Kenny King chats past go-arounds at IMPACT and what is different present day.
This weekend, IMPACT Wrestling is holding television tapings at Sam’s Town Live in Sunrise Manor, Nevada and Kenny King, who is billed from Las Vegas is going to be present.
To promote IMPACT, King appeared on the Vegas Bad Boyz of Podcasting. He returned to the company this past February as a part of the Honor No More storyline. The remainder of Honor No More arrived to IMPACT in January at Hard To Kill.
King shared that originally, he was supposed to be part of that Hard To Kill appearance. In the transcription below, King got mixed up with the 2021 and 2022 Hard To Kill events but he meant this year’s show as he said it took place in Dallas, Texas.
So I was supposed to debut — this is actually old news but I was supposed to debut at [IMPACT Wrestling] Hard To Kill last year, and I got COVID [King means 2022 Hard To Kill]. Unbeknownst to me, I didn’t even know that I had it, right? But as I’m leaving — so I ended up driving back because they’re like, ‘You have to stay’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not staying in Dallas’ so I end up driving back from Dallas to Vegas.
Continuing on the Honor No More front, he dove into the formation of that group and how he was briefed about it. Kenny recalled past conversations with former IMPACT co-Head of Talent Relations D’Lo Brown. D’Lo joked with King once about letting him know when his contract with Ring of Honor was up.
King feels Honor No More was able to blur the lines between reality and scripted television as it relates to their promos. He said everything that each member of the group had to say regarding their feelings about Ring of Honor were legit.
I mean, I am eternally grateful to IMPACT Wrestling [King stated when asked about coming back to the company to be part of Honor No More]. With Ring of Honor kind of evaporating at the end of last year, it was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of concern, right? And IMPACT, I’d been speaking to D’Lo [Brown] for a while. I remember one time, when I re-signed with ROH, he kind of jokingly told me off like, ‘Why don’t you ever tell me when your deal’s up!?’ I’m like, ‘Damn D’Lo. I didn’t even know it was a thing.’ So we stayed in communication and having that communication and getting that contact that, ‘Hey, this is what we’d like to do, this is who we’d like to do it with’ and the best things in wrestling that kind of blur the lines, reality and the things that you can kind of see. ‘Are they shooting? Is this real? What are they saying?’ And I think Honor No More was an opportunity to do that. Something to maybe air some grievances, to maybe lift the curtain a little bit behind some of the things and nothing that was said by any member at any time was untrue or even a shoot. Something like that can happen at any company, right? So, it’s just the industry in general and I think that’s what made Honor No More kind of different because we’re not just railing on Ring of Honor. Lots of people, anybody who’s been in this business long enough knows that [the] wrestling business don’t have much love for you. It’s a lovely business but you have to realize the business doesn’t love you so, and that’s kind of where we took it and I feel like that’s why it worked.
Earlier in the conversation, Kenny spoke about the differences within IMPACT now versus his first go-arounds in the company. He said talent and the locker room were the least of the issues but things are more structured internally.
I would just say that behind the scenes… it’s ran in much more like a player-coach environment [differences between his past go-arounds with IMPACT Wrestling versus now]. It’s a lot less… How do I be politically correct, right? [King chuckled] It’s a lot more people who have done the job so they kind of know what it’s like so it’s a different feel as far as the way things are ran, things are delegated a little bit more evenly and you know, it just feels — there’s a different feel in the locker room, a different feel backstage so, and any iteration of IMPACT or TNA that I’ve ever been in, the locker room has always been the least of the issues. The work, the characters, the everything was always what was keeping it alive so it’s good to have kind of both sides even out a little bit.
King was in action on the latest episode of IMPACT on AXS as a part of a Scramble match. On October 16th, he competed for NJPW STRONG at their ‘Showdown’ taping in California.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the Vegas Bad Boyz of Podcasting with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
