By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
“Andrew Thompson Interviews” with guest Mance Warner
Host: Andrew Thompson
Full interview available at YouTube.com and PostWrestling.com
Warner on Matt Tremont’s retirement from pro wrestling: “It was awesome, man. I was watching. I was sitting in here drinking and I was watching that one. It was him and R.S.P. [Rickey Shane Page], and you know, Matty’s been doing this shit a long time and he’s another one of them guys that I always say, ‘He’s a legend.’ He’s been everywhere, he’s done everything. So you feel kind of bad because for me, I’m going like, ‘Well I know he’s happy to be done with it. He ain’t gotta be on the road, you ain’t gotta be beating your body up.’ But as a fan, because we’re still fans at the end of the day, I’m sitting there like, ‘Well I don’t want him to stop because I want to fight him.’ I want another fight. Me and him, I want to get him [in] there again. I want him at GCW, I want guys like him to be there and give advice to all of us and to the next crop of guys and keep it going, to pass down the knowledge. I think that’s something that kind of over time goes away from pro wrestling too. A lot of people just think they know everything when — people forget they got to pass that knowledge on. So, I’m happy for him but at the same [time], you’re like, ‘Damn it, I want a couple more fights’ so…”
On the atmosphere in the locker room at GCW events: “GCW to me, I just did an interview recently out there [on] a podcast for IWTV, and I was talking about GCW as kind of like a buffet of pro wrestling. It’s got everything and everybody watches it. I always say everybody watches it man, because everyone from GCW — I’m not saying every single person. But all the big companies watch it and they go, ‘Oh, we gotta get that guy, we gotta get this guy, gotta get that guy.’ We are basically the modern-day ECW. We’re the company that wrestling fans that may not like what they see on TV, come to us and then they go, ‘That’s my f—ing place.’ So, for me, it was kind of I started going there and the locker room is a family.
“Everyone there helps each other out, everyone there watches out for each other. If you come into GCW and you got a bad attitude, you ain’t gonna stay there because it’s legit a family, you know? And going to back to ECW, it’s kind of like we’re on tour all the time. Every month, we may have up to three or four shows in different states and we fly all over and do these events so it’s that thing of like, if you look back to ECW, you always had RVD, you always had Sabu, you had The Sandman, you had The Dudleys and it’s just kind of that thing where at GCW, the roster, it rotates but you also have the mainstays like you’re saying. It’s always gonna have these guys and girls right here and then there’s gonna be some guys and girls that come in and mix it up but, like I said, it’s a buffet man. You always get a little bit of something different on each show so…”
On suffering a collapsed lung in 2019 during a match: “Well, it’s weird man because, it happens, I take a bump to the floor and I just thought maybe I did something to my ribs or something. I couldn’t breath for a second. So we keep going, I think there was a couple more minutes left, I get done with it and I get backstage and I kind of collapse and I just couldn’t breath at all. But still I’m thinking — because we’re crazy, we’re all nuts. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, I gotta get to the airport because I gotta go to Portland and do another show’ so I’m just trying to like, ‘Okay, I’ll lay here a little bit, I’ll get up and keep on moving.’ Eventually, people talked me out of it. They’re like, ‘Man, you’re f—ed up, you can’t go.’ So I ended up getting in a car, get back home, drove myself home. I had someone drive me halfway and then I got to my vehicle and I got to where I had to go. Me being stubborn, I just laid in bed and I was like, ‘Maybe I’m just sore. I’ll be okay.’
“Then eventually, fast forward, about a day and a half goes by and then, my family ends up talking me into going to get checked out and I just thought I’ll get checked out and I’ll be fine. I walked in and they did a — I think they did an x-ray and then they do all the checking around and shit and I remember the doctor looked at me and he was like, ‘How the f— did you walk in here? You got one lung. Your other lung is like a pancake.’ So they ended up cutting me open, they put the little tube in there and then they do what they gotta do and then I was in there for I believe a day and a half, and they said I was good to go, so then when they go to take the tube out, I start squirting out blood and shit.
“They’re freaking out and I had to stay there again and they put you on — whatever they shot in me just made me high as kite and I just watched TV all day but I just sat in the hospital but then you get that big ass bill, you gotta pay that off for the next 15 years, who knows, I don’t know but — now they got me for a while. But it’s one of those things where we all love this industry so much that, we’re okay with getting hurt, we’re okay with — we were taught, you gotta keep going, you can’t just stop, and even then it’s like, I rest up and I think I was out for a month and then I came back and my first match back was at Beyond Wrestling against Nick Gage in like a hundred thousand thumbtack match or something. You take no breaks I guess.”
where did GCW come from was it because people fell out with CZW?