By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Jimmy Yang
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com
On Pro Wrestling NOAH: “ NOAH took off and they’re like taking off big, then Mrs. Baba, she was a genius, you know? She had the idea, Muta, Kojima, Kendo Kashin, The Young Dragons. When I first debuted for All Japan, places were crazy, like the Korakuen Hall sold out, Budokan sold out, like business was crazy and business was so good. When you get good business, you run a lot of shows, right? I remember we had a three-week tour, 21 days, we had 19 shows. Every house was packed. It was, you know, basically the Muta, Kojima, Kendo Kashin, and the Young Dragons. We did the invasion angle to All Japan and business is good. We was running the Budokan every month, you know, as a 15,000 seat arena. And with that, when Mrs. Baba kind of brought All Japan, when NOAH left, All Japan went down, when Mrs. Baba brought Muta and Kojima and us, business came back up and then it was like kind of neck and neck for a long time.”
On working for WCW: “My time in WCW, the last few years in WCW, I didn’t know shit; putting structure to a match, psychology, character, everything. I just was very athletic and can do some cool moves. And I’ve had some awesome dance partners with ‘The Hurricane’ Shane Helms, Kaz Hayashi, Jamie Noble, Evan Karagias. Luckily, I had those guys around me to say, Hey, yeah, Jimmy, come in here, do your cool thing here. Do your cool thing here. Do your cool thing here. I think about those two years at WCW that man, I didn’t know nothing. The stuff that I know now.”
On All Japan Pro Wrestling: “In the tag league, we were supposed to win it, win the tag team titles, All Asian Tag Team Titles, then I had a bad business disagreement with All Japan and then they, I got my ass beat by Muta and Arashi. There’s a lot of things that were going on, you know, Jasmine was born, I was getting homesick because I was getting baby sick. And then with All Japan, with some promises about pay and a video game, and it was like a bad time. And I kind of needed to reach out to WWE to see if I can come back as Akio.”
On the WCW cruiserweight style: “ Arn Anderson and Eric Bischoff told us that, like, ‘Hey, you know, we don’t really care about the wrestling match. We want you guys to go out there, and be like a car crash, you know, like when, when you’re driving down the street, you see two cars crash, like, like, you can’t take your eyes off it. That’s what we want you to do. You know?’ And then I remember stopping and asking him and say, ‘Hey, I got a question. It’s like, don’t people die in car crashes?’ Yeah, but it’ll be good for business, you know, like if something happened, you know, it’s good for business. I was like, people will be watching it, talking about it. And I was like a 18, 19 year old kid like, Oh yeah, yeah, yes, sir. We’ll do whatever you want. Like Yeah, you know, jump off the ladders and all that craziness.”
Other topics include breaking into the business, NWA, Billy Corgan, NOAH, Jazz being the first female gajin in their history, WWE, WCW, TNA, AEW, AJPW, and more.
Be the first to comment