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.
** As William Regal was doing a virtual signing for K & S WrestleFest prior to AEW Full Gear, he mentioned that he owns the name ‘William Regal’ but if Vince McMahon had asked him not to use the name outside of WWE, he would have went by ‘Steven Regal’.
No [WWE does not own my ring name]. I own William Regal.
I own William Regal but if Mr. McMahon asked me not to use it, I wouldn’t use it… I’d be just Steven Regal. He gave me his blessing. No problems with me and Mr. McMahon at all.
Regal and Bryan Danielson’s relationship is well documented. Regal picked Danielson as his favorite member of Blackpool Combat Club and said he would not be relevant today if it was not for Danielson.
No, it’s not a rough question [who’s his favorite member of Blackpool Combat Club]. It’s Bryan [Danielson]… I think a tremendous amount of all of them. Bryan’s been with me. We’ve been friends since 2000, and fortunately, luckily he came into my life. It’s not the other way around when people say, ‘Oh, great you met him.’ No. I wouldn’t be relevant today if it wasn’t for him.
A chat user asked Regal to recommend some names to dive into from the history of British wrestling. While doing so, Regal gave his opinion that Fit Finlay is the best wrestler ever.
I wouldn’t know where to start [Regal responded when asked who he would recommend for people to dive into when it comes to British wrestling history]. The person I would start with, who you know, would be Fit Finlay because he was the best and still is the best wrestler ever in my opinion. But then, ‘Rollerball’ [Mark] Rocco and just go from there. Go on because I’d never stop. My personal favorite wrestler and Fit Finlay’s personal favorite wrestler is a gentleman called Terry Rudge who is a huge influence on my career and a person who I styled a lot of my — taught me a lot but also, a lot of my style is like him. I wrestled him a lot when I was younger. But you could just go on and on. If you like technical, really, really technical wrestling then Johnny Saint, Jon Cortez, Steve Grey, that’s lightweights. If you go into the heavy middleweights, I go with Fit Finlay, ‘Rollerball’ Rocco, Marty Jones who was one of my trainers and then heavyweights, Terry Rudge, Pete Roberts, Ray Steele, Dave Taylor. A lot of Americans know Dave but Dave was an incredible wrestler, and it goes on and on.
Circling back around to Danielson, Regal feels if Bryan and WWE Intercontinental Champion GUNTHER had the opportunity to go one-on-one, they could put on one of the best matches of all time.
Incredible [Regal said about a match between Bryan Danielson & GUNTHER]. Have you ever seen Bryan have a bad match? Have you ever seen WALTER have a bad match? Right. Or GUNTHER… I would say, knowing that I’m a big fan of both of them and their styles, if they had the chance, they might have one of the greatest matches of all time.
** Joining Renée Paquette on The Sessions podcast was Stokely Hathaway. He debuted for AEW at Double or Nothing and immediately aligned with Jade Cargill and The Baddies. Hathaway shared that he did not know what exactly he was going to do at the pay-per-view until nearly 20 minutes beforehand.
I was told what I was doing maybe like 15, 20 minutes before it was actually happening [Hathaway said about his AEW debut]. Because it was just, you know, could this happen? The time frame, the date. We were still in the wiggle room of is this actually possible? So once we found out it was, we talked about everything. It was like, okay, this is gonna happen. So I had to open up the curtain and peek. So it’s like, oh, this tunnel? Is there carpet? Are there stairs? Will I trip?
It was fun. It was quite the experience to debut in Vegas on a pay-per-view. You couldn’t ask for more.
Looking back on his time working with The Baddies (Jade Cargill, Kiera Hogan, Red Velvet & Leila Grey), that’s an experience he takes pride in because it was an all-Black group and the power dynamic saw a woman in Jade Cargill at the helm.
And the one thing among many things I take pride in is the fact that it [The Baddies] was an all-Black group, faction and I think that holds a lot of power because the dynamic was interesting. Jade [Cargill] had the power and she is a Black woman and she had two other Black women — [Athena was] in the program as well [when I debuted at Double or Nothing]. You have me, this little guy on the side, you know, touting all of them as queens. It was fun and I think it’s something looking back, I hope that people saw that and that will open up more possibilities for other people down the line but for me, it was just a cool thing to do.
** Fuego Del Sol was a guest on The A.J. Awesome Show and touched on the amount of TV time that is available in AEW. Fuego said there not being time for everyone is a credit to the talent roster and thinks it’s a good problem to have.
I mean, like I said, I think it’s a credit to the roster that we have developed [lack of AEW TV time that is available]. Incredible guys, veteran guys that have been doing this for nearly 30 years. When you look at a guy like Chris Jericho, all these guys chomping at the bit, the talent is so good and I feel like that’s a good problem to have. I’d rather have too much good talent than not enough. But, I’m excited to see what my future holds and I’m excited to see what the future holds for the company going forward.
** As Colt Cabana was on the PWTCAST, he shared that he auditioned for a role on NBC’s ‘Chicago Med’ and for a role on ‘South Side’ which airs on Comedy Central and HBO Max.
I just turned down an audition today. It was for Sunbather for a C.D.W. commercial. I was like, I don’t wanna do that [Cabana laughed]. But I was on Chicago Fire and Chicago PD. Oh, man, I auditioned for Chicago Med the other day and I thought I was gonna get it. I did really good. It was down to me — you know ‘South Side’? You know that show on Comedy Central? It was down to me and another person and the other person got it so, I’m trying. I like doing those little things, especially if they are one or two days of work. They are so fun, as opposed to the seven weeks I spent in Australia for Young Rock for three minutes of TV time which was fun. Which was the best but yeah, anything local in Chicago, I love doing.
** There’s an interview that Steve Fall of the ‘Ten Count’ podcast recorded with Brandi Rhodes. They touched on the ‘Rhodes to the Top’ reality series on TNT and Brandi said she liked it for what it was at the time. She does not see where that would fit present day. As far as wrestling goes, Brandi is focused on seeing Cody have his moment(s) in WWE.
So, again, I’m gonna not say, ‘I’m not doing that anymore’ [Brandi said about Rhodes to the Top]. But, I will say I liked it for what it was, then. However now, coming into this phase of life, Liberty’s older, my husband’s on the chase of a lifetime, he’s kind of on this ride of a lifetime. I don’t think it fits to do that. Maybe in the future, something like that would be a fit but right now, I just really don’t think it is. I think that as far as wrestling is concerned, for me, the most intriguing story is Cody [Rhodes] trying to capture this dream and it’s been so fantastic, except for, you know, the injury portion but it’s just been really great to see him reconnect with this audience, kind of be completely welcomed back home, coming back to WWE and then to have his back in this journey. It’s been really, really fun to see and I’m excited for him to get back. Not only for that but because he needs to go back to work.
Continuing on the topic of Cody, Brandi discussed his performance at Hell in a Cell and working through a torn pec injury. She stated that she gave him her blessing to go through with it because she was not going to win the argument of trying to convince him not to wrestle.
Well everything wasn’t fine [with Cody’s torn pec]. I knew that going in and thankfully, I have seen people with the injury before so I knew that the chest was going to turn black and blue. It was really, probably the worst that I had ever seen it but I at least knew that-that was what we were gonna be looking at, something to that degree. But, you know, for me, I know that as athletes, we always wanna work through the pain so I was just concerned with how much pain were we working through, especially when we know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s like, hey, just get through this then you’re gonna have surgery and you’re gonna feel so much better. So you’re just like, okay, well, here goes everything. So I was really just concerned that he wasn’t putting himself through too, too much but I [know] him. There was no arguing him wrestling that match. I gave my blessing on it because why have an argument that I can’t win anyway? And so might as well give my blessing and just hope for the absolute best and I think the best is what happened there. I mean, get the W and go into surgery.
** The Wrestling Perspective Podcast welcomed MLW owner Court Bauer onto the show. While discussing his time working for WWE, Bauer told the story of when Vince McMahon found out an assistant had to spend $30,000 on organic worms for a segment for The Boogeyman.
There are times when Vince [McMahon] will try something and spend a significant amount of money. It doesn’t work and he just says, ‘All right. Well we tried it’ and you’re like, wow, that could have funded a half-a-year for my company back in the day. One time we had a thing where The Boogeyman, who loved to eat worms — not really but it was part of the gimmick and we had these worms fall from the ceiling in the arena and JBL’s rolling around in them because of course, the heel’s terrified of the worms and Vince is laughing, going, ‘Oh, that’s great’ and it’s raining worms in the arena and he turns to us and goes, ‘How much were those worms? That’s a lot of worms’ and we go over and get the production assistant or the writer’s assistant. ‘How much was it?’ He goes, ‘Well sir, that was $30,000’ and Vince’s jaw drops. He was like, ‘$30,000 for worms?’ ‘Well they were out of normal worms so we had to go organic’ and he just looked shocked. He’s like, I can’t believe we just blew $30,000 and there’s John Layfield rolling in the worms and he’s crying and everyone’s laughing but, it’s like, he was shocked and I think that assistant was fired soon thereafter but the show went on. You think about a lot of companies are gagged to spend that kind of money, it’s excessive. At WWE, it’s on a totally different level.
** On the latest episode of The Kurt Angle Show podcast, Kurt reacted to a comment made by Seth Rollins from an interview Rollins did. Rollins looked back on The Shield’s history and made a remark about wishing the reunions were handled better. He said Angle being in Shield gear with them at WWE TLC 2017 was ‘not ideal’. Angle had the following to say in response:
I don’t blame him [Seth Rollins for his comments]. I would feel the same if I were in his position. I wouldn’t want some Hall of Famer coming in and taking one of my teammates’ spots to fill in for a pay-per-view. But we had to do it. We didn’t have a choice because Roman Reigns was out so somebody had to step in there. Why not the Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle? [Angle laughed]
** Dustin Rhodes sat down with Chris Jericho for an episode of Talk Is Jericho. Rhodes looked back on he and Cody’s feud with The Shield (Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins & Jon Moxley) in WWE. Dustin said those were some of his favorite matches and he praised Rollins for his ability to put together meaningful finishes.
2014, we had a nice story. Cody [Rhodes] lost his job and we’re trying to win Cody’s job back by facing The Shield and we gave them their first loss and the crowd was just nuts man and it was such a good match that we brought it back for the pay-per-view the next weekend and beat them for the titles. I mean it was lightning. We went on the road with them to Europe, all that stuff, having these barnburner, 25 minute matches every night. Me selling, giving Cody the tag, him coming, boom, boom, boom and Seth [Rollins] has a really creative mind of putting these intricate finishes together, right? Just long, elaborated, Japanese finishes. Like 15 minutes of finishes, right? But they all make sense and you have moments in between all these things and that’s what makes ‘em so great and they were just some of the funnest matches I’ve ever had. Working with Roman [Reigns], even Mox, but Seth is unreal. We had so much fun.
Yes [Dusty Rhodes was involved in the feud]. He was down there and he took his belt off and was whipping Ambrose and it was magical. It’s one of those magical nights.
** IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions Francesco Akira and TJP partook in a virtual meet-and-greet that was hosted by NJPW. Both United Empire members expressed interest in adding a Joshi talent from STARDOM to the group.
TJP: You know, just the other day, I had mentioned that it would be beneficial to kind of be the first unit to branch out in that way to create members in other companies or part of the world or especially other divisions and especially like with STARDOM and having such close interactions between the companies and I think that there is some amazing candidates that would be beneficial for us. They have some amazing stars in STARDOM, no pun intended [TJP laughed].
She [Waka Tsukiyama] defended Gideon Grey pretty strongly I will say [at Historic X-Over].
Akira: I mean, we all watched KAIRI [tear] the house down in the STARDOM show so STARDOM is high-level so we’re gonna want to have some girl of course in United Empire. Would be very, very cool.
** Monday Night Raw is emanating from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on February 20th and to promote that show, newly crowned WWE United States Champion Austin Theory spoke to ‘CityNews Ottawa’. He looked back on his segment with John Cena back in June and described it as a ‘huge moment’ for himself.
That was a huge moment for me actually because that was the first time that I have done anything on-screen with John and for it to be a promo was pretty special and not just a walk by, it was a confrontation and just getting to have that two minutes with him, it meant a lot to me.
** Sami Zayn joined Corey Graves and Kevin Patrick on WWE After The Bell. He brought up Chris Hero’s name and words from Hero that stayed with him. Zayn and Hero were having a conversation about what it takes to make it in WWE.
It’s putting your heart into whatever you’re doing, it’s full commitment to whatever you’re doing. Again, going back to the [Johnny] Knoxville thing, it’s one of those things where maybe you could have put someone else in the role, I don’t know. I kind of like to think that it had to be me for it to work the way it did but it’s putting 100 percent commitment into it that that’s what makes it work… I remember Chris Hero, years ago, years ago, for some reason, this stuck in my head. We were talking about the idea of maybe one day getting to WWE when we were both on the independents and he said — and this applies to Kevin [Owens] too because we were talking about, ‘Yeah, you need these qualities and you need to possess this and this and this to make it in WWE.’ He’s like, ‘Well here’s the thing, up until this point in your career, you have been the exception, not the rule and so there’s no reason to think that won’t carry on. That you won’t continue to be an exception rather than the rule.’
** Episode #10 of ‘Jim Conlan Chats’ featured Brian Kendrick. He looked back on his pairing with Ezekiel Jackson and dove into how it came to be. Kendrick said he chose Jackson because he liked his personality and he had the perfect look.
I didn’t choose him [Ezekiel Jackson] because I was gonna learn anything from him as a wrestler. But I chose him because he has the perfect look and we hit it off when we met. I like his personality, he was fun to travel with. So yeah, we had a good time. Unfortunately, the stint didn’t last very long but, that’s just the way life goes.
** NJPW’s Shingo Takagi attempted to create a new KOPW trophy.
** Interview with CyberFight President Sanshiro Takagi. He talks about Konosuke Takeshita working for both DDT and All Elite Wrestling.
** Tatsumi Fujinami’s Dradition Pro-Wrestling promotion has a show on December 1st that will air on NJPW World. In the main event, Fujinami is taking on Hiroshi Tanahashi. The likes of Tetsuya Naito, Zack Sabre Jr., Shingo Takagi and AJPW’s Jake Lee are scheduled for the event.
** AEW’s Isiah Kassidy documented his first experience inside a mosh pit.
** Applications are being accepted for the Nightmare Factory’s new camp beginning January 9th. Cody Rhodes and Q.T. Marshall are hosting the camp.
** The Cincinnati Bengals posted a video of Renee Paquette and Jon Moxley.
Renee Paquette and Jon Moxley are this week's Rulers of The Jungle! pic.twitter.com/pH3NXMsC8h
— Cincinnati Bengals (@Bengals) November 29, 2022
** Scheduled for MLW Blood & Thunder on January 7th is Jacob Fatu versus Dragongate’s Ben-K.
** NJPW uploaded footage of Jushin Thunder Liger and Hiroshi Tanahashi fishing.
** wXw Women’s Champion Aliss Ink is sidelined with a rib injury.
** Bray Wyatt’s ‘Uncle Howdy’ character is the focus of the latest Canvas 2 Canvas with Rob Schamberger.
** On December 29th, Shinya Aoki will be making his return to in-ring competition. He’ll be facing Chihiro Hashimoto at DDT Pro-Wrestling’s Tokyo Dome City Hall show. Aoki has been fighting for ONE Championship.
** The latest release from Hiroshi Tanahashi’s Ace’s HIGH series.
** November 29th birthdays: Ren Narita, Dana Brooke, Hayabusa.
** Taylor Wilde welcomed Tommy Dreamer onto her ‘Wilde On’ podcast.
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.
