Originally published at POST NEWS UPDATE: Rich Swann discusses the severity of his Achilles injury from January, almost retiring in 2018 - 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.
** Rich Swann was interviewed by F4WOnline’s Garrett Gonzales and Dave Meltzer to promote Bound For Glory on 10/24. IMPACT Wrestling announced in January that Swann underwent ankle surgery and Swann returned to action at Slammiversary this past July. Swann revealed that it was much more than an ankle injury and that he severely damaged his Achilles in a match before the ‘Hard To Kill’ pay-per-view.
“Oh yes indeed So what happened was basically I was standing up and I got senton’d and so, my Achilles was crushed like a soda can, my ankle was just like — it was placed up into my shin. My foot was just peeled back. The other side of my ankle on the right side was just up in my calf then my fibula broke clean and it was almost similar to the Sycho Sid. Everybody’s familiar with that. One of the most horrific injuries in the industry. But yeah, it was very similar to that. My fibula was broken clean and it was broken to the point where the bone was just sticking at the skin and it was almost a compound fracture, and so I had my mind on that and then I didn’t even realize that my back was also fractured as well so once I got the CAT scan and MRIs and everything, that was brought up as well to my attention and it was rough man.”
Swann shared more details about his injury and followed up on his words that it was far more than the public knew about.
“Oh you know man, it was a mental rollercoaster. Everything was broken in January. It seemed my ankle, my fibula, my L5, my L6, my foot completely was just demolished, and for a bit, I didn’t think that I was gonna be able to wrestle due to what the doctors were saying to me, but with hard work and dedication, came back… the pandemic is one thing, but, once I got injured and everything, it was just… everything was going to be gone and taken away. You know that feeling and everything was gone and taken away from everybody due to the pandemic. WrestleMania and WrestleMania weekend. So many people lost so much but, I’m just picking myself up and going forward.”
The former IMPACT X Division Champion shared that following the surgery, he was told by the surgeon that there was a possibility that he may walk with a limp for the remainder of his life. Later in the interview, Swann stated that he was determined to prove the surgeon wrong and when he got back in the ring at Slammiversary, he knew he was good to go.
“It’s hard to explain just because of how crazy it was. But, once I figured I was — Chong who’s one of the greatest out here in Orlando. I got the surgery and he told me that due to the effects and how it was and how severe the injury, that I could be walking with a limp for the rest of my life and there’s not many — and anybody that has those problems, but an athlete, if you have a limp, that’s your career, you know? I wanna go out and perform to the best of my ability.”
Rich Swann was released from WWE in February of 2018 after an incident occurred between Swann and Su Yung, Swann’s significant other in December of 2017. Said incident has publicly been put under the bridge by Su Yung. A month after Swann was let go from WWE, he noted on Twitter that he was going to be retiring from wrestling and during the interview, he explained what was going through his mind at that time.
“You know, it was just the whole social media situation with everybody thought that they knew what happened with my situation and they read things that was glorified and you know, at that moment I just was like, ‘You know what? I need to take a step back, I need to find something else to do. Maybe this isn’t for me’ because I had never gotten in trouble in my life. I’d never experienced anything like that before, especially to which something that I love and so, I sat back and I broke down and I didn’t know what to do and guys like Tommy Dreamer, Scott D’Amore, Don Callis, Sami Callihan, my close friend Jason Cade, they would tell me, ‘Don’t do this, don’t retire, don’t quit. You still got so much’ and at the time, I was only what? 27, 28. So, you still got so much to give to this business and certain people, coming out just saying — guys that I look up to and admire and respect, just coming out and reaching out to me. That just made me change my mind and once I got that second chance and especially with IMPACT giving me the platform and the guys inviting me… there was no way I could give this up.”
Swann also discussed Grammy nominated artist Wale being a reason why he was brought to WWE’s attention and it stemmed from a tweet that Wale sent out about Swann, Ricochet, Apollo Crews and AR Fox.
“That’s very true, that’s very true. Wale, I wanna say he had came to the every single step.”
** Rob Van Dam did a virtual meet and greet with Pro Wrestling Junkies. One of the questions asked of Van Dam was does he watch other wrestling promotions. He explained that he does at times to help Katie Forbes, his significant other improve but while giving his answer, RVD revealed that he and WWE are collaborating on future projects.
“Since I joined IMPACT, I’ve been wrestling a little bit more but, I don’t look at it and think, ‘Woah! I wanna go here.’ Usually I look at it and I’m like, ‘Man I’m glad tonight’s a night off.’ I’m watching these guys work their asses off in the ring and I’m just thinking, ‘Ah, I’d be so winded right now’ and I’m watching everything come together and it’s cool that it is but, it would just be a job offering and nothing else at that point, you know? So, that’s how I’ve been since like 2001, I guess, since then, so some people say, ‘You should go to AEW because you and this guy would have a good match.’ Like dude, I don’t give a f*ck. I have good matches with everybody. I definitely would consider it and I’m actually going to be working with WWE on a couple of projects that we haven’t mentioned yet.”
Van Dam was also asked for his dream match. RVD explained why he does not get excited about the idea of having a dream match and talked about just following the money.
“These questions are always hard for me to answer because I don’t think that I think the way that a lot of wrestlers do and I don’t even look forward to getting in the ring, you know? It’s been so many years since I WrestleMania is the biggest payday I know of so, I guess that’d be the ultimate dream match, against whoever. I’m here for the money.”
** Lance Storm returned to the Figure Four Daily podcast on F4WOnline and during the conversation, Storm spoke at length about concussions in pro wrestling and discussed the concussion that Kairi Sane suffered at the TLC pay-per-view in December of 2019. Kairi teamed with Asuka against Becky Lynch and Charlotte in the main event of the show. Sane took a powerbomb through a table while not being all the way there and later was rolled under the ring by Becky Lynch to be kept out of the match. Storm reflected on that situation and how it unfolded.
“And I remember… I’m trying to remember a timeline concussed. But if we change that, because a lot of guys do. They take that kick and they do that face plant into the floor and don’t move for ten seconds while the guy rolls ‘em over, covers him then he kicks out. I can just imagine if you’re a ref. It’s like you’re not going to be 100 percent sure and again, asking him isn’t valid unless we come up by some means in-which you think they’ll be able to remember the appropriate safe word, that they won’t if they’re knocked out which again, it’s a real tough call.”
Prior to the first quote, Storm discussed the Matt Hardy injury at AEW All Out and the Mickie James situation from this past week’s RAW where Mickie and Asuka’s RAW Women’s Title match was called early. Lance questioned if the ‘flash knockout sell’ should be stored away and explained his reasoning behind that thinking.
“Again, I was huge fan of their matches but when Aleister Black and Buddy Murphy when he was still Buddy. He doesn’t have any friends now so he’s not Buddy, but when they were doing their program — first, I think I was still an agent then. But, they would do so many great knee strikes and kicks and quite often sell, boom, face down unconscious for a second and I remember thinking at the time, it’s like, ‘I wonder if we should be doing this?’ Granted, still do the knee strikes, still do the kicks but when you sell that you go unconscious for a second or a few seconds, does it then start telling the story that we’re letting people continue unconscious? Does it get into a contradiction of our concussion protocol? And then the other thing is, and for the sake, I don’t know. This might have been what happened with the Mickie James situation is she sold too damn well, the ref thought she was hurt and panicked and called it.
I don’t know but he obviously thought she was hurt or out of it or something and I wouldn’t be surprised. We see it in UFC all the time, that when there’s the late stoppage and then later on in the show, that same ref does an early stoppage because there’s an early compensation because you’re now thinking about it too much and I think that’s probably what happened in the Mickie situation was it was such outcry and uproar for Matt Hardy being allowed to continue and again, I’m speculating here. I wouldn’t be surprised if agents, producers, Vince, talent had a big meeting with, ‘Look, we gotta look after our people. We don’t want this happening on our show. If someone gets knocked out, refs, you need to just stop this match. You’ve got to look out for the safety of our competitors’ and then this poor guy, ‘Alright, I gotta be sure, I gotta be sure’ and for a second, thought she was hurt, called the match and then found out that apparently she’s fine, and again, I would rather have a sh*t finish in the match because the guy was airing on the side of caution than someone get seriously hurt so again, I’m not upset about him doing it…”
** Timothy Thatcher is joining KUSHIDA, Kyle O’Reilly and Cameron Grimes in the Eliminator Gauntlet match on NXT this week to determine Finn Balor’s challenger at the next NXT TakeOver event.
** On the newest episode of Talk’n Shop, Doc Gallows, Karl Anderson and Rocky Romero brought Brian Myers and Matt Cardona onto the show. Gallows told the story of when he portrayed the throwback version of Kane and revealed that WWE had “fake Kane practices” and he and several others had to pretend as if they did not know these practice sessions were a thing.
“I felt so bad for the secret crew of fake Kane practice because you actually had to act like, ‘Oh man, I’m getting asked to come in and do extra so I’m really excited.’
So they called me, they’re gonna put you on TV and you go, ‘Okay, thanks, cool. What am I doing?’ ‘Well you’re gonna be the fake Kane.’ Okay… what does that mean? Well not only do you have to do these hard practices, we have to do extra hard practices after but they have to be held in true secret so no one knows who the fake Kane is because everyone’s gonna expect him coming,” Gallows said sarcastically. “So these guys would be chosen to literally chokeslam, sidewalk slam, Tombstone, go to the top rope, clothesline, and they’d be like, ‘Okay, feed in, chokeslam, Tombstone. Clothesline, sidewalk slam, clothesline over the ropes.’ Everyone’s just going, ‘F*ck this man.’”
** IMPACT Tag Team Champion Chris Sabin was a guest on The Chase Thomas Podcast. Sabin shared that while he’s currently an active talent in IMPACT Wrestling, he has also been working as a producer.
“Yeah, a little bit. Not as much as I was before but now I’m splitting wrestling and producing so… they’re keeping the load a little lighter on me.”
When the topic of a singles run came up, Sabin said he’d for sure be interested but right now, he’s focused on teaming with Alex Shelley.
“I mean if the situation dictated then, yeah. I’d be down for it. But, right now I’m definitely happy as a tag team with Alex Shelley.”
Further on the topic of a singles run, when asked if he sees himself as an IMPACT World Champion at some point over the next five years, here’s how he responded:
“Five years, oh yeah. I’ll say yeah. Five years, I think that’s a long period of time. I’ll just say yeah.”
** AEW World Champion Jon Moxley did an interview with SunSport and discussed Paul Heyman being paired with WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns. Moxley expressed that he wants all of his friends in WWE to do well.
“The concept of him and Paul Heyman – that was very cool to me. I think that’s gonna work out really good. All my friends there (WWE), I wanna turn the TV on and I wanna see them kicking ass and doing great.”
** Brian Myers was the latest guest on the Wrestle Buddies podcast. Myers talked about the opportunities he’s received in IMPACT Wrestling and currently working with Willie Mack. Myers said it was difficult to display his talents in WWE while working six-minute matches on Main Event.
“Same thing I said along those lines, it’s just opportunities that I’ve never really been given. It is hard to do a lot of character stuff when you have a six-minute match on Main Event with Mojo Rawley, you know what I mean? No offense, but that’s not gonna be the best version of myself or his self either, you know? But I’m getting a real cool opportunity here and I actually told the IMPACT office, those guys right away right when I came in that I’d like to work with Willie and now I am so… he’s awesome and very talented as well so, I’m literally having a blast.”
Throughout his time in the company thus far, The Rascalz (Dezmond Xavier, Trey Miguel & Zachary Wentz) have caught the eyes of Brian Myers. He praised IMPACT’s product and feels that they are right up there with AEW and WWE.
“I’ve been really impressed with The Rascalz. I think all three of them are really, really talented in their own way too so I think they complement each other in a three-man team very well. The North, insanely talented and obviously their title reign speaks for itself. You don’t hold the tag team championship for a year by accident, and like I said, all the ex-WWE stars if you will that came in with me, we keep referring to ourselves like — I feel like I’m working for ECW in a way. It’s the land of the misfit toys is what we call ourselves because it’s a lot of people that have so much potential and it just wasn’t capitalized for whatever reasons and now we’re all here with this common goal, having fun which is I think is a big, big ingredient to the success and obviously I’m bias but I think the shows have been incredible since Slammiversary. I think they’ve been very well thought out and fun and full of action and then the real icing on the cake is when we can be able to get in front of real crowds again and start building that fan base town by town and letting people see what everyone can do because the roster is stacked and the women’s division I think is the best in all of wrestling. So, there’s a lot there to tune in for and as many people as I can tell tune into AXS TV every Tuesday night because it’s worth watching and it’s right up there with I think AEW and WWE programming. It’s that good.”
** Tom Lawlor has been added to Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport show on 10/11.
** Darren Paltrowitz conducted an interview with Eva Marie. Eva reflected on her time as a part of the Total Divas cast. She discussed the production team for the show wanting family members to refer to WWE talents by their in-ring names and there would either be instructions or pre-airing editing to make sure that talents were not called their birth names often.
“It’s totally correct because, especially with Total Divas, it’s even a little bit more difficult because you have your superstars and their actual characters and their names but those personas are not their actual real given names, so when it comes to family, husbands, wives, it gets dicey where you know, they’re gonna have to try their hardest to call you by the name of the actual character. For me and my family, it was a shift for them but it wasn’t like they were calling me some other made up name because Eva Marie is my middle name and my gave me that middle name, so it was just kind of like an easy alternate nickname I guess.”
** Vince Russo shared that he was interviewed for an independent documentary that’ll be about the late WWE Hall Of Famer Chyna.
** Kylie Rae announced that she and fellow wrestler Isaias Velazquez have gotten engaged.
** Kurt Angle will be the next guest on The Broken Skull Sessions on the WWE Network, per WWE Network News. The episode is scheduled to premiere on September 27th which is the day of the Clash of Champions pay-per-view.
** Bruce Prichard and Conrad Thompson covered the 2005 WWE Unforgiven pay-per-view for the latest installment of Something to Wrestle. Prichard discussed Chris Masters’ match on the show with Shawn Michaels and explained why Masters didn’t get more out of his run in WWE:
“I just think that Chris had his own demons during that time frame and they got the best of him. So, it was unfortunate because I think that first of all, the human being when you have Chris in a clear head, I think is a sweetheart of a human being and someone who really wanted to make it in the business, that had the tools. He might have gotten too much too soon, and with that look, it’s like he got pushed and I think people expected more out of him than what he was able to give. But then he also believed that he belonged in that spot so, I think Chris had a few things working against him and timing and sometimes your demons will get the better of you and it’s a little harder for some to recover than others, but Chris had a hell of a run during that time and this program with Shawn , the match was great, told an excellent story and at the end of the night, Shawn got his hand raised, but Chris still left whole because Shawn didn’t break The Masterlock.”
** Ring of Honor has a new video up on their YouTube channel featuring Mike and Maria Bennett.
** Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp spoke with Fred Rosser and Rosser stated that he’d like to get signed by New Japan Pro-Wrestling. He’s also open to the idea of returning to WWE.
“I’d love to get signed by New Japan. I’m not signed with them. But, if I can get signed with New Japan, that’s great. If WWE calls me back… I was just talking with Chavo earlier, I’m not one of those grizzled vets that are gonna talk bad about the company. I’ve had great experiences with WWE. The only time I would get upset is like years ago, they took me and Lana off an Abu Dhabi show. I was booty hurt on Twitter. So, that’s the kind of stuff that I’ll get upset over.”
** Caprice Coleman, Todd Sinclair, Ian Riccaboni and Bobby Cruise put together their respective all-time Ring of Honor rosters.
** Sports Guys Talking Wrestling podcast welcomed Tenille Dashwood onto their show. During her appearance, Tenille elaborated on the sentiment that IMPACT Wrestling has the best women’s division right now.
“I 100 percent agree and that’s part of what brought me back in was it was time to get back in the mix and to enjoy the moment with all these amazing women’s wrestlers so, yeah, it shows it for itself. The product is amazing and the talented women that absolutely love wrestling and that oozes out of them. You can tell when they step in the ring how dedicated and how much they want to show the world how good they are so, that’s what I love about IMPACT Wrestling.”
**As first reported by WWE Network News, the next episode of WWE Timeline will be based on the rivalry between Triple H and Seth Rollins.
** Warrior Wrestling Results (9/19/20) Chicago Heights, Illinois
– Sam Adonis def. Jake Something
– 6-Man Scramble Match: Beast Man def. Façade, Jack Griffin, Icon Lee, Dani Mo and Dan The Dad
– Lee Moriarty def. Tre LaMar
– Ace Austin & Madman Fulton def. Violence Is Forever (Dominic Garrini & Kevin Ku)
– Kimber Lee def. Jordynne Grace
– Jonathan Gresham vs. Alex Shelley goes to time limit draw.
– Luchasaurus & Tay Conti def. Chris Bey & Ray Lyn
– #1 Contender Match for Warrior Wrestling Championship – Three-Way: Trey Miguel def. Zachary Wentz & Dezmond Xavier
– Warrior Wrestling Championship: Brian Pillman Jr. (c) def. Warhorse
** Xavier Woods welcomed Mia Yim onto the UpUpDownDown YouTube channel for Superstar Savepoint.
** Chris Charlton interviewed NJPW Young Lion Gabriel Kidd.
** Alex Gracia and Vert Vixen joined the Sports Guys Talking Wrestling podcast to promote the Mission Pro Wrestling show that occurred on Friday night.
** Mark Sterling, co-host of The Major Wrestling Figure Podcast and the individual who played the role of MJF’s lawyer on AEW Dynamite, guest appeared on F4WOnline’s ‘Left My Wallet’ show.
** Arn Anderson turned 62-years old on 9/20.
** Dragon Gate ‘Masato Yoshino 20th Anniversary Homecoming’ Results (9/19/20) Higashiosaka, Osaka, Japan
– Don Fujii, Ryo Saito & Shachihoko BOY def. Team Dragon Gate (Jason Lee, Punch Tominaga & Yosuke Santa Maria)
– Genki Horiguchi def. Ben-K
– Kagetora & Susumu Yokosuka def. Team Dragon Gate (Dragon Dia & Kota Minoura)
– KAI, Keisuke Okuda & U-T def. R.E.D. (Diamante, H.Y.O & KAZMA SAKAMOTO) by DQ.
– Dragon Kid, Masato Yoshino, Naruki Doi & Ultimo Dragon def. R.E.D. (Big R Shimizu, BxB Hulk, Eita & Kaito Ishida)
** Alicia Atout interviewed Isaiah “Swerve” Scott.
** Big Show did a Q&A with WWE NOW India.
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.