matt Riddle and Cameron Grimes are four people that I would say are some of my best friends in pro wrestling and I called Eddie and I was like, ‘Dude, I need one of those Eddie Kingston pep talks right now’ and he’s like, ‘What’s up bro? What happened?’ And I was just like, ‘I got fired man.’ ‘No!’ Like he just — he’s like, ‘You’re so badass. You’re gonna be okay. Don’t you dare let this get you down’ and I go, ‘Dude, I’m fine. The only thing that’s really starting to bother me is the fact that I gotta go inside and tell my grandma and my great grandma that I just got –’ and as I’m saying this, my voice starts cracking and Eddie just cuts me off. He’s like, ‘Stop! No! Do not get upset right now. Don’t be sad. You’re gonna be okay bro. Everything’s gonna be fine’, blah, blah, blah and everything turned out fine. He was not lying. I went back inside, I told my grandma. My grandma was real worried. She thought I was gonna go crazy and like kill myself or something, I don’t know. I literally was fine. I was just numb.
Rogers recently had a match with 2 Cold Scorpio at GCW and Black Label Pro’s ‘3 Cups Stuffed’ show. He’ll be in action for New Texas Pro Wrestling on September 25th at the promotion’s ‘Olajuwon’ show.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Lucha Libre Online with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
