By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Stephen DeAngelis
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com
On working for ECW: “When I went out there, of course, the fans did not know who I was, so they were merciless. There was a guy in the front row screaming ‘ring announcer, I F your mother’, and of course the camera guys are right there and they’re shooting and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, they’re gonna throw this guy out cuz it’s getting picked up by the camera. But the fans are gonna turn on me cuz they’re gonna think I had him… I was the one who had ’em thrown out.’ So I went and stopped. I went and before the next match, I went and I said, ‘ladies and gentlemen’, and I stopped just knowing that if I took a beat, he’d say it. So he screamed, ‘I F your mother.’ I said, ‘Everyone, excuse me for a second.’ And I went outta the ring with the microphone and called for the camera guy and I said, ‘Do you have something you want to say to me?’ And I put the mic right in his face and over the mic, he screamed, ‘I F your mother.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Dad, you’re drunk. Go home’. He got the attention he wanted. He shut up the whole rest of the night and Paul said, ‘I want to use you as much as I can use you.'”
On Paul Heyman: “Paul was very instrumental in me getting to certain wrestlers and making connections and introductions and things. And Paul at the time was very worried that if the word got out, that it would blow his image as a heel. I say, Paul, don’t worry about it, it’s fine. One evening in New York, the Starley Foundation held a sports banquet at Madison Square Garden. And they honored Paul, he was one of the five honorees and all these people who’d been very active and they honored Paul. And Paul was just like, number one shocked. He wasn’t too upset cuz it’s, it’s an honor. But you know, he’s done so much that he just never took credit for, never made public.”
On Axl Rotten: “I would do anything for those guys because I saw, as I said, you know, I saw the best in them. And it continued even after ECW had finished and I would be on independent shots with them or whatever. I was in a car, we were driving through New England and a hurricane came through. And my wife and I were pregnant with my daughter, who’s now 24. We showed up at this hotel, and of course the hotel sold out and whatever. And it turned out that there were a bunch of workers who were in, who had rooms in that hotel that night. They had done the show and they had rooms that night, and Axl Rotten saw me there with my very pregnant wife, and gave up his hotel room, and slept on the couch.”
On New Jack: “I remember New Jack had done some shows and then he had one of, he had one of those incidences where he was down south and he missed a show. He had gotten outta jail and he came up and I walked in. I saw him in the dressing room in the arena, and I walked up to him and I said, ‘welcome back.’ I said, ‘you were really missed.’ And he looked at me like, and half hour later I’m sitting and I’m putting, I’m getting dressed and I feel this tap on my shoulder and I turn around, it was Jack, and he said, ‘I have to ask you a question. When you said that I was missed, you meant that?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I did. I did.’ I said, ‘You always add a lot to the show. And it’s always, it’s always fun seeing you.’ I say, ‘Cuz you make the locker room laugh.’ I said, ‘It’s important’. I said, ‘Beyond what you do out there, you add a lot to the, you add so much the morale here in terms of just keeping the vibe right.’ I said, ‘So you were missed.’ And he just like nodded his head and he walked away. And from then on he’d come. Every time I walk into the building, he’d come up to me to see how I was.”
On The Bloodline storyline: “Paul was always a big movie fan, and I think Paul realized with the Covid situation that while everyone was talking about being cinematic, that wound up be being like special effects and shots and crane shots and Paul instead, he had no audience to play to. So he wasn’t trying to get a reaction. So what he did was he focused on the reactions of the people who he was working with and he made those characters have depth and life and they can go any number of ways. The Bloodline could be around for ten more years in some way or another. He will find a way, he will find a film that influences him. He will remember something from an old TV series. He’ll remember something from an episode of The Twilight Zone. He has that intellect and I think that… it’s not surprising to me because he’s always gonna go down the path that no one else is gonna think to go down.”
Other topics include breaking into the business, Paul Heyman, ECW, New Jack, Balls Mahoney, Axl Rotten, being a Broadway producer, being a casting director, and more.
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