The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Trevor Murdoch
Hosts: John and Chad
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com
On Daniel Bryan: Everything that you are doing as you are working your way to get to WWE is if you are the best wrestler, you are the hardest worker, you will get elevated and get the push. That’s not the case in WWE. You may be the best wrestler but there is either somebody that A. doesn’t like you or B. doesn’t see your talent that other people do and they just let you flounder. Look at Bryan Danielson, how many times have they held that guy back and he is probably one of the most over guys on that roster still to this day and hasn’t worked in almost a year. What does that tell you? It tells you that guy is over and his wrestling can get over. People like wrestling but he is not what the WWE model is and it’s not what their idea is of what a top guy is. In turn they hold him back and put him in spots where to this day a UCLA Doctor has cleared him to wrestle and WWE still hasn’t. Let that man work. Let that man wrestle and give the people what they want. WWE knows what kind of power that man has with the people and they don’t want to give them that power back.
Lack of emphasis on tag team wrestling by WWE up until recently: The tag team division has been struggling for years. They tend to give it a boost and they just tend to forget about it and then want to know why they have such a weak tag division. Right now the tag division is in a big push and is being elevated and put on TV. WWE doesn’t like tag teams for the single fact that they don’t really know what to do with them anymore. When you have people that aren’t in wrestling, that haven’t been in wrestling and are writing a wrestling program you can’t fully expect those guys to understand what to do with the characters that are on the program. Thats what the big issue is, is lack of knowledge of the business when it comes to tag teams and not knowing what to do with them.
Cade and Murdoch’s matches with DX and learning from HHH and HBK: Between working them and the Hardyz are probably the most fun times I’ve had in the business. When those guys walk out they get such a reaction and are already so over that anytime we are in control and are beating them up we get heat and that makes our job ten times easier. What was also fun too was those guys let us take control of the match. I remember one time we were in the ring with all four of us getting ready to start a match at a house show and Shawn was yelling at us telling us what he was going to do and Lance looks straight over at him and says “we are the f—ing heels, we will tell you what to do, shut up and listen” and they both started laughing and said okay. They were confident in their abilities and they were confident in us that we could go out there and not run them over and we could make them look good and they did and they let us work. When we got in the back they would come up to us and they would tell us what was good and what we needed to work on and what we needed to expand on and that kind of knowledge was priceless. We are talking two of the top guys in the business and for them to be coming back to us and telling us what we need to do to get better and giving us advice, it doesn’t get any better than that.
Being excited to be winning the WWE World Tag Team Championship: I was. Lance had been around the WWE longer and knew that it was just another stepping stone. For me it was huge vindication. For being the first guy to come out of Harley’s school and get a WWE contract and go up and be a champion on TV is extremely vindicating for me to come home and lay the tag title on Harley’s desk and say this is all that hard work you’ve been investing in me. It was very exciting and super cool to be not only a champion but I am a champion of the number one wrestling company in the world. Those are things that nobody could take away from you, well except Vince could because he did it to Hogan and Benoit for awhile.
Dropping the tag belts so quickly to Big Show and Kane and being in the ring with two legit monsters: It was in the beginning of my time at WWE so to be honest with you I didn’t know those guys very well and again to be honest with you, I was scared. I was scared out of my mind because what am I going to do with two guys that are just so big and strong that you can’t do anything unless they say okay. In that match I went in kind of hesitant. It’s not only a regular match but it’s a Hardcore match and I have to hit these guys with heavy objects and expect them not to rip my head off intentionally. So it was a little bit nerve wracking and on top of the fact we knew we were losing the titles and we had only had them for four weeks and they were going to take them off of us and it didn’t seem to make sense to us and we thought that we were in the dog-house. But in the same sense it was exciting to get in the ring with Big Show and Kane, those are matches I can put under my belt and look at 90% of the guys that I’ve got and say you’ve never been in the ring with those two ever, not even one of them. So it’s nice to have that under my belt too.
The untimely passing of his tag team partner, Lance Cade: The way I found out was, when I woke up my wife was sitting next to me on the bed and my kitchen manager of my bar and grill was sitting at the end of my bed, so when I wake up and see them, my kitchen manager who is also a wrestler I’ve trained I asked him what happened to Harley? Harley is up there in age so that was my first assumption. My wife said it wasn’t Harley and said it was Lance and I’m still half asleep so I think it’s a f—ed up joke. I grabbed my phone to see what time it was and HBK had sent me a text and said CALL ME ASAP. I’ll never forget the words he said, “Kid I’m sorry, he’s gone”. I’m not afraid to admit it, I dropped to my knees and cried like a big old baby. We are talking about the most solid of dudes, a good person and not too mention the man has got two little girls that he has left on this earth and I was wrecked. I talked to Lance’s Dad and that in itself was a tough deal, he was the one that found Lance and I couldn’t imagine ever finding my son blue, dead on the floor. I was a Pallbearer at his funeral which I still crack jokes that that big SOB there’s eight guys carrying that casket and we are still struggling and you son of a bitch you are still sandbagging us even in death. Just a little joke to try and lighten the mood but after that there is a certain amount of emptiness.
Trevor Murdoch also discusses what a dream match of him and Harley Race vs. Cade and HBK might be like, his run in TNA as a Dupp and Jethro Holliday, his best memories of WWE, getting a singles push and training students at his new wrestling academy.
Be the first to comment