Originally published at POST NEWS UPDATE: Edge says his spear to Elias at SummerSlam was on the fly, wasn't planned and he wasn't cleared - POST Wrestling | WWE AEW NXT NJPW Podcasts, News, Reviews
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.
** Inside The Ropes conducted an interview with Edge ahead of WrestleMania 36. Edge took a mental trip back to the Summer of 2019 when he delivered a spear to Elias at SummerSlam. Edge said he was not cleared for that and that was supposed to be a promo-only segment. He praised Elias for being aware enough to recognize what was about to happen and said that was the start of the process of him being cleared by WWE.
“And in that process, kind of the audible of the Spear on Elias. Wasn’t planned, wasn’t mapped out. People said I was cleared, I wasn’t cleared. I just felt it and I did it, and thankfully he’s enough of a performer and enough of a pro that he picked up on it and realized what was about to happen, but if you watch it closely, you can see the change in his eyes when he realizes, ‘Oh boy… this isn’t a promo segment anymore.’ But sometimes you just gotta go off your gut and like I said, I knew at that point, I just knew I could do this again. Nobody else knew though. Again, 95%, there’s that 5% wiggle room. I don’t know if everybody else is gonna clear me for this but I know I could do it and that’s when it became, ‘I’m gonna go see some doctors. I gotta go see where I’m at,’ because I never had a checkup since 2012. So, that’s when the checkups came. ‘How am I for mountain biking? How am I for fight scenes? Oh yeah, by the way, how am I for wrestling?’ And that’s when it all snowballed.”
When it comes to Edge and Randy Orton’s promos for the build-up to their match at WrestleMania, they’ve been left alone to craft that portion of their story. Edge said he doesn’t work well when promos are pieced together for him and WWE has allowed him and Randy to take the reigns in that department.
“We have been left alone. We have been left alone and that’s because I’ve been doing this for 25 years, Randy’s been doing it for 20. Nobody’s gonna write a promo for me. Just all there is to it. I don’t work well that way and I think everyone understands that, but it took years and years of proving it, so if you try it and you fall flat on your face, well you might not get that chance again, but over the years, I was allowed to fall flat on my face a bunch and we were given the freedom to do that then which is amazing. Now I don’t know how much of that freedom is given to new people coming in. I don’t know, I’m not in that situation. I just know the situation I’m in and I love it because man, all I do is read, write. I’m always creating in my mind. I read 72 books last year. All I do is think of stories. How they can play out, characters and layers, what drives a character to do this, what drives a character to react that way. When I watch a show, why did the actor make that decision? Why would the script read this way? Those are the questions that are constantly going on in my brain. That’s how I try to peel back and dissect things. So in doing that, it feels like its been training to come back to wrestling and I really feel like now I have this full arsenal that I didn’t necessarily have before and again, nine years of reps on television and movie sets has been indispensable and I get asked — if it’s for advice, now what I say is, ‘Once you’re trained, get acting classes. Just plain and simple,’ because it’s glaring who can and who can’t.”
Edge also revealed that his forthcoming WWE 24 documentary on the WWE Network was originally going to be a documentary about his life after wrestling but as they were filming, Edge began the process of getting cleared.
** Newsweek released their interview with AJ Styles. Styles opened up about suffering a separated shoulder in the 2020 men’s Royal Rumble match. Styles said he was worried he wasn’t gonna make WrestleMania and wanted to be clear with Vince McMahon that he didn’t need to be replaced.
“Oh yeah. Shortly after finding out that I separated my shoulder, it was a little before Vince left the Royal Rumble. I told him I’d be fine and I would just take a couple of weeks and I’ll be ready to rock. They told me that I’d be ready in four to six weeks, so keep in mind I didn’t want to think: ‘Well, I got to find someone else for The Undertaker.’ I didn’t want anything like that to happen. So it scared me for a minute, especially in the ring because I thought I dislocated my shoulder. Not saying that a separated shoulder is a good thing. It sucks too, but it’s something I can recover from and not need surgery or anything like that.”
While speaking about his match with The Undertaker, AJ said that the ‘Boneyard’ match was not the original plan but he’d rather have a Boneyard match than an empty arena match.
“It’s awesome considering the circumstances. We didn’t have rather have him in a Boneyard than in an empty arena match. So I’m very happy with the WrestleMania match.”
As far as traveling during the pandemic goes, AJ Styles revealed that he has his own personal bus that takes him to Orlando so he doesn’t have to drive himself to the Performance Center where RAW has been taped for the past several weeks.
“If I’m being honest, my bus picks me up. I’m a little spoiled in that. I’m lucky to have that especially when you think about driving for seven hours to Orlando.”
** Former multi-time wXw Shotgun Champion David Starr joined The Wrestling INC Daily podcast. Starr was asked about his departure from the wXw promotion following the 16 Carat Gold tournament in March of this year. It was reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that WWE factored into the decision of wXw and Starr no longer working together. It’s public knowledge that WWE has a working relationship with wXw. David Starr has not spoken negatively about wXw and he continued that trend during this podcast appearance and said anything else other than his comments are pretty obvious and doesn’t need to be spoken on.
“The way I’ll put it because I love wXw and I respect them so much; the thing I’ve been leaving it at, with all of this is that we didn’t want to stop working together, but we had to and it’s just a lesson to be learned that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences and there are sometimes when sh*t happens that just sucks, and you just put your head down and you keep moving forward because that’s all you can do. But I love wXw. I love Tas, I love Dennis, I love Felix, I love Jakobi, I love that entire locker room, I love those fans there, I love everybody who’s on the ring crew and the production staff and everybody. It’s such a wonderful place that I had so much good stuff there. That’s it and I think the rest is — anything else is quite obvious. I don’t think I need to spell that out for you.”
David Starr has spoken out in the past about Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is the parent company to Ring of Honor. Starr commended ROH for taking the proper precautions during the Coronavirus pandemic but believes that has more to do with ROH wanting to make that decision opposed to Sinclair actually caring to factor in.
“Well that’s great. The way I feel about Sinclair Broadcasting and Ring of Honor or people like Joe Koff really… I haven’t made that a secret that I’m really not a big fan, but hey, if they’re doing the right thing, credit where credit is due. I’m not gonna be that blind to it. That’s awesome. That’s what they should be doing the whole time. There obviously is a little bit more motive behind that because Sinclair doesn’t really care that much about Ring of Honor and I think they use it mostly as a tax write-off. Sinclair, the company doesn’t care. The wrestling company itself obviously wants to be fine. I just don’t think Sinclair cares that much. They’re just kind of using it as a tax write-off, just like that because they’re a $3 billion dollar company. So, I think it’s easier for them to make the decision because I don’t think they care that much about it and the contracts they’re giving to the wrestlers are drops in a bucket for Sinclair — a company worth that much. Regardless of the motivation, it still is the best thing to do so, good job Ring of Honor, kudos.”
** Forbes published an article of the top ten highest paid wrestlers in WWE in 2020 and the list is as followed:
- Brock Lesnar, $10 million
- Roman Reigns, $5 million
- Randy Orton, $4.1 million
- Seth Rollins, $4 million
- Paul Levesque, $3.3 million
- Becky Lynch, $3.1 million
- Goldberg, $3 million
- Shane McMahon, $2.1 million
- Stephanie McMahon, $2 million
- Braun Strowman, $1.9 million
** Liv Morgan vs. Natalya, and Cesaro vs. Drew Gulak has been added to the WrestleMania kickoff shows for day one and day two. Gulak noted on Twitter that he’ll be facing Cesaro tonight. Sami Zayn will be defending the Intercontinental Title against Daniel Bryan on tonight’s WrestleMania as well.
** Jim Ross and Conrad Thompson reviewed WrestleMania 2000 on the latest edition of the Grilling JR podcast. Jim Ross began talking about the sixth match on that card which featured Grand Master Sexay, Scotty 2 Hotty and Chyna defeating Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn. Ross said he was not a fan of intergender wrestling and didn’t think it was smart to have Eddie Guerrero bumping around for Chyna. Ross recalled his conversations with Chyna and she was not too big on wrestling other women and felt that it made her look weak.
“And I had a lot of talks with Joanie, a.k.a. Chyna about that. She didn’t wanna wrestle women, because she said, ‘It makes me look weak.’ You wanna say, ‘Joanie, you’re a woman. Unless you’re gonna grow testicles, you’re always gonna be a woman. So come on.’ I just didn’t like the booking. I had so much respect for everybody in there but, damn man. You got Eddie Guerrero bumping around for Chyna. Are you sh*tting me? If that’s not a good enough reason why this particular intergender match was not copacetic with me, then I don’t have a better answer for you. Eddie Guerrero having to sell for Chyna was unrealistic and unbelievable, but the one thing it proved is that The Radical guys were players. They were pros, they did what they were asked to do because there’s not anybody in that match that would tell you that this was their first choice of wrestling at WrestleMania and wrestling in an intergender match-up. No way in hell. So again, good folks, I can vaguely remember the match but I never signed off personally as a fan of that work. I just never did and I think that was proven out in that deal and my bottom line to get off of it, Chyna bouncing Eddie, Eddie selling for Chyna is all the reason I need to tell you and the audience — you gotta agree with me folks. JR’s gonna be honest. I might not be right. I’m gonna give you my opinion. It just wasn’t realistic to me, and I thought it was just unnecessary booking. We could’ve done something else with those guys but we didn’t and there it was. When Eddie and Chyna got together later on, I liked that pairing a lot, but not when they’re wrestling each other. Just didn’t make sense to me.”
** Prior to WrestleMania, Becky Lynch was the focus of an international media call. Becky thinks it’s important to her career to have that one-on-one match with Ronda Rousey and is ready for her when she decides to come back. (Audio courtesy of Inside The Ropes)
“I think it’s pretty important. I don’t know. I’ve been here holding down the fort so whenever she’s ready to come back. But, I think that people have often said that the finish of the match was controversial so yeah…”
When asked about the NXT Women’s Championship being defended at WrestleMania, Becky took a few jabs at Charlotte Flair while giving her thoughts about the title being defended on WWE’s main stage.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I wonder if an NXT person should’ve gotten the chance to fight for it, but such as the way things fall, or such as the way things are privileged. But, it’s awesome. It’s awesome to see that it is defended at WrestleMania and to see where its come now. There was a lull for women in NXT for a little while and now its picked up again and it’s super strong and it makes me super excited because there’s a lot of competitors that I could see come challenge me for the title and offer me some good fights and of course then realize that The Man is on a whole different level. But yeah, being in NXT and growing that way and changing the landscape of it forever and women’s wrestling forever, hugely important to me.”
** Lita appeared on ESPN’s ‘Now Or Never’.
** Jim Varsallone of the Miami Herald has a series of audio highlights up on his YouTube of Rob Gronkowski talking WrestleMania.
** The pre-sale date for New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s Wrestle Dynasty show has been moved from April 8th to May 13th and May 15th, respectively.
** Lana did an interview with Sportskeeda and said if she could manage anyone in WWE’s women’s division, it would be Nia Jax.
** Natalya spoke with Bret Hart for her latest piece for the Calgary Sun. During their chat, Bret shared some of his favorite WrestleMania matches that he’s been a part of and gave his thoughts on each of the respective matches.
–WrestleMania 13 with Stone Cold Steve Austin: “My three all-time favourite WrestleMania matches are the ones where I gave the absolute most both physically and emotionally. My WrestleMania 13 match in Chicago with ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin will stand as my greatest match. It was such a fun story, the psychology was unequaled and the concept had never been attempted before. This match would shake up most fan expectations when the company’s primary babyface would switch places with the company’s primary heel in a 30 minute brawl that had the same vibe as a UFC fight. A real classic.”
–WrestleMania 12 with Shawn Michaels: “My second favorite match would be the one-hour-long WrestleMania 12 Ironman Match with Shawn Michaels in Anaheim, California. Again, it was one of the most physically demanding matches of my career. Whatever differences Shawn Michaels and I ever had, this match was a testament of the skills and athleticism of us both. It was more a case of two of the best Superstars of their era, both giving their all for one full hour trying to best one another. Two pros working full blast trying to outdo each other. We both shined and always will for what we delivered that amazing night.”
–WrestleMania 10 with Owen Hart: “The story playing out was that Owen took on the role of a bitter and jealous younger brother envious of his big brother’s success and he was determined to be the one to steal my thunder for himself. What I most remember about this match was piecing a brilliant blueprint for the match for weeks only to panic two days before Mania and completely scrapping the entire plan when I realized that Owen was doing too many ‘nice’ moves. I knew Owen was only just beginning his run as top heel and it was critical for him to be nasty, viscous, and make the fans hate him. We restructured the match with lots of cheap heat (dirty tactics) and rule breaking that would open the door for Owen as a real star and villain in WWE. I loved this match for many reasons but, if I can pat myself on the back for anything, it would be the different and never before tried attempts to reverse the sharpshooter twice during the match. The most amazing thing for me was that two brothers that had spent their lives dreaming about a match of this magnitude hadn’t ever worked together and, after a real nasty struggle, Owen scored the upset win and launched himself as the top heel of the company. I was so proud of Owen. A few hours later that night, I would defeat Yokozuna to become WWE Champion and Roddy Piper and ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage thought it would be fitting to congratulate me. Soon Lex Luger, Razor Ramon and several of my closest friends were carrying me on their shoulders around the ring. The second they hoisted me up I had this incredible feeling of having dreamt of this before. All I can say is winning the world title in MSG is a memory one could never forget. Ever.”
** During his appearance on 105.3 The Fan, Jim Ross played ‘Plead The Fifth’ with the hosts of the show.
** The Scottish Sun has a detailed feature up about Drew McIntyre which includes Drew talking about how his wife and late mother helped him personally and professionally.
** Yahoo! Sports pushed out their interview with Ric Flair and Ric discussed Charlotte Flair’s match against Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania. Flair is aware that Charlotte is inching closer to his title victory record but she never brings it up and neither does he. Flair added that Charlotte is very tough on herself and wants to be the best version of herself everyday.
“Never. Never. It would be great if she did, but we don’t discuss that. She has never, ever . It’s a great positive to always be critical of yourself and want to be that much better, but she’s extremely hard on herself and she wants to be the best every day she gets up. That’s what she lives for. It’s not for championships. It’s for peace of mind, knowing that she has given the most she can give. Everyone wants to be admired and appreciated for giving the biggest and best contribution that they can give and that’s all she lives for.”
When it comes to facing Rhea Ripley, Ric thinks Charlotte isn’t taking it any more seriously than she did when she faced Asuka at WrestleMania 34 or main-eventing WrestleMania 35. He thinks that Charlotte is focused on having the best match on the card and that has been her mindset for the past few years.
“For me, everything has stayed the same. I don’t think much has changed at all because the match she is in this weekend is as big as any she has been in during her career thus far. I think the same now as I did when she wrestled Asuka. It doesn’t matter what number you’re on. I do think it’s great to be in the main event — but it’s all about having your peers and the fans say, ‘That was the best part of the show, you were fantastic.’ When you walk through the curtain, that’s the reaction you want. When you’ve done it as long as I have, trust me, the athletes know when it’s good and they know when it’s bad. I’m sure that she is going to go in with the attitude that she wants to have the best match on the card. I don’t think that wrestling Rhea, who I think is spectacular, is anything less than being another opportunity for her to demonstrate how good she is, regardless of if she wins or loses.”
** WWE streamed a WrestleMania edition of ‘The Bump’ featuring the likes of Kevin Owens, Lacey Evans and Mojo Rawley.
** Ahead of his match against The Undertaker, AJ Styles spoke with the New York Post. He reiterated sentiments that he’s made in the past that his current WWE contract, which is the one he signed in 2019, will be his last contract in the sport of pro wrestling.
“I’m not sure. Things change. You have a kid or the economy is in the toilet, so knows how long that’s gonna be. The contract that I’m on will be my last, so we’ll just see how long that can take me.”
Although AJ is getting the opportunity to work with The Undertaker in a Boneyard match, he does want to one day wrestle Undertaker in a traditional singles match.
“I hope we get an opportunity to do that. I hope that there’s still an opportunity before he retires to get in the ring and have a traditional match. That’s what I wanted from the get go because that’s where you can really pick up on these ideas and the way he does stuff to make myself a better performer.”
One individual that Styles wants to work is WWE Hall Of Famer Edge. Styles said that Edge appears to be in great shape and he hopes that they can share the ring together one day in a one-on-one scenario.
“I think it’s a veteran new guy. I’d love to have the opportunity to be in the ring with Edge at some point. I think that would be fun, and then to go back and do matches I’ve already done before. It’s just different now. Roman Reigns, the last time him and I were in the ring together was 2016. Let’s bring it back. Let’s see how much we’ve changed and what we could do. I think I’d be fun.”
** Kenny Omega vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Seth Rollins from ROH’s ‘Bound By Hate’ show in 2008 is up on Ring of Honor’s YouTube channel.
** SPORTbible has highlights posted from an international media call that Lacey Evans was the focus of. The site also has highlights from a Drew McIntyre conference call. McIntyre spoke highly of MVP and said the former United States Champion has been a big help to him.
** Paul Levesque did an interview with CBS Sports.
** Chuck Carroll of CBS Local spoke with former WWE Champion Kofi Kingston. Kingston reflected on his WWE Title win from last year’s WrestleMania and said no match in his career in the future or in the past will be able to top what he accomplished at last year’s show.
“I think, for me, regardless of any WrestleMania going forward, I don’t know if there’s going to be anything that will ever match that for me last year, because that was the culmination of not just an 11-year journey, but a lifetime journey. That was my dream as a kid. I wanted to wrestle for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania. Now that was on the cusp of happening.”
** During his chat with Metro, Ric Flair shared that he wishes he never wrestled after his WrestleMania 24 match with Shawn Michaels. Ric described it as the greatest moment of his life and the saddest moment of his career.
“I was nervous, extremely nervous. That was at a time when my self-confidence levels were up and down. I should have realized that being with Shawn alone was the greatest thing anybody could have ever given me. He just led me through the match, and afterwards it was a really emotional moment for me, my family. The best answer I have is that was the greatest moment of my life, the saddest moment in my wrestling career, and I wish I’d never wrestled again after that. I just couldn’t stay away. At the end of the day, people remember that like it was my last match, and that’s the important thing.”
** Becky Lynch sent a video to an 11-year old that’s diagnosed with autism. The young man was planning on attending WrestleMania in Tampa, Florida and to make up for not being able to attend event, Becky Lynch sent him a special video.
** CM Punk appeared on the most recent episode of the ‘No-Sports Report’ podcast with Jensen Karp. Punk was asked for his thoughts on WrestleMania continuing on without fans during the COVID-19 outbreak and said that the decisions that WWE made were strange to him. He doesn’t think it should’ve been cancelled but that WrestleMania should’ve been rescheduled.
“I think it’s completely strange. I hear all the rumors of who’s sick, and then you got all these guys that are — whether the culture there has changed or not — are gonna be job scared so they’re gonna show up and then they’ll get somebody else sick and obviously that’s how the virus works. It was just very strange. Instead of being a leader and taking charge and being like, ‘Hey, you know what? Let’s reschedule this. Let’s refund everybody’s money.’ I also think as a performer, man that sucks. That’s gotta suck. That’s gotta totally be the worst thing ever. I just thought every decision that was made — shocking that CM Punk thinks every decision that was made was a wrong one. I just thought it was so obtuse. Like, just the wrong decision. Don’t just cancel it, reschedule it. ‘Oh, you’re still gonna do it? Okay, well that’s not what I would’ve done. Oh, you’re making it two days instead of one? Okay, but that’s not what I would’ve done but okay,’ and on top of that, they pre-tape stuff, so I’m sure there’s all types of spoilers out there so what’s the incentive for even watching.”
** Paul “Triple H” Levesque promoted WrestleMania 36 by speaking with PEOPLE.com.
** NXT Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley did an interview with TV Insider and shared that her first recollection of wrestling was Triple H and Ric Flair’s Last Man Standing match from the 2005 Survivor Series pay-per-view.
“It’s funny, I was always a brutal kid. I loved all sports. My family friends introduced me to wrestling by showing me the match between Triple H and Ric Flair. Me being me, I loved the spot with the screwdriver. That definitely got me hooked. I thought, ‘I want to do this.’ My parents didn’t like that. They were like, ‘Really, you want to do this?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, yes I do. This looks amazing.’”
** ‘Wide Open Country’ has a feature story published about how Hillbilly Jim’s ‘Don’t Go Messin’ With a Country Boy’ theme song came to be.
** The premiere episode of season five of Total Bellas on E! drew 563,000 viewers according to Showbuzz Daily.
** Charlotte Flair chatted with TMZ Sports and during their conversation, she spoke about Rob Gronkowski hosting WrestleMania. Charlotte said that she’s happy to have Gronk hosting but when it comes to him possibly transitioning into the ring, she stated that just because someone has an impressive athletic background, does not mean that they’ll be successful in the ring.
“Well, one, I have a lot of respect for Gronk, with what he’s done in his athletic career but I always say this: We, as performers make it look easy, but just because you’re a talented athlete, does not mean that you’re going to succeed in the ring. Now, I’m so excited to have him as part of the team, but I have no idea what his in-ring career will look like.”
** Kurt Angle did a Q&A on his Facebook page and was asked for his favorite match with Chris Benoit. Angle noted that it was he and Benoit’s WWE Championship match from the 2003 Royal Rumble pay-per-view.
“Royal Rumble 2003. I tell aspiring wrestlers to watch that match, it’s as close to perfect as it gets. Benoit was a technical master. We had incredible chemistry.”
** Referee Odie Brown took to social media and announced that he had been hired full-time by EVOLVE. He was planning on making the announcement as WrestleMania week kicked off in Tampa, Florida.
** This coming Tuesday on FS1, the network will air the following WWE 24 documentaries: WrestleMania 31, WrestleMania 33 and WrestleMania 34.
** Triple H chatted with FOX Sports about WrestleMania.
** On the latest episode of the Talk Is Jericho podcast, Chris Jericho welcomed former WWE referee Marty Elias onto the podcast to recap Shawn Michaels and Undertaker’s match from WrestleMania 25. Marty Elias revealed that the match was originally supposed to be the third on the card and it was only supposed to be 15 minutes but Undertaker and Shawn got that changed.
“It was supposed to be third and we only had 15 minutes when we were putting the match together. The Thursday before, Michael Hayes and Pat Patterson were the agents, this match was third and we only had 15 minutes.
I remember sitting there and Taker and Shawn just looked at each other and Taker rubs his goatee and he goes, ‘Shawn, how long you been with this company?’ Shawn’s like, ‘Hmm, pretty long. Maybe half my life.’ He goes, ‘I’ve been with this company longer than some of my ex wives.’ He goes, ‘We got 15 minutes?’ Shawn’s like, ‘Oh, I can go on first and do the dark match so I can get out of there early,’ and Taker’s like, ‘This ain’t gonna fly,’ and Michael Hayes goes, ‘Oh! I’ll go talk to Vince. I’ll get it changed! I’ll get it changed,’ and within 20 minutes, came back and we had 30 minutes.”
Chris Jericho talked about his WrestleMania 19 match with Shawn Michaels as well. He and Shawn went five or six minutes over their scheduled time and Hayes told Shawn about that after the match. Shawn had some choice words for Hayes in response.
“Our WrestleMania match with me and Shawn, we went, I think 25 and we only had like 20 or 21, and I remember we came through the curtain and Michael Hayes was there and he was like, ‘You guys went long’ and Shawn was like, ‘Hold on. After a masterpiece like that, the first thing you’re gonna tell me is that we went too long? Go have a five-star match first then come back and talk to me. Get the f*ck out of here.’ I was like, ‘That’s the old Shawn right there a little bit,’ but he was right,” Jericho said.
Going back to Marty Elias, Elias said he was given one simple instruction for The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels’ match and that was to count Undertaker out if he didn’t make it back in the ring after the dive over the top rope. Those instructions came from The Undertaker.
“The only thing that I was given instruction — Taker gave me instruction — was that if he didn’t get back after the dive, to shoot count him out. That was the only instruction I was given.”
Marty told the story of how he believes he was fired because he broke WWE’s dress code and was told that he was let go because of budget. He stated that he’s open to talking to WWE again and AEW and he has reached out to Paul Levesque but he’s busy with his roles in WWE.
“WWE, if they ever wanna talk, and I’ve reached out to Hunter but he and I have scheduled things but he’s so damn busy it’s like, ‘Okay.’”
** Mario Lopez chatted with Paul Levesque about WrestleMania 36.
** Al Snow appeared on ‘Good Day Live’ and spoke about Ohio Valley Wrestling’s new television deal and his career in wrestling.
** Michael Lombardi, who’s the President of Northeast Wrestling joined Wrestling Observer Live to talk about how the COVID-19 outbreak has impacted his business. Michael shared some of the success stories that Northeast Wrestling has under its umbrella as far as attendance and the growth of the brand.
** Maria Menounos welcomed Kofi Kingston onto her podcast and Kofi said that this period of time in his career where he has time off might’ve extended his wrestling career and explained why.
“Time off is so rare. It’s like few and far between. I mean, you know, just as the world. We never had this kind of situation particularly for WWE superstars. Honestly, ever since I got with Woods and E, the level of fun that I’ve been having over the past six years we’ve been together now… I’ve never to work feeling like, ‘I’ve had enough’ or ‘I’m worn down’ because I know I’m going to be having fun in the ring. So at this point in my career, as long as I’m having fun, I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can.”
** Yahoo! Entertainment’s ‘Inside Edition’ show took a deep dive into the life and career of Bruno Sammartino.
** India.com interviewed Lana recently and she opened up about what it has been like for her to successfully play the role of a heel with Rusev and then become beloved by the crowd with the ‘Rusev Day’ gimmick and now going back to drawing that negative reaction from the crowd as she’s working with Bobby Lashley:
“It’s really a crazy experience actually to have both situations. To be able to experience, being able to provoke the crowd so loud that the whole arena is booing you is the greatest adrenaline rush. Then, to be able to go into a different zone where the crowd is cheering for you, sure, I’m the same, I’ve never changed. For some reason the WWE Universe decided to chant at one point, ‘Lana is the best, she’s No. 1’. Suddenly, they are booing again because they don’t support the decision of being with Lashley. I personally am very thankful that I have a very special connection with the WWE Universe and I’m able to provoke strong reactions. I can’t speak for Rusev, but I would say he probably feels the same that he’s been able to connect with the audience very well. For some reason, we have been able to provoke two extremely opposite yet strong reactions. I’m very thankful, because at least I have a relationship with them, at least I am able to make them feel something so passionately and that is extremely important. Being part of the WWE or other reality TV, that has been my biggest goal, to connect with viewers so passionately that they have to stand up and make a noise.”
** Sony Picture Sports Network has announced a new series entitled ‘WWE Blockbusters’ which will feature WWE content from the past and present, every day of the week.
** NXT’s Dexter Lumis was profiled by Robert Stone in Stone’s ‘What’s your Hobbie w/ Robbie?’ series.
** Mark Henry spoke with TMZ Sports about WWE’s WrestleMania event and said it could possibly draw 200 million viewers.
** EVOLVE 142 streamed on the WWNLive YouTube channel.
** Ring of Honor streamed the 2017 Supercard of Honor event on their YouTube channel.
** Killian Dain, Dio Maddin, Mansoor and Dominik Dijakovic are doing a live WrestleMania watch-along on Twitch.
** Corey Graves joined the ‘Say Less With Kaz’ podcast with former WWE writer Kazeem Famuyide. Corey said during the podcast that WWE has more podcasts in the pipeline. Also, he talked about Shinsuke Nakamura and Nakamura’s time in NXT. Graves said before Nakamura joined WWE, he would use some of Nakamura’s moves in the ring because he was a fan of Shinsuke’s work in New Japan.
“Yesterday, I was scrolling through Twitter and somebody had posted a clip of Nakamura and Sami Zayn in Dallas, and I sent the tweet to Tom Phillips because that was one of the shows he and I called together, and it still gave me chills hearing the first few notes of Nakamura’s music. That was magic to me because I was such a fan of Shinsuke in Japan. I’m sure if you study hard enough on any of the old NXT TVs back in the day, I stole some of Shinsuke’s stuff like move-wise. I was a huge fan of his. Never in a million years he was gonna end up here in WWE. But I was stoked beyond belief when he got there.”
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.