By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
“Andrew Thompson Interviews” with guest Kaun
Host: Andrew Thompson
Full interview available at YouTube.com and PostWrestling.com
Feels Shane Taylor Promotions made trios wrestling relevant while they were ROH Six-Man Champions: Oh, yeah, we made history with that [Shane Taylor Promotions’ run with the ROH Six-Man Tag Titles] and I don’t think the trios titles got as much respect as they deserved. I think people looked at them like a secondary title, but yet we were the only ones who were truly defending those belts it seemed like. Every TV taping we told them, ‘We’re taking these on the independents and defending them. If you don’t have any six-man teams here that can beat us, then we’re gonna go find our own competition if you’re not gonna bring that competition for us.’ And, honestly in my mind, other than like the MexiSquad holding those belts and they never defended them over the COVID period, we have the longest reign in my mind. We’re gonna go down in history as the greatest six-man unit in history and I’ve said this before, we made six-man wrestling relevant again. So, I stand by that claim.”
The moment at Final Battle when Shane Taylor Promotions, Kenny King, Eli Isom, World Famous CB, and Caprice Coleman stood in the ring with their fists in the air: “I don’t think I realized the impact of what we were doing until like two days later, because when you do wrestling poses, it’s always like the fist in the air. Like okay, Black Power, fist in the air and I know for me specifically, with my background, my Dad’s from Cameroon, so and I’m biracial. My mom’s from a small town in Wisconsin. I never grew up with Black cultural things. I never really understood those things. They went over my head because my Dad’s an immigrant. So I grew up around afro-centric stuff, music, food. I had no idea what, I don’t know, these iconic Black shows are, I don’t know. But just seeing the impact that we have had on kids, specifically, that is huge to me because I know — one of the reasons why I wanted to get into wrestling is because I never saw anyone like myself really doing this. Like you had Farooq, you had The Rock and Booker T, but The Rock was never positioned as a Black wrestler. It was always like his Samoan heritage. I know probably like Rikishi, there’s a couple others that I can’t remember at the moment. But like, seeing how far we’ve come now and seeing your peers like Big E, Kofi [Kingston], Bobby Lashley, seeing [them] at the highest level in this business and still at this age, I’m getting tears when they win championships because again, I never saw that stuff growing up. It’s just so profound. Like this stuff is really changing people’s lives. I’m seeing that we’re like people’s banners on social media and I’m like, ‘That was just a pose to me’ but this is so much more for so many more people so that kind of puts some weight on your shoulders, but to see the impact that you have and that you can make in this business for people, I mean that’s life changing.”
On his AEW Dark and AEW Dark Elevation experiences, says Mark Henry has been a big supporter of his for years, and discusses feedback from Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels: “So I was actually supposed to wrestle Frankie [Kazarian] the first time but his flight, something happened with his travel so he came to the show late. It’s funny because I’m like a huge fan of Andrade [El Idolo]. I was a huge fan of his in NXT and I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m wrestling this dude.’ But I’ve been watching AEW Dark since they started and I’ve been studying these match structures and I know they don’t get a lot of time and I think a lot of people do a lot of stuff that doesn’t really mean too much. So in my mind, all right, I’m like, ‘I’m just making a moment. I’m just making a moment.’ When I was working with Andrade, fortunately we didn’t do too much because why? It doesn’t mean anything. There’s only three or four minutes. If I’m trying to show off my physicality and make a moment. This dude pulls my hair, I slap the shit out of him. He can slap me back, but, I make sure I had that moment and look, I’m not here to play either. This is my opportunity to try to get signed.
“Came to the back, Mark Henry’s been like a huge fan of mine for a couple of years, so I talked to him briefly. He put me over on commentary too, so I definitely appreciate that. He’s a legend so, him saying that I have a great physique and I’m an athlete, thank you. Same thing with Kazarian… talking to him about the way that I was trained by Joey Mercury and he was at ROH right when — right when he left ROH, that’s when I got signed there, so I briefly crossed paths with him. But same thing with him, ‘Hey, we don’t have a lot of time. Let’s take this slow, let’s make this work, let’s show this struggle, let’s make this mean something because that’s gonna be so much more important to these people than just like doing all this stuff.’ I don’t even wrestle like that. I’d rather show off my physicality and came to the back, same thing, Mark Henry loved it, Kazarian liked it, [Christopher] Daniels liked it so, I think I’m going back for a couple more opportunities. Hopefully some good things come out of that. But it’s been great. I know a lot of those people from ROH, I know some people in the office, I got to meet people. Surprisingly, they remember me when I was at ROH when they were there. So it’s like a great vibe, it’s cool to see people like Austin Gunn, Fuego Del Sol and catch up with people so, hopefully good things happen in the next few weeks.”
On the future of Shane Taylor Promotions post-ROH (agrees it can tasking to move five people at once to the same location on the indies): “Oh, yeah, I think the biggest thing we run into sometimes is like costs honestly [moving all of Shane Taylor Promotions around at the same time]. Definitely traveling places, but it’s — we’re a collective, right? It’s like five people so a lot of these indie shows, they don’t have the funds. I understand where that could be possibly a struggle. We have talked about it. If anything, we try to keep S.T.P. together. I understand the politics — not the politics but like the struggle of bringing five people into wherever. But I’ve said this with them, if people get opportunities [at] places, why wouldn’t you support your brother getting these opportunities? And this opens the door. Like you can’t help people get into the door if the door’s closed, so someone could open that door for you, then you can help pull your brothers through.”
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