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 latest episode of Out of Character with Ryan Satin featured interviews with Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch respectively. During Rollins’ portion of the conversation, he expressed his feeling that there was more to unpack in his story with Claudio Castagnoli in 2021. He said he regrets not pressing hard enough for more.
Rollins: So I got punted in the face at Survivor Series, left ‘The Messiah’ character behind, came back with this ‘Visionary’ character but wasn’t really certain of what it was going to look like. Got into the story with Cesaro and I kind of still was piecing it together. I had some ideas of what I thought it could be. But it didn’t really take hold until the Edge story. The Edge story was so deep that I had all these different emotions to play off of. My point is the Cesaro story had so much, there was so many legs and different directions we could have taken it and I think one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t press hard enough to do that. I feel like that’s an untapped story that if we ever cross paths again, that’s such a great story there that we can get to and it went one way and it was fine and fun, produced, again, a WrestleMania banger but, I think we had a lot more that we could have done there.
When Rollins versus Matt Riddle was taken off the 2022 SummerSlam card, Rollins sent out a tweet about doing everything he could to earn a spot on that show. Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque responded by noting that he heard Rollins. He had not had a conversation with Levesque until the response tweet was sent. Rollins was not happy about the match being postponed.
Rollins: We [Rollins & Paul Levesque] had a conversation before the tweet, before his tweet, not mine [about the SummerSlam match against Matt Riddle being postponed]. There’s no conversations had before mine. Yeah, I was not happy with that and how that played out but, again, and I felt bad because I knew it was a bit — I didn’t mean to undermine any of what he was trying to get done and I understood in the long game, why the decision was made to move my match off the show. But that still didn’t — I still have a chip on my shoulder all the time. I still think I’m competing on such a high-level right now. Nobody, I don’t care if you’re Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns or Logan Paul, Pat McAfee, outside of our industry, I just thought no one deserved to be on that card more than me. I put in too much work with the Cody [Rhodes] story, the Edge story, with the Roman story and everything I was touching was just on cloud nine. I was so good, I was in a zone and so, I felt very slighted and I wasn’t about to let anybody else but me control that narrative and so I felt bad, but I had to do what I had to do. Sometimes you gotta… and Hunter’s been on both sides of it luckily so he understood that and we had a conversation afterwards and everything’s cool but yeah, it was… sometimes I just can’t let somebody push me around too much.
While Seth was feuding with Edge, there was a segment during which Rollins invaded Edge’s home. Seth said it was Edge’s idea to do it.
Rollins: I think it was his idea, his brainchild to begin with [the home invasion idea]. What it turned into was definitely a collaborative process but I think it was his idea to do — he wanted to do some more — he’s coming from the end of the Attitude Era, I guess and then into that kind of early 2000s where they did a lot of off-site stuff and he has the famous Cena household, not invasion but they went and visited John’s dad and so he kind of always wants to do those things and they’re not always easy because logistically, it just doesn’t always work but we were able to get it set and I was able to go to Asheville and do it and so, yeah, I think it was his idea and his push to kind of just do some more different stuff and again, it turned into one of these iconic, different moments. You’re always gonna remember me riving on his love seat or whatever that was.
When the podcast transitioned over to the Becky Lynch interview, she reflected on her match with Lita at Elimination Chamber. That match meant a great deal to Lynch and said she’d be open to wrestling Lita again if she wants to come back.
Lynch: Oh, amazing, amazing man [Lynch said of her match with Lita]. She was my hero and she’s somebody who always championed for me when I was nobody, when I was the underdog. I think maybe she saw a little bit of herself in me and to be able to work with her and tell a story that wasn’t the typical, ‘Oh, you’re a has-been’ because she’s not obviously. You can see her go, she’s awesome and hell man, if Lita ever wants to come back again, I would love to go again because she’s amazing and to tell the story of this is my idol who’s come back and now you’re trying to take my title away from me, how dare you. I think it was just fun, it was a good story and I think we had a good match and to be able to be in there with her and to push myself by the way; for the first time in my life, do a moonsault. It was very scary for me. I always say it, I’m not an athlete. I’m somebody who worked very hard at this craft and she pushed me towards doing that and supported me and believed in me and you know, she has, my entire career and to be in there and share that moment with her was beyond a dream come true. I never would have imagined. I had action figures of wrestlers growing up and the one that I kept with me when I came over here was [a] Lita action figure and that’s pretty cool.
** Episode #153 of Cultaholic’s Desert Island Graps show is out with Mike Bennett as the featured guest. He was asked about Paul Levesque now overseeing creative in WWE and Mike said he loved working for Levesque. Bennett feels he has unfinished business in WWE, but added that he loves where he currently is which is IMPACT Wrestling.
I loved working for Triple H, I did. He gave me the best parenting advice when we [Mike & Maria] had our daughter. He said to me in the Gorilla Position, asking me about Freddie and how things were going and he’s like, ‘You’re just trying to figure it out aren’t you?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.’ He’s like, ‘Welp, none of us know what we’re doing’ and he was like, ‘You know what’s even crazier to think? Your parents didn’t have a clue what they were doing when they had you and your brother and sister.’ I was like, ‘Oh damn, that’s probably true too.’ Oh crap, we’re all just trying to figure this out. But man, he was the only one that reached out to me and talked to me when I asked for my release publicly. He called me, he chatted with me, he brought me down to NXT, tried to get me a new birth down there with Tony Nese and stuff like that. He would always be open to talk to me… He was a great person to work for so I can see why it seems like maybe they have turned another leaf and I hope so because like I said, I feel and I don’t know what anyone else feels but I don’t care because it’s my life and what I wanna do. I feel like I have unfinished business there. My dream was to be a WWE wrestler. That dream doesn’t go away just because you have a lousy experience with one guy. It just doesn’t. You still always have that itch in the back of your head of like, yeah, but there’s a reason why you wanted to. There was a reason why 10,000, 15,000 screaming fans when Mick Foley won the world title, that didn’t change. That feeling doesn’t change, that still happens there and it happens at that company all the time so it’s just like you kind of put the pieces together and you start to feel really good about the direction of pro wrestling when you have someone that you think is going to run the ship correctly and man, that interview Triple H did the other day, I don’t remember what channel it was on but I sat and watched it for an hour and I was just like, that sounds like that Triple H I remember. That sounds like a dude I wouldn’t mind working for. Now I love working for IMPACT, but like I said, the wrestling world flips on its head a million times. Who the hell knows what a year looks like from now.
Bennett has spoken at length about his past addiction vice and having to overcome that. He credited Maria Kanellis-Bennett for sticking by him and he believes there’s a chance he might not be alive today if it was not for her being there throughout that period of his life.
Everything [Bennett responded when asked how helpful Maria Kanellis-Bennett was during his addiction struggle/recovery process]. My wife was legit everything. I did an interview the other day and we were talking about when I hit rock bottom and when I decided to tell Maria, ‘I think I have a problem’ and I was recalling, I think what I said to her was, ‘I have a problem. I don’t wanna die and I think I’m going to die’ and I just remember, this woman who I’ve lied to about my addiction and have drained our bank account for my addiction and in everything, just had no good reason to stick by me. No good reason. I wasn’t the breadwinner, I wasn’t being pushed to the moon at WWE. There was nothing that said to her, you deserve to stick with this guy or he deserves you to stick by him and she did. I tell people to this day and I mean it and I know it sounds dramatic and over the top and I know wrestlers can indulge, I get it, I try not to but in this case, this is the God’s honest truth. I don’t think I would be alive if it wasn’t for her. At a certain point, this sh*t would have caught up to me and it wouldn’t have ended it well because it doesn’t end well for wrestlers and so, she saved my life and she was the most important thing that ever happened to me and to this day, she’s given me two of the greatest gifts I could have asked for in my two children and to this day, she motivates me and inspires me.
During the summer of 2021, Mike Bennett challenged Jonathan Gresham for the Pure Championship at ROH Best in the World. It eats at Bennett that he was never able to become Pure Champion.
It eats a hole in my heart that I never won the [ROH] Pure Title. That just is where I saw myself going. Right after WWE, I wanted to win the Pure Title so there’s still things in my heart and in my soul that I haven’t given up on that I wanna do.
While Mike and Maria were with WWE, the two used the ‘True Love’ theme song that Mike thinks very highly of. He jokingly said it was the best thing about his time in WWE.
It’s so good [‘True Love’ WWE theme]. So I didn’t even hear it until we got to Money in the Bank that day and so it was funny how it came about because I remember when they were asking what kind of theme song we wanted, I remember Maria [Kanellis-Bennett] had said to me, ‘Billy Corgan suggested to me that you guys should come out to a love ballad’ and I remember being like, ‘I don’t get it. I don’t see it. What are you talking about?’ And then when WWE came up with this love ballad, they were like, ‘Do you wanna hear it?’ I was like, ‘Yes, I think I do’ and then they played it and I was like, ‘This is the greatest song ever.’ This isn’t even a good wrestling song. This is just a banger of a song that I would play at a wedding. It was just awesome, it was so much fun. It was the best part of the whole run.
** In 2013, Nick Aldis captured the TNA World Heavyweight Championship for the first time. One of the names he got to work with during that run was Jeff Hardy and while on The Kurt Angle Show podcast, Aldis expressed how important Jeff was to TNA’s business at the time. He said some house shows would have been canceled if Jeff were not on them.
At that point in time, Jeff Hardy was without question, the top babyface in TNA. People do not realize how important Jeff Hardy was to TNA’s business. I do because I was on the house shows and I knew that I was on house shows where if Jeff Hardy hadn’t been on the show, the show likely would have been canceled… He’s one of my all-time favorite opponents. He has that thing and I think Bret [Hart] has it and I think there are certain guys who have a connection with their fans that is different to just being over.
Aldis told the story of when he had to call a match early because he was not feeling well. He was approached by Kurt Angle afterwards who told him to never do that again. Aldis recalled Angle telling him that he was the world champion and no matter what he was going through, he had to give people their money’s worth.
I remember Kurt [Angle] had sort of a ‘come to Jesus’ with me on some house shows we had in the northeast because I was sick, I was really sick. I had the flu really bad and I was wrestling [Samoa] Joe on the house shows and I’m ashamed to say it now but we had a match, I was so sick, I was having such a hard time breathing that I kind of called the finish early, I took it home kind of early, like ten minutes and I came back and Kurt came in the dressing room and I don’t know if you remember this or not Kurt but you go, ‘You’re the f*cking world champion. You don’t get to do that anymore. You f*cking go out and you deliver, because they gave you the ball. I don’t care if you’re sick, I don’t care if you’re… you have to go out and you have to give the people their money’s worth’ and I remember just being like… I wasn’t sad. I was angry at myself because I knew you were right but I also, I made a promise to myself that day that I will never do that again, no matter what and I take a lot of pride in, fast-forwarding my run with the NWA Title, I took something that no one cared about, let’s be honest, and I knew that if I was gonna have any chance of making anyone care about it, I was gonna have go out in front of 50 people or in the case of me and Cody [Rhodes] in Chicago, 10,000 people and I’m gonna have to make them feel like this is the most important match they’re gonna see that day. This is the most important thing happening in pro wrestling at this moment in time.
He had to, because he was 100 percent right [Aldis further commented on his interaction with Kurt Angle]. He wasn’t saying it to be mean. He was saying it like, don’t f*ck this up.
In the earlier portion of Aldis’ TNA/IMPACT run, he teamed with Samoa Joe. Aldis said he knew initially, Joe was not too thrilled about being paired with him but as he noticed Aldis’ team mindset, he bought in.
That was the first time in my career where I could feel a difference in the audience where the audience were kind of like, oh, I like this. I’m kind of seeing something new sort of happening here and if you go back and look at that match, me and [Samoa] Joe — because I was such a big fan of Joe’s. I love Joe’s work, I loved his matches with you [Kurt Angle], I loved his matches with Kenta Kobashi and you know, so I was already such a fan of his and I could tell that Joe was not necessarily, particularly enthusiastic about being stuck with me so I really went out of my way to be like, ‘I’ve got these great ideas’ and it was basically me just inserting myself into Joe’s established stuff so like, ‘Hey Joe, can you do that thing where you do the squisher in the corner and then the enziguri? Why don’t you do that and then throw him out to me and I’ll do the elbow off,’ you know? I was basically just taking all of his stuff and just kind of inserting myself… I showed him a lot of respect in that sense and then I think he started to get excited about it because it was like, I wasn’t thinking ‘me’, I was thinking ‘we’ and I think that as a result, he got a shot in the arm and it was… like I said, I sort of based everything around his offense which then reminded everybody how great Joe is because he was mismanaged at times in TNA, he was misused and he knew it and the audience knew it and the audience, I think, again, I think the reason the audience responded so positively is because they were kind of like, this is the Samoa Joe we f*cking want and as a result, I got the rub and I’m perfectly secure enough to admit that. I got the rub from Joe because Joe was over and then people started going, I like this dynamic between these two. They’re so unlikely.
** Karen Peterson welcomed NJPW commentator Kevin Kelly onto her ‘Tiny Puroresu Club Podcast’. Kevin said he will not be calling NJPW Royal Quest II live in London, England but there is a chance he and Chris Charlton could commentate the show on tape. Kelly added that there has been talks of the show(s) airing on FITE TV.
I’ve had people ask me, you know, am I gonna be there [at NJPW Royal Quest II] and the answer is no. It’s not a traditional New Japan event like the first Royal Quest was. That’s a little different. It’s kind of a partnership with RevPro but it’s a New Japan-branded event.
I don’t think the decisions have happened yet [where the events are being streamed]. There was some talk of it being on FITE TV but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. So obviously, I’m sure the event is gonna be recorded and I’m sure it’s gonna be both days and it’ll be available on [NJPW] World and I have a feeling that Chris [Charlton] and I will call it but not live. But there’s also the possibility that they could hire their own announcers and do it there locally and that would actually expedite things so fans would be able to see it a little bit quicker, which I don’t have a problem with either. I want fans to be able to see New Japan Pro-Wrestling in any shape, form or fashion.
** Michelle Donelan, who once worked for WWE as the company’s Marketing Manager, was appointed as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport by U.K. Prime Minister, Liz Truss.
** WWE canceled their October 2nd house show at Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
** ‘King of Indies’ 2022 is taking place in November and Pro Wrestling NOAH is sending Katsuhiko Nakajima to compete in the tournament.
** On October 10th, Masato Tanaka will be defending the ZERO1 World Heavyweight Championship against The Great Sasuke. Donations are going to be collected at the event venue (Nanso-Bunka-hall) and will be sent to the Ukrainian Embassy.
** NJPW ‘Burning Spirit’ Results (9/7/22) Lily Arena Mito in Mito, Japan
– Yuto Nakajima def. Akio Fujita
– HOUSE OF TORTURE (SHO, Dick Togo, EVIL & Yujiro Takahashi) def. Ryohei Oiwa, YOH, Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI
– Master Wato, Jado & Ryusuke Taguchi def. Gideon Gray, Francesco Akira & TJP
– United Empire (Great-O-Khan, Jeff Cobb & Aaron Henare) def. Gedo, Chase Owens & Bad Luck Fale
– Hikuleo, KENTA & Taiji Ishimori def. The DKC, Toru Yano & KUSHIDA
– Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, SANADA, Hiromu Takahashi & Tetsuya Naito) def. TAKA Michinoku, Zack Sabre Jr., Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru
– Tomoaki Honma, Kazuchika Okada & Hiroshi Tanahashi def. TMDK (Bad Dude Tito, Shane Haste & JONAH)
** Willie Mack was welcomed onto the ‘Somethin’ Else!’ show:
** Logan Paul further reflected on his experience at SummerSlam on episode #342 of his IMPAULSIVE podcast.
** NJPW’s Great-O-Khan attended an anime music festival and wrote an article about it.
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.
