By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
PWMania interview with guest Bobby Fish
Interview conducted by Lewis Carlan
Interview available at PWMania.com
On being a free agent: “Right now, I’d say I’m really kind of enjoying free agency. So a couple things that popped up that I would not have been able to do should I have been with a larger company the way that I have been for the past decade or so. I fought on the Floyd Mayweather undercard in Dubai in November. So I actually had my first professional boxing match after 20 odd years in professional wrestling. Prior to that I had three amateur kickboxing fights, but they were kickboxing. Kickboxing and boxing are very different things. That very much fell in my lap and wasn’t really on my radar, let’s say at the beginning of the year or the end of the year before. If things had worked out with AEW or I was with WWE, I would not have been able to take that fight. So that was an opportunity. Something that I really can’t put a value on. They flew my agent over, they flew my coach over, they flew my wife over. So I got to spend a week in Dubai. Yeah, to have missed out on that would have kind of sucked. That alone has helped me to appreciate this time. Obviously, the security of a regular contract is always attractive. But yeah, right now I’d say I’m enjoying free agency.”
On a possible ROH return: “Ring of Honor is definitely a place that will always hold some space in my heart and the things that I love about the industry. That’s the place where Kyle [O’Reilly] and I got to grow as a team. I’d say that was probably the most important part of my maturing process when it came to being a professional wrestler was the time that Kyle and I started doing Red Dragon and that I think really formed who I would become as a performer. And that’s where I found my lane. I think Kyle had a similar experience. Ring of Honor, being that place and New Japan, in a way as well. Ring of Honor would always be someplace that would interest me. I love the fresh coat of paint that it seems to have been given. I love to see a guys like Samoa Joe back there doing the things that he’s doing. Claudio Castagnoli, doing the things that he’s doing.
“I’ve been a huge fan of Samoa Joe since longer than Samoa Joe would even remember. He was one of the first independent wrestlers, we’ll call it that, non-WWF guys, that I became aware of that really captivated me. I was cutting my teeth as an independent and getting reps for Pro Wrestling Noah. But here, I saw this big Samoan dude way more athletic than he’s supposed to be. He had legitimate martial arts skill. I knew that I had legitimate martial arts skill. And I was trying to figure out how it was to fit into my pro wrestling and it’s a process. I would tell anybody that would be coming up trying to do something similar to that it doesn’t just happen, and you want to kind of get your basis of your pro wrestling, it’s up to you to add your flavor to it. And the flavor I knew all along was that I wanted it to be martial arts. But I didn’t know how to integrate that. Joe was one of the first guys that I saw, who was finding that balance of integrating martial arts into his pro wrestling.”
His current relationship with Tony Khan: “I mean, as far as I know, unless he’s told something different, I’ve always had what I would like to consider a good relationship with Tony. Tony is in that company. He’s dare I say spread thin. Like, he’s only one man. He’s got a lot of people pulling at him from different directions. So I will say for myself in that company, I tried for the most part to do my job and kind of flew under the radar. I would request time if it was needed. But I tried not to be a pain in the ass about it. I would hear murmurs about this person or that person being a pain in the ass. I don’t know, sometimes I think the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Maybe that is prevalent in the industry many times, but I’m just not comfortable being that guy. I tried to try to get the time when I could and if it wasn’t there, it just wasn’t there.”
His thoughts on Triple H and WWE: “I’ve made no secret about how fond I am and was of the time that we spent working for Hunter. Vince McMahon’s name was on the checks, but when we were working for NXT, Hunter and Shawn Michaels, they were the guys. They were the coaches that we played for. I will liken it to that because of my years playing football in high school and in college. And that being such a big part of my life. There were coaches I had over the years that I wanted to play for. As much as I wanted to play well for myself, I wanted to play well for them too. And I kind of liken it to that, working under Hunter and Shawn. We would come through the curtain and we were kind of, I don’t want to say they’re their project but we were their guys, we were Hunter’s. Some people nicknamed us Hunter’s Horsemen. I take such pride in that because I was a fan of the same timeframe, as Hunter and Shawn from a pro wrestling standpoint, the NWA, the Crockett years, with the Horsemen, and the WarGames and all of those things.”
Other topics include his future, the differences between Triple H and Tony Khan, the creation of Red Dragon, Impact Wrestling, and more.
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