Ace Darling on the wrestler who knocked him out, working with Ice Train, Jim Cornette, training at “Iron” Mike Sharpe’s secret training school, working with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall

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By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Ace Darling
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com

On “Iron” Mike Sharpe: “He didn’t want the WWF to know he had a school, cuz if he did, he would’ve told them. And the reason we all started doing TV was I graduated. So I started training in February of ’92. I graduated high school June of ’92, but the first week in July of ’92, they came to Asbury Park and Tony Garea was in the crowd. He was working behind the scenes. So I went up to him and I introduced myself and I said, you know, ‘if you ever need job guys, I’d be more than happy to work for you guys.’ And he said, ‘Oh, Mike Sharpe has a school?’ So the next day in class, Mike Sharpe was like, ‘Who told Tony Garea I have a school?’ That’s me. So he never confirmed the fact that he didn’t want the office to know he had a school. But if he wanted them to know he had a school, he would’ve told him he had a school.”

On Jim Cornette: “Cornette would always do what he could to get myself and Crowbar booked whenever he worked for Dennis [Coralluzzo] in any Northeast shows, he would work with us, always gave us great advice. I can’t say enough nice things about Jim Cornette. He was just, if you’re respectful of pro wrestling and you appreciate the journey someone like him has been on to better the pro wrestling business, and you treat it with respect and you are all ears and you want to be better and you have decent gear and you’re in decent shape, Jim Cornette will have all the time in the world for you.”

On working for WWF: “Matt Borne knocked me out with a punch behind the ear, but pretty much every, the Headshrinkers were just a night off. They were amazing. I worked Samu probably 15 times because of the indie matches, but the Headshrinkers themselves, I worked with I think three times on TV and I took the big splash. He wasn’t Rikishi size at the time, but Fatu is still a big boy. I wrestled everybody though. If you were a heel during that time, I pretty much worked with you.”

On wrestling Ice Train: “Ice Train took probably ten years off my life, wrestling him. Oh, God, it was so hard to wrestle and so big and so strong. So he hits me with a clothesline, like ere’s my head. Okay. Hits me here. And instead of being able to take a back bump like this, you know, I’m standing up back bump, hit me so hard. This is my head. I landed like this. Oh my God. Backwards. He hits me backwards on top of my head. I swear I’ll take a bump for you, if you hit me not so hard, Ice Train. It was so hard wrestling him that like when we got booked the second time and it was me, this time was me and Crowbar versus him and Joe Gomez. I was almost excited because I knew Crowbar now experienced the torture of getting hit so hard by Ice Train. So at least I could share that with him. Ice Train said, ‘Oh, remember that move?’ I forgot what he called it. He goes, ‘you remember my finish?’ I go, ‘Oh, the one where you jump…’ I swear. I said this word for ward, you can ask Crowbar when you see him next. He’s like ‘you remember my finish?’ I go, ‘Oh, the move where you jump as high as you can. And you come down and break my sternum? Yeah. I remember that move.’ It was torture. It was not fun.”

Wrestling The Outsiders in WCW: “Oh, yeah. Wrestled [Scott] Hall and [Kevin] Nash, and I knew Nash and Hall from WWF TV. I wrestled Nash a few times as Diesel and wrestled them, got squashed by them. And then two weeks later, I heard we were wrestling the Steiners. So we get to the airport and we were like 20. We couldn’t even rent a car, so we’d get to the airport and there were no Ubers back then, so we’d get to the airport and we try and figure out how we’re gonna get to the arena. We either make friends on the plane, we try and find one of the boys in the airport, bum rides with them. Sometimes you can walk; one time we walked, I mean, it was, you do what you can. You’re 22 years old trying to make your way in WCW. So we’re walking to the airport. I’m like, how are we going to ride? I hear, ‘yo’, I look and there’s Kevin Nash sitting there in one of the seats, like, ‘What are you boys doing?’ ‘We’re just trying to get a cab to the hotel’. He’s like, ‘you’re with me’. So he got the cab. He’s like, ‘you’re working with us tonight’. I go, I think we’re wrestling the Steiners’. He goes, ‘Who do you think books around here?’ He goes, ‘You’re wrestling us tonight.’ I said, ‘All right.'”

Other topics include breaking into the business, the New Jersey independent scene, SMW, ECWA, Diesel, Shawn Michaels, his YouTube channel “Wrestling Then and Now”, and more.

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