By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Ethan Page
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
The scariest moment in his career: “That coffin match was, I think it still is taking time off my career, that one was rough. It was easily the scariest moment of my career. So wild last night, I asked Matt Hardy, I was like, hey, what’s the one thing that happened in your career that was easily the scariest moment? Like, what was that thing? And while he was thinking about it, someone was like, well, Page, what’s yours? And I was like, oh, laying in the coffin. The coffin is closed the lid shut. I have no clue what’s happening. If I’m gonna get hit when I’m gonna get hit. I’m just [thinking] thank God the match is over that was extremely painful. But also, I’m alone in this box, no one’s talking to me. It’s not like I have something in my ear. And then here comes this body crashing through this box and it’s landing right on my knees and like I’m in the fetal position, which is not something you want to be in just to be cramped in the box. Anyway, that was the scariest thing for me. He said it was when Jeff Hardy jumped off in Orlando to Swanton him through the table that ended up turning him into Broken Matt. He said the anticipation of how high he was in the air. He’s like, I’m gonna die. He’s gonna kill me and break my ribs. But yeah, being in that box was the scariest thing ever in my career, and probably will be ever.”
On American Top Team: “I mean, we had Andrei Arlovski, who was one of my favorite mine and my father’s favorite UFC fighters. So that was like, mind-blowing to me. Dude, he was so jacked and he had the coolest mouthpiece with the fangs. He’s such a badass. So we had him and then we had Junior dos Santos, and then we had Paige VanZant and all three ended up wrestling. All three brought something completely different to the table and a completely different perspective to the table.
“Out of all three, I have my fingers crossed and I pray every day that JDS gets back into professional wrestling. He is one of the most naturally charismatic people out of all three of them. And this is not a knock on anyone. He picked it up the fastest. The timing, the footwork, everything, the presentation and the fact that he understood that we were putting on a show. And the first time we all went, I think it was we jumped Lance Archer or on the stage or it was just all of us in the ring talking trash. I can’t remember but Junior ended up coming to the back and he was ecstatic. What is this? He’s like, they were yelling at me and I started yelling back. There’s another booing me And he’s like, then they gave it more back. He’s like, this was the best. Like right away he got it and he was like, Okay, how do I do this? Okay, what do we do this? How do I do that? Well, I want to learn this. Like he was the best out of the three I hope he comes back to wrestling. He’s a natural showman. And one of my favorite dudes, just the nicest, nicest dude.”
On requesting to be a part of Ring of Honor: “If I’m putting something out [on YouTube], it’s something that inspired me. And also, I’ve decided to kind of, once I realized that like the last time we did an interview, I was doing American Top Team stuff, things were going fantastic. Not to say that I’m not happy. I just noticed a change in my career and I realized that I really needed to start focusing on professional wrestling more and dedicating myself to that, which is actually why I requested to do the Ring of Honor stuff because our roster has grown so big that the opportunities to be physically active in the ring come a lot less. And that’s just the nature of the beast, Tony [Khan] wants to have the best wrestlers in the world, and I commend them for it, we have them all. But the matches come less. So I wanted to be more active. And as I age, I started to notice that my body was starting to feel a little bit tighter. And when you’re not wrestling as often your body is just adjusting differently. So I was like, okay, dude, you’re either going to end your career by just getting stagnant and fatter and more depressed. And like, I could have definitely kept continuing to do the YouTube videos and selling ads through an agency and I was doing very well and things were great. But that was kind of my full-time job. And then everything else kind of took a backseat in the trajectory of that, if that makes any sense.”
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