By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
ROHStrong Podcast with David Arquette
Host: Kevin Eck
Interview available at ROHWrestling.com or Libsyn.com
Why he decided to wrestle again at 46 years old: “I knew it was an unfinished thing in my life. I didn’t want people to define me; I wanted to define myself and let people know who I am. Sort of take on the challenge, meet these wrestling fans, gain the respect of the guys in the locker room and just honor wrestling. I love this sport and I love it even more now.”
Why he made the documentary, “You Cannot Kill David Arquette,” which chronicles his return to pro wrestling: “I wanted to do it as a love letter to wrestling and to wrestling fans, but I did also want to do a film that spoke to the film audience. I also thought of it as an unauthorized sequel to Ready to Rumble. I tried to get Scott Caan to be in it, but he was like, ‘I don’t want to be in a documentary.'”
Whether making the film was cathartic: “It was. It captured my life at a place that I had been working toward for a long time, dealing with personal issues, abuse issues — substance and physical — and just kind of coming to terms with a lot of the pain that I had growing up and sort of what triggered me. I just ended up beating myself up for years and tried to escape and numb pain. All of that sort of came to a head during filming. It really captured a time in my life when I was going through an experience. Hopefully if anyone’s going through things like that they can find some strength from it.”
Why he did a backyard wrestling match at the beginning of his comeback: “We wanted to start at the bottom and work our way up into the independent scene. … Backyard wrestling was kind of just starting out when I became [WCW World] champion, but then I noticed that a lot of wrestlers like The Young Bucks and different people had experienced that growing up and becoming wrestlers, so we wanted to honor that and show the different worlds of wrestling.”
Whether any WCW wrestlers were upset about him winning the world title back in 2000: “Hugh [Morris] came up to me and he didn’t know what happened in the match. I told him, ‘They made me the champion.’ He goes, ‘This business. I can’t take this business.’ He was really pissed. I understood, but I didn’t think it was as big a deal as it was. I see it now, that people work for it so much and it has this lineage and it represents all the years of training and not being home for holidays with their families and all the kinds of stuff that you encounter on the road. So I get it now.”
Arquette also talked about nearly dying in a death match against Nick Gage, the former ROH World Champion he’d like to get in the ring with, wrestling under a mask in Tijuana, and more.
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