Speaker 1: All right, everybody, this episode of Wrestling Magic, we were
Speaker 1: having an interview with Donovan die Jack. And Man, this
Speaker 1: is somebody that I've watched over the years, and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty excited for this because I feel like he hasn't
Speaker 1: really been given a fair shake really in some of
Speaker 1: the situations he's been in. But honestly, I'm really happy
Speaker 1: to see him here and I'm happy to really give
Speaker 1: him this conversation and this opportunity to tell his story. So,
Speaker 1: mister die Jack, how you doing. Man, I'm doing great.
Speaker 1: How are you doing fine? And man, I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to have you on the show. And as always, also
Speaker 1: joining me will be the gardener, Michael Gross. Michael, how
Speaker 1: you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. My nephew, and mister die Jack, it's
Speaker 2: great to actually meet you and talk to you in person.
Speaker 2: I followed your career for a little over ten years
Speaker 2: and probably about close to twelve or thirteen when I
Speaker 2: found found out about you in Ring of Honor, and
Speaker 2: I just want to say that this is a big
Speaker 2: honor to have you on the show, and thank you
Speaker 2: nephew for introducing me. So let's get down to the
Speaker 2: nitty gritty. Where do we want to start what do
Speaker 2: you think of math?
Speaker 1: Well, oh, mister Daijack, are you comfortable talking about childhood
Speaker 1: a little bit? And just what got you into wrestling
Speaker 1: and when you started off?
Speaker 3: Sure? Yeah, so I started watching. I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: I heard about wrestling. So for context, I'm thirty eight.
Speaker 3: So when I was a kid, my earliest memories are
Speaker 3: like five years old, six years old something like that,
Speaker 3: especially because we don't have like videos. Well, I mean
Speaker 3: there's some home and stuff, but like I think about it.
Speaker 3: I think about this a lot actually, because my kids,
Speaker 3: like every day of their life is documented like nassively,
Speaker 3: Like there's a I can show my daughter like video
Speaker 3: from yesterday, video from two days ago, video from you know.
Speaker 3: So for her, like remembering her childhood is easy because
Speaker 3: it's there's a constant stream of reminders going on. For me,
Speaker 3: not so much. My earliest memories are like little like glimpses,
Speaker 3: like pictures I can remember in kindergarten, like pretending that
Speaker 3: I was a wrestler, like we all pretended we were wrestlers.
Speaker 3: I had very little context for it outside of like
Speaker 3: like WWFD arcade game. I know some of my friends
Speaker 3: had that and played that, but like in terms of
Speaker 3: like the actual product, I'd only seen like maybe like
Speaker 3: commercials or stuff like that. Like as a six or
Speaker 3: seven year old kid, you don't even know like where
Speaker 3: to turn on a channel or what to do. And
Speaker 3: you look at the TV guide and it says, you know,
Speaker 3: Saturday at whatever time. It's like, oh, I have soccer practice,
Speaker 3: you know whatever, whatever, you can't record it, and maybe
Speaker 3: I gotta get a VCR or something.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There's this whole thing right as a as a kid
Speaker 3: that's not as easy as it is now, which is like, oh,
Speaker 3: can I just watch it? And it's like yeah, you
Speaker 3: grab their mote and you can turn it on literally
Speaker 3: whenever you want. Not as simple. I was a kid,
Speaker 3: so I didn't I didn't really truly discover like full
Speaker 3: time watching of professional wrestling until like nineteen ninety eight. Okay, again,
Speaker 3: it's right in the middle of the Attitude Era and
Speaker 3: I'm eleven at this time, so my parents weren't thrilled
Speaker 3: about that concept, and rightfully so, Like at the time,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, they're kind of hard and they're
Speaker 3: kind of strict. Then going back and watching some of
Speaker 3: the content from the Attitude era, I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't. I wouldn't let my my eleven year old
Speaker 3: watch that. Ever, I don't have an eleven year old,
Speaker 3: but if my when my son turns eleven, like for sure,
Speaker 3: wouldn't let them watch Attitude Era stuff. So I don't
Speaker 3: think my parents were being strict at all. I think
Speaker 3: they were being you know, pretty solid parents. But as
Speaker 3: most kids do, I went behind their back and you know,
Speaker 3: started recording it and watching into my friend's house and
Speaker 3: things like that. So that's when I started watching pretty religiously.
Speaker 3: And they sort of loosened up on that around late
Speaker 3: ninety nine, early two thousand, when I became about thirteen
Speaker 3: years old, they were more okay with it. So I
Speaker 3: started watching, you know, much more religiously, you know, both
Speaker 3: shows every week, things like that.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, just to interject, who is that one character
Speaker 2: that you had to see that one wrestler.
Speaker 3: He had to guess? What would you guess? Stone cold
Speaker 3: Stone cold Steve Boston. Absolutely, yeah, so much so that
Speaker 3: when the Rock turned Babyface and became like the megastar
Speaker 3: had the you know, the whole franchise, and I refused
Speaker 3: to accept that. I was like, absolutely not like this
Speaker 3: guy betrayed my favorite guy. He was a dick that
Speaker 3: whole time. Sorry, I told you I wouldn't swear.
Speaker 2: Okay, we can find that one.
Speaker 3: He was a jerk the entire time. Yeah, I refused
Speaker 3: to ever acknowledge The Rock, So yeah, I really didn't
Speaker 3: start to appreciate The Rock until I became a wrestler,
Speaker 3: and then I was like, oh, okay, I actually kind
Speaker 3: of like his work. He's actually really really entertaining. But
Speaker 3: at the time I was like, he's pompous, he's cock. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't care for him at all, you know, no
Speaker 3: matter what he did, the crowd was I was at.
Speaker 3: I went to probably fifteen or twenty shows in my
Speaker 3: childhood every time they came to either Manchester, New Hampshire, Manchester,
Speaker 3: New Hampshire, Worcester, Massachusetts, Providence, Rhode Island, Boston, Massachusetts. Anytime
Speaker 3: they came to one of those four arenas between like
Speaker 3: early two thousand and late two thousand and three, I
Speaker 3: probably went to every single one of those shows. So yeah,
Speaker 3: there was tons of love for the Rock. I was
Speaker 3: even at I think it was Backlash two thousand and
Speaker 3: two or two thousand and three, where it was the
Speaker 3: Rock versus Goldberg, and the Rock was a bad guy
Speaker 3: at that point, I think, but everyone was still cheering
Speaker 3: for him, and I was like, nope, now I like Goldberg,
Speaker 3: you know. So yeah, fast forward to to I guess
Speaker 3: two thousand So I guess I'll try to make this
Speaker 3: a long story short. Around two thousand and three, two
Speaker 3: thousand and four, like I mentioned, that's sort of when
Speaker 3: high school sports took over for me, and I didn't
Speaker 3: really have time to you know, Monday nights were either
Speaker 3: basketball practice or a football practice or a game or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Friday night, same thing, so I didn't really have time
Speaker 3: to watch pro wrestling, and you know, DVRs weren't much
Speaker 3: of a thing. I think we had a TVO in
Speaker 3: like two thousand and five and six or something.
Speaker 2: But right, yeah, real quick to sidebar and we're gonna
Speaker 2: get out of this real quick. Basketball at your height. Obviously,
Speaker 2: who is your favorite player? Just throw that in?
Speaker 3: Well, depends on the like in two thousand and four
Speaker 3: and five, probably probably like Paul Pierce, I'm a big However,
Speaker 3: it's usually whoever it was the best for the Celtics.
Speaker 3: My my all time favorite is Kevin Garnett.
Speaker 2: You know, he's just Larry Bird, come.
Speaker 3: On, tired. Larry Bird retired before I even ever saw
Speaker 3: a game, So I mean, like, I love watching Larry
Speaker 3: Bird highlights and stuff, but I never I never saw
Speaker 3: him play.
Speaker 2: Any guy who could call a shot in front of
Speaker 2: his own player and then do it. I mean, your
Speaker 2: guard men, I'm gonna step back, pump fake, and then
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna take a three. And he would do
Speaker 2: it to somebody. That's amazing that anyway, go ahead and
Speaker 2: miss Dodge. No.
Speaker 3: I was just gonna say, you know, Larry Bird was tremendous,
Speaker 3: but I think he retired in ninety two or ninety three,
Speaker 3: so I was like six or seven, so I don't
Speaker 3: even have a memory of watching him on TV unfortunately.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I uh, the so long story short, I was,
Speaker 3: you know, high school sports turned to college sports, so
Speaker 3: basically from two thousand and three to twenty ten, I
Speaker 3: wasn't watching wrestling at all, just hearing about it and stuff.
Speaker 3: But once I graduated from college, I was just working
Speaker 3: a full time job and I said, you know what,
Speaker 3: I have my night's free again. So I picked up
Speaker 3: right where I left off started watching wrestling full time again,
Speaker 3: and then through a series of coincidences, I happened to
Speaker 3: find the New England Pro Wrestling Academy, which is where
Speaker 3: I'm a trainer today in North Andover, Massachusetts. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I started training there and that was in twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I've just been in a pro wrestling ring
Speaker 3: for the last thirteen years. Wow.
Speaker 1: It's really cool. Actually, and I do want to ask
Speaker 1: before we move on to the academy and everything. So
Speaker 1: what all sports did you play in high school?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: I'm curious.
Speaker 3: My three best were football American football, right, basketball, and
Speaker 3: track and field. I was a thrower like shot put
Speaker 3: in discus.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's.
Speaker 3: On a national scale. I was probably best at like
Speaker 3: probably a tie between football and shop. I was pretty
Speaker 3: good at shot put enough to be like top in
Speaker 3: the state, but I was also one of the top
Speaker 3: recruits for football. The sad part, though, is my favorite
Speaker 3: was basketball, like I wanted to be. I enjoyed playing
Speaker 3: basketball a lot more, but I was only good enough
Speaker 3: to play at like a Division three college level, which
Speaker 3: I did. Because I played at a high high level
Speaker 3: for football that they wanted to move me to an
Speaker 3: offensive lineman position, which I didn't care for so I
Speaker 3: transferred to a smaller school so I could play football
Speaker 3: and basketball, which I'm very happy about.
Speaker 2: I just remember that Ben Wallace played for Cuyahoga Community
Speaker 2: College in Cleveland in basketball. Yeah, he also won a championship,
Speaker 2: So you never know.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I know, I'm thirty eight, so it's
Speaker 3: not happened to me. But yeah, he was a little undersized, I.
Speaker 2: Know, but I'm just saying like he was a phenom too,
Speaker 2: Like there's there's only super athletic.
Speaker 3: I remember in high school I would sort of compare
Speaker 3: myself to him and say, oh, I'm a bit of
Speaker 3: a wider body and he's not the tallest guy in
Speaker 3: the world, but he can still play power forward at
Speaker 3: like at an NBA level, So like I have a
Speaker 3: chance too. And there was in my brain I couldn't
Speaker 3: connect the dots between, like he's wildly more athletic than me.
Speaker 3: So like because in my head I was like, I'm
Speaker 3: a pretty good athlete, you know, I can play multiple
Speaker 3: sports and stuff. But he had like a probably a
Speaker 3: thirty eight inch vertical or something and just like probably ten.
Speaker 2: Years so yeah, insane, great defender. But anyway, this is
Speaker 2: about you, it's not about like Ben Wallace, so like
Speaker 2: let's go forward. So I want to ask you a
Speaker 2: question when you got into school, like when you got
Speaker 2: into wrestling school and started training, Like did you feel
Speaker 2: it was grueling? Did you feel it was hard? Did
Speaker 2: you expect what you had or were you just like
Speaker 2: were you shocked? Like okay, like this is wrestling school,
Speaker 2: Like what was wrestling school for you?
Speaker 3: So for me, I started with what we call fantasy camp,
Speaker 3: which is like everyone can sort of pay whatever seventy
Speaker 3: bucks or some seventy US dollars and come try a
Speaker 3: day as a professional wrestler. So the first time I
Speaker 3: stepped foot in a ring, I I did what we
Speaker 3: call it. I took a bump. It's a flat back bump,
Speaker 3: which is like land on your back, and then hit
Speaker 3: the ropes a little bit. And just from watching it
Speaker 3: for so long, I had sort of like a like
Speaker 3: a muscle memory to it watching it and doing backyard wrestling,
Speaker 3: I would kind of portray it in my backyard like
Speaker 3: on you know, mattresses or whatever the ground sometimes where
Speaker 3: I would just you know, imitate what I was seeing
Speaker 3: on television. And quite frankly, that's kind of a good
Speaker 3: way to do a lot of things that you I mean,
Speaker 3: people do it in basketball, they do it in football.
Speaker 3: You watch someone who's great, and you try to imitate
Speaker 3: someone who's great. So I was doing the same thing
Speaker 3: with pro wrestling, and it felt very natural to me,
Speaker 3: and I said, Oh, okay, I think this is what
Speaker 3: I was meant to do. This feels like something that
Speaker 3: I've been doing for a long time, even though it's
Speaker 3: my first time doing it. That being said, training was
Speaker 3: very strenuous, both mentally and physically. There's really nothing like
Speaker 3: pro wrestling in terms of athletic and certainly in terms
Speaker 3: of cardio. An interesting story I like to tell is
Speaker 3: I did a tryout for WWE very early in my
Speaker 3: career that a lot of people don't know about. It
Speaker 3: was in June of twenty thirteen, so really i'd been
Speaker 3: training for less than a year and I had really
Speaker 3: just done my first match on a show. So it's very,
Speaker 3: very very early in my career. But I right from
Speaker 3: day one, I knew I wanted to wrestle for WWE.
Speaker 3: So I was sending emails to all the recruiters and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, and I ended up getting a try
Speaker 3: out just based on, you know, my youth and my
Speaker 3: size and my look stuff like that. I say youth
Speaker 3: and it's funny because at the time I felt like
Speaker 3: I was kind of old because I was twenty five
Speaker 3: and I would look at the foster and it was
Speaker 3: like eighteen nineteen, and I was like, oh, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: kind of old. In hindsight, you know, twenty five is
Speaker 3: actually really young in pro wrestling. But yeah, I ended
Speaker 3: up getting a trout and they asked me. They being
Speaker 3: Canyon Seeman, who was the head of talent relations for
Speaker 3: NXC for about a decade, but at this point he
Speaker 3: had only been there for about a year. But he
Speaker 3: mailed me back and asked if I wanted to do
Speaker 3: the tryout for wrestlers or if I wanted to do
Speaker 3: it for athletes. And I was like, ooh, I want
Speaker 3: to do it for athletes, because you know, I'm a
Speaker 3: Division one athlete and you know I can hang with
Speaker 3: those guys. But the wrestlers, they're all going to have
Speaker 3: way more experience than me. I don't want to have
Speaker 3: to like get in the ring and wrestle guys who
Speaker 3: have ten years experience and I'm green as hell. So
Speaker 3: I did the try out with athletes, which was all
Speaker 3: It was like thirty probably Division one football players and
Speaker 3: like Olympic caliber athletes, guys who had like gold medals
Speaker 3: and stuff. When you do pro wrestling conditioning, and I
Speaker 3: had the great fortune of having about nine months of
Speaker 3: pro wrestling conditioning under my belt, so I actually did
Speaker 3: really well in terms of the conditioning, like one of
Speaker 3: the top people there. People were dropping like flies. And
Speaker 3: I'm talking about like Olympic level caliber athletes, like extremely
Speaker 3: well conditioned men. I think it was all men. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this was an all male tryout. I don't know, they
Speaker 3: probably did like male and female tryouts back then or
Speaker 3: something separately, but uh yeah, like people were just like
Speaker 3: after day one, like ten guys left, you know.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It's that kind of thing. And I still hear anecdotes
Speaker 3: like this every day. I was talking to someone two
Speaker 3: days ago who did a tryout and there were there were,
Speaker 3: you know, real legitimate athletes who just were like, this
Speaker 3: is not for me, right, because it's it's just an
Speaker 3: incredibly You really to get through the sort of mental
Speaker 3: and physical anguish and conditioning of professional wrestling, you really
Speaker 3: have to love the business of professional wrestling because if
Speaker 3: you think about it, like, imagine doing something so physically
Speaker 3: and mentally grueling that you didn't even know what it
Speaker 3: was and someone just told you to try it and
Speaker 3: you see it and you're like, this is silly, Like
Speaker 3: I don't understand. It's not even a real competition. It's
Speaker 3: more of a theater that you know. You so people
Speaker 3: don't and that's fine. I don't hold anything against that,
Speaker 3: But like if you put yourself in their their shoes,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, I would absolutely not. Why would I
Speaker 3: condition myself and my body to smash myself and do
Speaker 3: all these painful, tiring, exhausting things for something that I
Speaker 3: don't really care about, you know. So so really it
Speaker 3: takes a level of like fandom to sort of be
Speaker 3: able to push yourself and continually push yourself at a
Speaker 3: level to be at where you need to be physically
Speaker 3: to succeed in the Ring.
Speaker 1: I see, And that makes a lot of sense, because
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, it is the last true theater
Speaker 1: art at this point. You know, you don't really see
Speaker 1: many others that are actually you know, cutting themselves open
Speaker 1: to get the real blood effect and actually look that
Speaker 1: good in the ring as well as uh, just doing
Speaker 1: their best to make everything look perfect and stay in
Speaker 1: that kind of condition. It is one of those things
Speaker 1: that it's not for everybody. And I don't blame anybody
Speaker 1: that's like, yeah, I just couldn't do it. It's too much,
Speaker 1: And I don't put that against anybody, but I will
Speaker 1: say I give hats off to you man for sticking
Speaker 1: with us a lot.
Speaker 3: Interesting now that you mention it, you just sparked an
Speaker 3: idea in my head because I do. I do a
Speaker 3: lot of acting training. I was doing a lot.
Speaker 2: I love this now I keep going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, I'm a little busy with my independent bookings.
Speaker 3: But ironically, when I was in WW I had a
Speaker 3: little bit more free time, so so I would spend
Speaker 3: a lot of my free time training with Howard Fine,
Speaker 3: who's one of the best acting coaches in the world,
Speaker 3: and thankfully he does online classes, so I did a
Speaker 3: bunch of levels of his class and he trains for
Speaker 3: both screen and theater. And whenever we talk about like
Speaker 3: theater acting, a lot of the concept is like being
Speaker 3: able to mentally commit yourself to the act that's happening
Speaker 3: without actually doing it right. You don't want to actually
Speaker 3: like drink to get drunk or actually be like sleepy
Speaker 3: and wake up and be tired, to act like you're tired, right.
Speaker 3: A lot of it is just like convincing yourself that
Speaker 3: you're in those scenarios so you can act the part
Speaker 3: and convince yourself that you you feel sick without actually
Speaker 3: being sick. But now that you mentioned like what we
Speaker 3: do in professional wrestling and how that translates, I almost
Speaker 3: want to like do or direct a play one day
Speaker 3: that's like the opposite side of that where you do
Speaker 3: all of the things on stage, because like, like pro
Speaker 3: wrestling is one thing, right we can actually hit each
Speaker 3: other and do all those other things, but like real
Speaker 3: life on stage would be such a wild thing to
Speaker 3: like actually have people like drinking or whatever. Maybe you
Speaker 3: don't want to do fighting unless you have trained professional
Speaker 3: wrestlers up there, But as a professional wrestler, I know
Speaker 3: some guys and we could for sure do portray that
Speaker 3: part of it. And then I don't know if you
Speaker 3: can portray falling asleep or all the different you know,
Speaker 3: getting sick like that, But like that that'd be an
Speaker 3: interesting experiment if you could design a screen written play
Speaker 3: that has elements of reality all sort of coursed throughout it.
Speaker 3: That would be a very interesting play that I think
Speaker 3: people would like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Donovan, I think it would be called the Plane
Speaker 2: Rod from Hell.
Speaker 3: I wasn't on that.
Speaker 2: I wish. I know, I know, I know you're you're
Speaker 2: way too young, but but I do. You said your
Speaker 2: friend Howard Fine. Is that a real name or is
Speaker 2: that a stage name? Because you know who Howard find is.
Speaker 3: I don't are you pronouncing the last name right? It's
Speaker 3: f I N E. Fine? Yeah, yeah, do I know
Speaker 3: who he is?
Speaker 2: Well, it was one of the names of three stooges.
Speaker 3: Oh was it?
Speaker 2: Yes? It was. It was it was Fine, Howard and
Speaker 2: Fine or something like that. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was.
Speaker 2: Yes that people do not know that that the name
Speaker 2: of the Stooges. You can look it up Mo Fine,
Speaker 2: Curly Fine, and Larry Howard. I think it was Larry Howard,
Speaker 2: Mo Fine, and Curly Fire. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, so
Speaker 2: that I thought you were making that because wrestling you
Speaker 2: always have a stooge. I thought it was like a
Speaker 2: stage thing, so I had to call you on that.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I'm loving this, this interesting stuff. What match
Speaker 2: like made you say I gotta turn it up? And
Speaker 2: be like a star. What match like when you're yeah,
Speaker 2: like when you were in training and you're going through
Speaker 2: the Indies and you saw a match on TV and
Speaker 2: you said, Okay, this match has made me say I
Speaker 2: got to be a star, Like I want that match,
Speaker 2: I want that situation.
Speaker 3: I had a bit of a light bulb moment when
Speaker 3: I was watching I just started training and I was
Speaker 3: watching one of the early early NXT. I don't know
Speaker 3: if it was Takeover or if it was just an
Speaker 3: episode of TV, And I don't think I've watched the
Speaker 3: match many times since, but I remember watching it live
Speaker 3: and it was Cizarro and Sammy Zane, and I remember thinking, oh,
Speaker 3: they they they've taken this to another level. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 3: I got the wrestle in that ring and in that
Speaker 3: venue at full sale many many times after that and
Speaker 3: have great matches where I was trying to outdo them,
Speaker 3: you know, in a lot of ways. But at that
Speaker 3: time I remember watching that and as someone who was
Speaker 3: just learning, like lock ups and shoot offs and hit
Speaker 3: the ropes and this is how you pin and this
Speaker 3: is and I'm watching them do all that stuff combined
Speaker 3: with the with the psychology of it and the impact
Speaker 3: and the violence and the storytelling and all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, wow, this is a completely different level,
Speaker 3: and I need to I need to push myself harder
Speaker 3: than I've ever pushed before if I ever want to
Speaker 3: get to that level. So, you know, it was it
Speaker 3: was cool in the moment because this is twenty thirteen
Speaker 3: or twenty fourteen maybe at the time, and to kind
Speaker 3: of escalate and elevate myself to the point where I
Speaker 3: started to have matches that were sort of in that
Speaker 3: realm conceptually, maybe a year or a year and a
Speaker 3: half later, because that's when I really started, you know,
Speaker 3: to hit the round running with Ring of Honor and stuff.
Speaker 3: So I really had to sort of step my game
Speaker 3: up in that capacity. And then obviously, as I elevated
Speaker 3: through NXT, we started to you know, push harder and
Speaker 3: harder and push that envelope in terms of you know,
Speaker 3: trying to you know, break ground and sort of reinvent
Speaker 3: the wheel.
Speaker 2: It's really awesome, man. Nov I'm gonna let you take
Speaker 2: the next couple of questions because I've got a couple
Speaker 2: of questions that I've had some fans that want me
Speaker 2: to ask him. So I want you to actually take
Speaker 2: a lead a little bit here for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Okay, no problem, man. So I do want to ask
Speaker 1: about So, given where you are now, what advice would
Speaker 1: you give to your younger self starting out training and
Speaker 1: just your first couple of years in.
Speaker 3: What advice would I give myself Earlier? I'd probably say, like,
Speaker 3: don't be in such a rush. I felt like I
Speaker 3: was in this huge, huge rush, which because as I
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, I thought I started when I was twenty five,
Speaker 3: and I felt like I was like really behind the
Speaker 3: eight ball because in my mind, pro wrestlers like you
Speaker 3: had to start training at fifteen and living out of
Speaker 3: your car at sixteen, and then you were ready to
Speaker 3: hit the road at seventeen and you were a world
Speaker 3: champion by eighteen. Like that was my mindset of how
Speaker 3: professional wrestling worked. And I would look at the developmental
Speaker 3: roster and there was a lot of young guys on there,
Speaker 3: and I'd say, oh, I'm way behind the eight ball.
Speaker 3: I need to at least be in WWE by the
Speaker 3: time I'm you know, twenty nine or thirty something like that.
Speaker 3: So when that opportunity came, you know, I jumped all
Speaker 3: over it. In hindsight, I feel like I could have
Speaker 3: used a little bit more. So I want I don't
Speaker 3: I don't want to dissuade myself from having that push
Speaker 3: and having that drive and continuing to push and feel
Speaker 3: like my back is against the wall, because I still
Speaker 3: have that to this day and it's still what drives
Speaker 3: me and motivates me. I just want to make sure
Speaker 3: that my decisions that I made weren't so hasty, because I,
Speaker 3: you know, I jumped at Ring of Honor, and then
Speaker 3: I jumped at WWE and I and it feels like
Speaker 3: it like sometimes I didn't survey the whole situation and say,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe six months from now might be a
Speaker 3: little bit better of a scenario, or or have the
Speaker 3: conversations that I could have had in those scenarios instead
Speaker 3: of just saying like, oh, here's the contract, sign on
Speaker 3: the dotted line as quick as possible, right, I could
Speaker 3: have had a conversation before that and been like, what's
Speaker 3: the what's the plan? What are the thought process here?
Speaker 3: But in my mind it was like, oh, they're offering
Speaker 3: you a contract, don't ask what the plan is. That's disrespectful, Right,
Speaker 3: They're going to have a plan for you, you know,
Speaker 3: so in if I could give advice to my younger self,
Speaker 3: it'ld be it. Don't be afraid to, you know, ask
Speaker 3: those questions. Don't be afraid to broach those those topics
Speaker 3: and things like that. You know, this is a it's
Speaker 3: a two way street, like you're signing a contract, but
Speaker 3: like that, there's there's a reason, right, there's agreements on
Speaker 3: both ends of a contract, and you should you should
Speaker 3: feel comfortable having those conversations and things like that. So
Speaker 3: that would be my advice.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I mean, yeah, you got to read the
Speaker 1: fine print and realize like, okay, I'm signing here, here's
Speaker 1: what they're asking of me, and where do I feel
Speaker 1: that I need to fit in as well? And there's
Speaker 1: a lot to it when you're signing into anything, I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, I mean, I've signed many contracts
Speaker 1: so far in my life and it's always like you
Speaker 1: never know what exactly could happen, especially if you just
Speaker 1: don't read it. You have to really read in the
Speaker 1: fine print, like a I don't mean to get too
Speaker 1: much in my personal life here, but every time that
Speaker 1: I sign off a job or anything saying an aircraft
Speaker 1: is good to go, as I'm a mechanic on them.
Speaker 1: It is a contract saying this is perfectly fliable, there's
Speaker 1: no issues with it. If I just pencil whipped in
Speaker 1: just didn't care, then yeah, everything could fall apart if
Speaker 1: I'm not paying enough attention. So that's understandable that you
Speaker 1: would look back at your old self and just say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I should have read the room a little bit
Speaker 1: more figured out everything that could have been in my plans.
Speaker 1: But I do also want to ask you about so
Speaker 1: you weren't pushed correctly. I don't feel like when you
Speaker 1: were in your WWE time, I kind of felt like
Speaker 1: you had a lot more potential and you could have
Speaker 1: done a lot more. But it feels like I want
Speaker 1: to use almost Bronze Strowman in a way as an example,
Speaker 1: because like, you have this guy with a lot of talent,
Speaker 1: but what are you going to do with him? And
Speaker 1: then they just kind of don't know. Maybe it's the image.
Speaker 1: How did you feel about the situation?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, pro wrestling is a lot about sort
Speaker 3: of timing. There's elements of timing, there's elements of luck,
Speaker 3: there's elements of talent and ability, and there's also a
Speaker 3: lot of like business factors and moneymaking factors and boxes
Speaker 3: that are checked and things like that. So I referred
Speaker 3: to it as a pie chart almost. It's this big
Speaker 3: pie chart where a lot of it is stuff you
Speaker 3: don't control, and a smaller piece of it is that
Speaker 3: you do control. You want to fill out as much
Speaker 3: of that as possible and then just kind of like
Speaker 3: hope that the rest of it like rounds out as
Speaker 3: much as possible. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't,
Speaker 3: and that's that's just part of it. I mean, like,
Speaker 3: I was in WW for seven years, so I knew
Speaker 3: a lot of people, and I had a lot of
Speaker 3: conversations with a lot of people, and I was around
Speaker 3: a lot of people, from the people all the way
Speaker 3: at the top of the car to the people who
Speaker 3: you know, were only there for a cup of coffee
Speaker 3: and barely you know, had anything. It's a double edged
Speaker 3: sword for everybody. No nobody is like one thousand percent
Speaker 3: happy with one hundred percent of the scenarios that happened.
Speaker 3: You know, there's there's oh, I gotta go do this
Speaker 3: media appearance, or I gotta do this, I gotta do that,
Speaker 3: and meanwhile, someone else on the other end of the
Speaker 3: spectrum is like, oh, I would love to do a
Speaker 3: media appearance. You know that that's actually a conversation. I
Speaker 3: had a lot of times as I was asking to
Speaker 3: be on house shows, and I was like, please, can
Speaker 3: I be on these house shows? Because I know that
Speaker 3: there's one hundred guys who don't want to be on
Speaker 3: house shows. I'll take that exactly please.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the just the business model and the way that
Speaker 3: it is is the house shows aren't there to like
Speaker 3: get reps and stuff or to have good matches. They're
Speaker 3: there to here's the stars, here's the people you see
Speaker 3: on TV and come see them and buy a bunch
Speaker 3: of tickets and stuff like that. So so I get it,
Speaker 3: you know, I get a lot of it from a
Speaker 3: business aspect. The reality of the situation is I I
Speaker 3: wanted to be a top guy, and I asked many
Speaker 3: times what I needed to be and needed to do
Speaker 3: to be a top guy. I don't think that. Uh So,
Speaker 3: on the one hand, I don't. I don't hold it
Speaker 3: against anyone because you know, there was a lot of like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know, just keep doing this and keep doing and
Speaker 3: so in a sense that's not wrong, right, No one,
Speaker 3: No one would ever come to me and say like, oh,
Speaker 3: just you know, just cross your finger. You know they'll
Speaker 3: work real hard and and uh and and and hope
Speaker 3: because you know that that would all be be you know,
Speaker 3: sort of detrimental advice to a talent. But so I
Speaker 3: understand like why they didn't say that. But you know, again,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of it's timing. That being said, I
Speaker 3: had a great I was given a lot of things
Speaker 3: that ended up being very fortunate for me in the
Speaker 3: realm of professional wrestling.
Speaker 2: Right. So, like I.
Speaker 3: Especially my runs in NXT. Right, I was on multiple
Speaker 3: premium live events. I was in relevant storylines. I was
Speaker 3: able to have marquee matches on big stages. As recently
Speaker 3: as a year ago, I had the biggest match of
Speaker 3: my entire career, which was to stand and deliver for
Speaker 3: the North American Championship in front of sixteen thousand people, Right,
Speaker 3: So I can't look back at it and be like,
Speaker 3: whoa it was me. I'm so you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: it's that was a wonderful, mainstream sort of opportunity that's
Speaker 3: still paying dividends to this day. You know, did I
Speaker 3: want more? Did I want to be a representative champion
Speaker 3: for the company, absolutely, and I tried everything in my
Speaker 3: power to get that, but again, a lot of it's,
Speaker 3: you know, stuff that's out of your control and timing
Speaker 3: and things like that. So what I did get I'm
Speaker 3: very thankful for because it gives me the opportunity to
Speaker 3: come out on shows like I did last night, for example,
Speaker 3: Beyond Wrestling in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is you know, my
Speaker 3: home where I'm build from, and you know, as soon
Speaker 3: as my music hits and I come out, people recognize me.
Speaker 3: They've seen me on TV, they see me on these
Speaker 3: premium live events, they come to my merch stand, they
Speaker 3: buy a lot of my merchandise and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So I'm able to make a living off of professional wrestling.
Speaker 3: So for that, I'm extremely grateful because there's so many
Speaker 3: people who even people who have time in WWE, who
Speaker 3: aren't able to make a living off of this once
Speaker 3: they're done with pro wrestling, and that's that would be
Speaker 3: a very unfortunate situation, right if I. If I were
Speaker 3: unable to do that, I'm extremely lucky in that sense,
Speaker 3: So I'm very thankful for my time and the opportunities
Speaker 3: that I got with WWE.
Speaker 1: I see. So you seem like a very positive person
Speaker 1: and a big go getter with every opportunity you could
Speaker 1: possibly go after. And there is somebody that I do
Speaker 1: want to reference with this. I think it was Matt
Speaker 1: Cardona who had talked about after being released and everything.
Speaker 1: Or it feels like every time that WWE goes through
Speaker 1: a list of new people who have been released. Hey,
Speaker 1: you have a couple of options here. You can either
Speaker 1: let yourself fade into obscurity and say what was me?
Speaker 1: Or you can get up and you can do your
Speaker 1: best outside of that company and build yourself. And I
Speaker 1: feel like you've done that very well, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean a few months ago, I was watching a little
Speaker 1: bit of MLW here and there, and I remember watching
Speaker 1: your match with Kenta, and I thought, man, this is
Speaker 1: probably best on the card. I really liked it, and
Speaker 1: I thought, man, I think this guy has a lot
Speaker 1: more than what he was given. But either way, he's
Speaker 1: still building on himself. And that's something that I think
Speaker 1: you are very good at right now, is you are
Speaker 1: keeping yourself relevant even if you may not be in
Speaker 1: the top company. But you don't have to make yourself
Speaker 1: relevant anymore. You know, the Internet and all these indie shows,
Speaker 1: they are willing to hire you, and I know that
Speaker 1: for a fact, and I'm very glad that you're able
Speaker 1: to keep yourself going. But I do want to ask you,
Speaker 1: do you have anything in the future that you like
Speaker 1: to promote?
Speaker 3: Real quick? I mean, yeah, like you mentioned MLW, that's
Speaker 3: going extremely well for me. I'm very happy with with
Speaker 3: the Like I said earlier, the advice I gave my
Speaker 3: I wanted to give my younger self, Well, that's the
Speaker 3: advice I'm giving myself right now. Right So, I've I've
Speaker 3: had those conversations with Court, with with Jared A at
Speaker 3: MLW about you know, here's where I am in my career,
Speaker 3: Here's what I want out of this partnership. And they've
Speaker 3: fulfilled their end of the bargain, like very much. So
Speaker 3: you know, I've we're less than a year in and
Speaker 3: I've already been just two or three weeks ago. I
Speaker 3: was in Mexico for cm ME Wrestling at Arena Mexico,
Speaker 3: wrestled LW World Championship twice. Now the storylines are there,
Speaker 3: they're consistent, they listen to my creative ideas, you know.
Speaker 3: So my whole goal has been to rebrand myself. Right,
Speaker 3: I had a I have an image, I have a brand.
Speaker 3: I have how people picture me. And it's good.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's a very positive thing for people to look at
Speaker 3: you and say, oh, that's that's one of the best
Speaker 3: wrestlers in the world. Every time he wrestles, he is
Speaker 3: a great match. Right. So that's a positive thing. But
Speaker 3: I need to continue to adjust that, right because I
Speaker 3: I'm past the point where I need people to look
Speaker 3: at me and say, that's that guy's always going to
Speaker 3: have a great match. Right now, I need people to
Speaker 3: look at me and say, oh, that's the guy that wins,
Speaker 3: that's the champion, right, That's that's my guy. Right. He
Speaker 3: represents me, right, because having a great match is awesome.
Speaker 3: It's having a great match, but you know, call space
Speaker 3: to space. I never want a championship in WWE, so
Speaker 3: I was the guy who always, you know, had great
Speaker 3: matches but usually lost them. Right. So now I'm working
Speaker 3: on rebranding that image and making people so that I
Speaker 3: can be viewed as a top guy because that's my goal, right.
Speaker 3: I want to be the face of a company, and
Speaker 3: MLW is giving me that opportunity. So I'm extremely thankful
Speaker 3: for them. We have a show coming up in New
Speaker 3: York City on June twenty sixth. I'm gonna double check
Speaker 3: that date just to make sure that it's right. I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure it's a Thursday, June twenty sixth, Yes, in
Speaker 3: New York City. So that will be my next appearance
Speaker 3: for MLW. I'm very much looking forward to it. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's my number one company, so I'm very excited to
Speaker 3: be with them consistently. It's been a wonderful partnership and
Speaker 3: opportunity though so far. And I, like you mentioned, I'm
Speaker 3: just continually trying to reb and rebuild myself less, rebuild more,
Speaker 3: rebrand and you know, give people and myself the opportunity
Speaker 3: to to see what it looks like to have me
Speaker 3: as the face of a company.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well, dude, do you mind if I ask a
Speaker 2: couple of fan questions?
Speaker 3: Jar?
Speaker 2: Go ahead, all right? So, first of all, Josh Turner
Speaker 2: wants to know what was it like when they approached
Speaker 2: you to do retribution and just change yourself and become
Speaker 2: this other character, And how'd you feel about it knowing
Speaker 2: it was pandemic and you knew basically this was just
Speaker 2: a weird thing. You're smiling.
Speaker 3: So it was funny because the second you said, can
Speaker 3: I ask you a fan question? I said, sure, go ahead,
Speaker 3: And in my mind I said, it's gonna be about retribution.
Speaker 3: It's going to be about what Vince said to me.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be that's all fans want to know because
Speaker 3: it's such a fascinating thing. So he asked how I
Speaker 3: was approached about it? Is that coo? I wasn't. I
Speaker 3: wasn't approached by it. I I approached Vince with with
Speaker 3: the idea because he he came up with retribution. The
Speaker 3: timeline is very weird, and again I don't I don't
Speaker 3: blame anyone for not having this correct because it was
Speaker 3: the pandemic, right, so we were all like, you know,
Speaker 3: freaking It's it's funny when you think back to it,
Speaker 3: it's there's almost like a pre pandemic life and then
Speaker 3: a post pandemic life, and then everything in that two
Speaker 3: years is like a complete blur, like our heads were
Speaker 3: spinning and stuff. So I totally understand how how everyone's
Speaker 3: like a perception of time is way off, just as
Speaker 3: a as a general refresher for those who were only
Speaker 3: casually paying attention at the time, which is a lot
Speaker 3: of Yeah, we had just we were still we uh
Speaker 3: Monday night, Raw was still in the performance center at
Speaker 3: the time. There were fans there, but they were behind
Speaker 3: like the glass thing, and Vince had introduced on Twitter
Speaker 3: for some reason, uh like tonight, I'm gonna raw a
Speaker 3: Roague group of bandits Sarga are gonna be doing something.
Speaker 3: They're calling themselves Retribution or something like that. And then
Speaker 3: that night they showed some CCTV footage of like a
Speaker 3: bunch of people in ninja outfits, like throwing a mall
Speaker 3: tof cocktail at something that didn't really look like a generator. Basically,
Speaker 3: what I had come to find out was they were
Speaker 3: throwing all this stuff together like hours in advance.
Speaker 2: How can you still broadcast to be took out the generator?
Speaker 2: Go ahead?
Speaker 3: There's lots of questions like that. But again I wasn't
Speaker 3: involved in any of this. I was just watching it
Speaker 3: from not even from Afar because like I was one
Speaker 3: of the people in the crowd, like I was like
Speaker 3: a fan, like just cheering and doing and stuff. So
Speaker 3: I'm watching this stuff and in my mind, I don't
Speaker 3: I don't want to make this a big, long story
Speaker 3: about me and my call ups and things like that.
Speaker 3: But let's just say at this point I was quote
Speaker 3: unquote on the roster of RAW. Things were extremely volatile
Speaker 3: at that point, so like the contract was different and
Speaker 3: who knew who was where and all this different stuff.
Speaker 3: But like, theoretically speaking, I was done with NXT at
Speaker 3: this point. Carrying Cross had like hit his submission on
Speaker 3: me and choked me out to build to him and
Speaker 3: Keith Lee for the NXC Championship. So I was effectively
Speaker 3: done as far as I knew with NXT, and I
Speaker 3: was now a member on Monday Night Raw. That being said,
Speaker 3: Monday Night Raw had no creative plan for me as
Speaker 3: far as I knew. So I'm just kind of like
Speaker 3: in purgatory basically, and I see this thing with retribution,
Speaker 3: and I see, you know what it is, and I
Speaker 3: have all the same questions that you and lots of
Speaker 3: fans have, and I'm saying, oh, they need wrestlers to
Speaker 3: populate this, right because I again, I'm in the company,
Speaker 3: so I know that the people who are doing it
Speaker 3: are not wrestlers. They had like extra who are wrestlers,
Speaker 3: but they're like, you know, indie wrestlers or whatever and
Speaker 3: or local talent will call them and and some of
Speaker 3: them were writers, right, so they needed like ten people
Speaker 3: or whatever to like you know, chainsaw the ropes or
Speaker 3: whatever and all that all that stuff and like throw
Speaker 3: cinder blocks through a through a glass window. But none
Speaker 3: of them are like roster talent. They're all either local
Speaker 3: talent or writers extras. Yeah, so I'm so I'm watching
Speaker 3: this and I'm saying, oh, they need Obviously this is
Speaker 3: going to be a focal point of of of the
Speaker 3: show because it's it's it's being introduced in like relevant
Speaker 3: segments like I don't know if you remember this, but
Speaker 3: like Randy Yorton like did his punt kick on Rick Flair,
Speaker 3: Like that's a massive moment in WWE history, And the
Speaker 3: lights flickered and went out because of retribution, so that
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, it was a solution
Speaker 3: a problem, which was they didn't want to punt Rick
Speaker 3: Flair for real. But you know, it's still part of
Speaker 3: the storylines and stuff like that. So I'm saying, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is gonna be a part of this brand going
Speaker 3: forward of WWE. So I want to be a part
Speaker 3: of it. And I have people I know people who
Speaker 3: can be a part of this. So I long story short,
Speaker 3: I went directly to Vince. I introduced myself. I pitched
Speaker 3: myself and a bunch of other people to populate Retribution,
Speaker 3: and I showed him my idea, my presentation. Ultimately, all told,
Speaker 3: he took about half of what I said and used
Speaker 3: it between the names that I had and the presentation
Speaker 3: that I had, and then the other half of it
Speaker 3: he put his spin on it. So that's kind of on.
Speaker 2: So you were the brains behind Retribution.
Speaker 3: About half of it? Yeah, yeah, about half of it
Speaker 3: what I what I would refer to as the good half. Here,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you exactly what I pitched. I pitched. I
Speaker 3: pitched myself, uh Dio Madden, who's who ended up being
Speaker 3: Mason is now Mason Madden in uh In MXM and
Speaker 3: a W. I pitched Shane Thorne, who's now Shane Haste
Speaker 3: in New Japan, the Mighty O'Neil.
Speaker 2: I love those guys. I followed them like I'm a
Speaker 2: wrestling historian, so I've loved those guys.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, sir, I think I also pitched Killian Dane,
Speaker 3: who's now Big Demo. I pitched Tomaso Champa, and I
Speaker 3: pitched I think Nikki Cross and maybe one other but
Speaker 3: that might be it, So I think it was those six.
Speaker 3: So so it ended up being me, Shane, do O
Speaker 3: or Mason, and uh Mia mia Yim who I think
Speaker 3: was still like actively on NXT at the time, so
Speaker 3: that's probably. And then Ali ended up being our our
Speaker 3: our leader.
Speaker 2: Mastafa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I didn't I didn't pitch him obviously because
Speaker 3: he was like on SmackDown or so that that ended
Speaker 3: up coming into play later. Uh So again about half
Speaker 3: of the stuff that I had there. And then in
Speaker 3: terms of the presentation, I did want masks, so I
Speaker 3: did pitch masks, but I wanted them as entrance masks
Speaker 3: that we would would take off. And in terms of
Speaker 3: the names that I pitched the names in the backstory,
Speaker 3: I wanted it as one name all caps, so I
Speaker 3: guess theoretically he liked that, but I pitched die Jack,
Speaker 3: do O, Thorn and then whatever for for the other ones.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't remember what I ended what I pitched,
Speaker 3: but obviously what we ended up getting was t bar,
Speaker 3: Mace and Slapjacks one word all cap, so like it
Speaker 3: had a lot of the element that I'd pitched, but
Speaker 3: it was like, ooh, we changed just enough to make
Speaker 3: that really weird.
Speaker 2: They're they're so. I don't know if anybody knows this,
Speaker 2: this is a great admission. This is a great wrestling
Speaker 2: admission that nobody knows about. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: talked about this and other podcasts before and if you have,
Speaker 2: great but for us, this is a very big thing
Speaker 2: because everybody's asked about that and in you know, like
Speaker 2: the early two thousands or not early two thousands, by
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one on the on the podcast here at
Speaker 2: WWE podcast dot com, Matt the host and I would
Speaker 2: do some shows together and he'd be like, what do
Speaker 2: you think about retribution? I was like that that boat
Speaker 2: has sailed into the sunset. It's gone, you know, And
Speaker 2: I felt bad because you guys were doing the best
Speaker 2: you could giving what you were given. You know, you
Speaker 2: were giving a bowl of rice and you were asked
Speaker 2: for a stirfry. It's like, Okay, well I can make run,
Speaker 2: but I can only flavor it with so many things.
Speaker 2: So I just I think it's amazing that you were
Speaker 2: one of the pioneers of the situation and what you
Speaker 2: wanted it to be, and as far as you know,
Speaker 2: your cohorts and everybody who was there, I wished way
Speaker 2: better for it. And I being a follower of you
Speaker 2: since twenty probably twenty twelve, twenty thirteen or whatever, when
Speaker 2: I first started seeing you on Ring of mon or
Speaker 2: probably twenty thirteen or fourteen, I just wanted bigger things
Speaker 2: for you. So can I lead you into my next question?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Sure? All right? So do you feel that there's a
Speaker 2: stigmatism because you're what six seven six eight six seven?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that you have to wrestle different. This is from Chrismasanti,
Speaker 2: by the way, you have to wrestle different as a
Speaker 2: small man who's a star versus a small man who's
Speaker 2: not a star.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, there, they're not just a small man, but
Speaker 3: every man. You need to take star power and booking
Speaker 3: into account. Right, it doesn't matter what their size is.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: If if I'm everything plays a role in terms of
Speaker 3: my psychology, in how I wrestle, how I talk to someone,
Speaker 3: how I encounter someone at all, It all plays a role,
Speaker 3: because that's that's how you know life works.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: If I'm If I'm walking down the street and I
Speaker 3: encounter a guy who's six one, two twenty and he's
Speaker 3: he's running his mouth at me, Like that's not a
Speaker 3: major threat. But if I walk into a UFC cage
Speaker 3: and I'm wrestling and I'm fighting Matt Riddle who's six one,
Speaker 3: two twenty, that's a whole different and he's running his
Speaker 3: mouth at me, that's a whole different ballgame. I need
Speaker 3: to approach that differently. I'm speaking to him differently, I'm
Speaker 3: fighting him differently. That's life, right, Size plays a role, right,
Speaker 3: it plays a role, but it's not the be all
Speaker 3: end all right, So I approach it. Yeah, I understand
Speaker 3: what he's getting at. Right, he's saying like, sometimes there's this,
Speaker 3: like there's a huge size difference and it ends up
Speaker 3: being a squash match. But sometimes you're wrestling like a
Speaker 3: Finn Balor and it's not a squash match. Right, He's
Speaker 3: he's beating me and he's beating me clean or whatever.
Speaker 3: And I've done both of those many times. Around the
Speaker 3: same time, I was wrestling squash matches on main event
Speaker 3: a lot of the time, and it'd be a smaller guy,
Speaker 3: and then I'd go and I'd have to wrestle Finn
Speaker 3: Ballart Madison square Garden. That's obviously not a squash match. Obviously,
Speaker 3: it honestly would trend more in the direction of him
Speaker 3: getting over on me pretty handily, like I would hit
Speaker 3: a false finish or two on him. But he was
Speaker 3: the star and I wasn't. I was bar right, So
Speaker 3: even though there's a massive size difference, So yeah, we
Speaker 3: take it into account, but I'm gonna all over the
Speaker 3: ring and making him look like a goof Right, this
Speaker 3: is a former Universal champion, so and he's one of
Speaker 3: the most over guys in the company. So I'm not
Speaker 3: just tossing around like a rag doll like you have
Speaker 3: to give him some you know, some some purpose, some gravitas,
Speaker 3: and quite frankly, he's you know, got more experience than me,
Speaker 3: and he's more veteran than me, so he would probably
Speaker 3: call most of the match, and he's not going to
Speaker 3: call a bunch of nonsense where I'm just chucking him
Speaker 3: out of the ring and stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 3: he's gonna you know, he beat him me up pretty well.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, you know, there's there's obviously a it
Speaker 3: plays a factor in terms of how you structure things
Speaker 3: and what your psychology is for sure.
Speaker 2: Like it all right. So my last question is from
Speaker 2: Eli Brow, and Eli would like to know basically, when
Speaker 2: you go into match if you have basically I don't
Speaker 2: know how to say this, diarrhea or something like that,
Speaker 2: how do you deal with it? I hate, but it's
Speaker 2: a question for you. It's a fair question.
Speaker 3: Someone actually asked me something similar recently. I've been fortunate
Speaker 3: that I've never been that sick when I have to wrestle. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: this has come up sort of recently because I was wrestling,
Speaker 3: like I mentioned in Mexico, and that did get to
Speaker 3: a bunch of us.
Speaker 2: More so than me.
Speaker 3: Mine. Mine wasn't so bad. I mean, we're all human beings,
Speaker 3: so we know that. Like you usually you you you
Speaker 3: go and then you get like you know, a certain
Speaker 3: amount of time as a reprieve, right you're not is
Speaker 3: like going, going, going, going, unless you're massively ill.
Speaker 2: Right. The only time novirus or something like that.
Speaker 3: The only time in my progress and career where I've
Speaker 3: ever been that sick where I felt like I had
Speaker 3: to live in the bathroom but I had to go
Speaker 3: do something on television was actually, interestingly, it was actually
Speaker 3: the first NXT TV taping we ever did at the
Speaker 3: Performance Center, which, if you remember the timeline, was the
Speaker 3: last NXT TV taping we ever did with a crowd
Speaker 3: because the pandemic hit that night. And then the next
Speaker 3: day SmackDown or whatever or two days later, SmackDown was
Speaker 3: at the Performance Center in that exact same setup, in
Speaker 3: that exact same building. In hindsight, it makes me wonder
Speaker 3: if they did that show at the perform Center because
Speaker 3: they knew that the COVID shutdown was coming. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we did NXT TV, and at that time it was
Speaker 3: on and Wednesday nights, I think, so, so yeah, that night,
Speaker 3: thank goodness, all I had was a run in. If
Speaker 3: you go watch it back, I think I think Keith
Speaker 3: wrestled Trevor Lee maybe or something like whose name was
Speaker 3: Cameron Grimes, and then something and like knocked him out
Speaker 3: or something, and I came in to make the save
Speaker 3: and to run priestuff and then I picked Keith up
Speaker 3: and Keith gave me his power bomb finish because he
Speaker 3: was distracted or thought it was me or something. So thankfully,
Speaker 3: all I had was that little thirty second segment or whatever.
Speaker 3: But like I went from the bathroom, washed my hands
Speaker 3: to the ring directly back to the bath because I
Speaker 3: was so sick, and in my mind I was like, oh, COVID,
Speaker 3: because if you remember, nobody knew what COVID was and
Speaker 3: nobody knew what the symptoms were. So for me, I
Speaker 3: was like, Oh, I have this such bad like stomach virus.
Speaker 3: This must be what COVID was. And you know, in hindsight,
Speaker 3: it was obviously not COVID. But the yeah, the shutdown
Speaker 3: came like literally that night or like the next day
Speaker 3: or something like that. But yeah, I've not so so
Speaker 3: to answer the question, I've never been so sick. Where
Speaker 3: it is the problem isn't solved by going to the bathroom,
Speaker 3: you know, a few minutes before I have to go
Speaker 3: out for the match, And almost not almost every show
Speaker 3: that I've ever done in my life, there's a bathroom
Speaker 3: accessible somewhere in the locker room or near the locker room.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I just I get my gear on, I
Speaker 3: call the match, I go to the bathroom, and then
Speaker 3: I wash my hands and I go wrestle, you know,
Speaker 3: and then your body takes over from that point and
Speaker 3: you don't have to worry about it. But I've heard,
Speaker 3: you know, horror stories of some guys who have to,
Speaker 3: like you know, usually I.
Speaker 2: Heard a story about like sid Vicious, which a guy
Speaker 2: I prank called one time. And you listen to old shows,
Speaker 2: it's it's really funny one of our old shows. But yeah, seditious,
Speaker 2: power bomb, jyd and in the middle of the three
Speaker 2: he just shies.
Speaker 3: So I've heard some guys who use what's called a
Speaker 3: muffler before. I don't know you've ever heard that term.
Speaker 2: No, it's like a.
Speaker 3: I'll leave it to your imagination. You do something something,
Speaker 3: you do something interesting with, like with like a roll
Speaker 3: of toilet paper. So we'll just leave it at that
Speaker 3: rather than going into.
Speaker 2: The gruesome details here Lord the Lord.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never done that.
Speaker 1: This conversation took an interesting turn.
Speaker 3: Oh we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we definitely do.
Speaker 3: If anything, if anything's gonna go viral, it's gonna be this.
Speaker 3: I want I want to name the person who told
Speaker 3: me that they do that. I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 3: They're very popular right now, in very mainstream, so it
Speaker 3: would go viral and I'm not going to out him
Speaker 3: like that. So take take that for what it's worth.
Speaker 3: Maybe he said it on another podcasts. People can connect
Speaker 3: the dots.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sometime down in the future, can we do
Speaker 2: a show called Russell Muffler just talking about ribs and that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's another one. Like, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know how we're doing on the timeline, how we're doing math.
Speaker 1: We got about eight minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So basically, tell me a good rib you've pulled,
Speaker 2: or a rib that you've done on. Somebody else already.
Speaker 3: Asks me this. I don't have one. Ribbing is not
Speaker 3: much of a thing as it used to be. It
Speaker 3: really isn't.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: I know people love the stories from like the eighties
Speaker 3: and the nineties where these guys were like doing these horrible,
Speaker 3: heinous things to each other. I've never seen it. I've
Speaker 3: never encountered it. The worst ribs that I see nowadays,
Speaker 3: or like people will like hide someone's boots or whatever,
Speaker 3: and that was like ten years ago. I really don't
Speaker 3: see it anymore. It's just it's no longer the culture.
Speaker 3: It really isn't. I I saw a video the other
Speaker 3: day of like Zeleena Vega like prank calling Dominic Mysterio
Speaker 3: as a child. That's probably like the worst thing you're
Speaker 3: gonna that's probably like the worst rib you're gonna get nowadays. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: if you guys have heard something more recent than by
Speaker 3: all means, I'd love to hear it. But I don't
Speaker 3: hear any of these anecdotes. Maybe people just don't don't
Speaker 3: mess with me specifically because I don't mess with them.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe, but yeah, I have none. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: that's fair.
Speaker 1: Times have changed, you know.
Speaker 2: It is what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the locker It's just it's just a completely
Speaker 3: different thing, right. I was even sort of part of
Speaker 3: the transition because there was a little bit of that
Speaker 3: like sort of old school, old guard mentality when I
Speaker 3: started in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Where it was like.
Speaker 3: Don't speak unless spoken to, and everyone in locker room
Speaker 3: was these huge, huge guys. There was a you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of them were on pills or or in
Speaker 3: the corner drinking. And then there was this whole thing
Speaker 3: where they're trying to find the female fans from that night,
Speaker 3: who are you know, are gonna continue the night and
Speaker 3: things like that. So that was like part of it,
Speaker 3: But then there was this also this trend in a
Speaker 3: different direction, and it's just it's it's really sort of
Speaker 3: parted ways from that over time, where now I go
Speaker 3: to the locker room and there's no like there used
Speaker 3: to be fights in the locker room. There used to
Speaker 3: be brawls people all the time. There's just everyone was
Speaker 3: on edge about everything, and everyone was. Now now there's
Speaker 3: a really sort of I don't encounter that much anymore.
Speaker 3: Especially and this isn't like me like putting myself over
Speaker 3: is some sage wizard or whatever. But the reality is
Speaker 3: most locker rooms I go into nowadays like I'm the
Speaker 3: veteran for the most part, I'm both the person with
Speaker 3: the most experienced and the person or the person with
Speaker 3: the most ears in the business and the person with
Speaker 3: the highest level of I've been on TV the longest
Speaker 3: in terms of most of the locker rooms, and now
Speaker 3: outside of MLWMLW is a lot of veterans and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, but most like indie locker rooms like last
Speaker 3: Night for example. So so yeah, maybe it's a trend
Speaker 3: just because I'm a boring Nancy who just kind of
Speaker 3: like shows up and laughs and is gets along with everyone,
Speaker 3: and we call our match and the goal is to
Speaker 3: have the best match of the night and things like that,
Speaker 3: rather than like where we going after like who has
Speaker 3: the somas and things like that. You know that maybe
Speaker 3: that was the trend fifteen twenty years ago or whatever,
Speaker 3: but you know now, it's just.
Speaker 2: It's just not.
Speaker 1: In a different world. It makes sense.
Speaker 2: I love this of you. I love the fact that
Speaker 2: you're very candidate and you're just like going straight forward
Speaker 2: and talking about, like, you know, the difference between you know,
Speaker 2: locker rooms for years and years. That's really awesome that
Speaker 2: you're like opening up about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, used to used to smell like baby oil and
Speaker 3: hot stuff too, which I kind of miss. I kind
Speaker 3: of have like a nostalgia for that, which is funny
Speaker 3: because I used baby oil. I never used hot stuff.
Speaker 3: But now when I'm in a locker room and I
Speaker 3: smell baby oil and hot stuff, I'm like, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: it peaks my like nostalgia for when I was younger
Speaker 3: and just starting off in the business. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, I'm like, I'm like, who's wearing baby oil
Speaker 3: and who's wearing hot stuff? Because get it off, the
Speaker 3: baby oil makes the rope saltce slippery, the hot stuff
Speaker 3: burns my eyes. I'm just screaming about it the whole
Speaker 3: match because it's such a nightmare to have to worry
Speaker 3: about that. Like I'm a two hundred and seventy five
Speaker 3: pound guy doing moon salts off the top rope. Somebody
Speaker 3: hits the and there's baby oil all over it. Think
Speaker 3: about how much that could like potentially harm me as
Speaker 3: a human being, Like if I slid and pencil into
Speaker 3: the ground, Like that's a ton of weight coming down
Speaker 3: on my neck and my vertebrate just because somebody wanted
Speaker 3: to be like glistening or whatever. Like, there's tons of
Speaker 3: other options. I put on a top sheer coat of
Speaker 3: of of shininess when I'm wrestling on TV, and it's
Speaker 3: not slippery. It's it's like a it's like a it's
Speaker 3: like it's almost like oily in a way, but it
Speaker 3: like has some grip to it. But it's it's from
Speaker 3: if any progress just to.
Speaker 2: Use tea tree oil. It's it's it's good for your body.
Speaker 3: Well, the thing I use is from a company that
Speaker 3: does the tanning. They do it for like competitions.
Speaker 2: Oh you can plug you can plug it here if
Speaker 2: you want to plug it, go ahead, plug it.
Speaker 3: I don't make any money off of it.
Speaker 2: Well we need you need to make it. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: do need you to make money though, so you will
Speaker 2: plug at the end.
Speaker 1: All right, So we're getting close to the end here, guys.
Speaker 1: So as we always ask at the end of Wrestle Magic,
Speaker 1: mister d Jack, could we get some recommendations for from
Speaker 1: you for the audience. Just anything that you like, movie,
Speaker 1: TV show, video game, poem, cat dog breed, doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my favorite movie of all time is Seven by
Speaker 3: David Fincher. I love that movie. I go back and
Speaker 3: watch it all the time. I think it's great. The
Speaker 3: show that I'm currently watching on TV is Why can't
Speaker 3: I remember the name of it? Tom Hardy's in it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if anyone else is watching this. It's
Speaker 3: UK based, it's London based.
Speaker 2: What the.
Speaker 3: Somebody will figure it out. Somebody posted remember the name
Speaker 3: of it? But uh yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, No problem there. And so if anybody wants
Speaker 1: to try to reach you or reach out to you
Speaker 1: or book you or anything, how can they do that?
Speaker 3: All my social media stuff is at die Jack Fye.
Speaker 3: Booking me is Bookdijack at gmail dot com. My school
Speaker 3: you can check out my school, The Dijack Wrestling Academy.
Speaker 3: It's dijack wrestling dot com. It's an online school just
Speaker 3: like this. I actually have it in one minute. It starts.
Speaker 3: My class starts in one minute, so everybody's probably waiting
Speaker 3: for me right now to get to hop onto that.
Speaker 3: But I'm gonna teach a two hour course. It's once
Speaker 3: a week every week. Check it out dijack wrestling dot com.
Speaker 3: But you probably you missed the first week already, and
Speaker 3: by the time this comes out, you'll miss the second week.
Speaker 3: So maybe maybe wait for the next round, which will
Speaker 3: be in probably three or four months.
Speaker 2: All right, mister die Jack, my name is Michael Gross.
Speaker 2: I am AT one captain on x Twitter, whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it. I think that you're incredible and
Speaker 2: I want you to do this. I want you to
Speaker 2: go into your school today and just look at one recruit,
Speaker 2: stone cold faced, stoic as possible, and just scream, lather
Speaker 2: up cupcake and then just walk away.
Speaker 3: Well you do, It'll be on zoom and I can
Speaker 3: promise you that I will absolutely not do that. That sounds.
Speaker 2: That sounds like, well will you do that? Well? Will
Speaker 2: you do it? For for like when you do an
Speaker 2: actual in person, will you just scream at somebody and
Speaker 2: say lather up, cupcake and just walk away. Just let
Speaker 2: them try me. Not.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not doing that. No, you do it?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't. I don't have a wrestler school and
Speaker 2: I'm fifty years old. Come on, man, I can't do
Speaker 2: this always time.
Speaker 3: All right, I gotta go, I gotta I gotta got
Speaker 3: to Mike.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, you have a great one. Thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you, all right bye.
Speaker 1: All right, guys. So well, that concludes the interview that
Speaker 1: we had with mister Donovan die Jack. You guys know
Speaker 1: how I end the episode every single time, do something
Speaker 1: nice for somebody and never know who needs it out there.
Speaker 1: Somebody's always going to uh with that. Michael, do you
Speaker 1: have a movie recommendation for this week?
Speaker 2: I think I sure do. I'm gonna go with Old Boy,
Speaker 2: and that's just really wrong, but I'm talking about the
Speaker 2: Korean version and it's gonna mess you up. But hey,
Speaker 2: it's old Boy, fair enough, all right.
Speaker 1: Well, for anybody out there listening, I will recommend a
Speaker 1: match this time, and that match is just gonna be
Speaker 1: from MLW. I believe it was Kings of Colosseum and
Speaker 1: that match with Kenta. It was very good, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it was one of those that actually kept me at
Speaker 1: least a little bit interested in the show. The rest
Speaker 1: of it I wasn't hugely thrilled on or hugely high
Speaker 1: on it, but that that one match, I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: this is good and seeing what I did want to
Speaker 1: bring up but we didn't quite have the time for
Speaker 1: was the fact that die Jack and Kenta have similar
Speaker 1: finishing moves, but it feels like it's more inverted from
Speaker 1: his end. But either way, with that, in the words
Speaker 1: of my friend Match, we're out.
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Speaker 4: next time.