By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Christian Cage
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
On choosing to sign with AEW: “I think we [myself and WWE] were back and forth a little bit and we never got as far as numbers or anything like that. I think it was more like scheduling stuff like what I was willing to do. I think we were trying to get some traction there. A friend of mine, Jon Moxley, called me and we were talking and when he found out that I wasn’t signed he was blown away by that. He said ‘You should have a conversation with Tony Khan.’ I was like, I don’t know. And he said, ‘Well, you’re actually an idiot if you don’t, you hold all the cards here.’ He said ‘You have the ability to pick where you refinish your career. You should at least have a conversation don’t you think?’ I said ‘If Tony wants to talk to me then I would love to have a conversation with him.'”
On the conversation with Tony Khan: “It was that day, it was a Wednesday, they were doing TV that day. When their show was on I got a text from Tony saying ‘Hey, how are you?’ I said ‘I’m great, how are you?’ He said ‘Should we talk?’ I said ‘I think we should.’ So he called me the next day and we talked on the phone for almost three hours. Halfway through that call, I knew that AEW was the place for me. So that’s basically how it all came to fruition was through that one phone call and then we talked one other time later in the week and that was it.”
On the hype around his signing: “You know how wrestling fans are, right? Nothing’s ever good enough. So when my name was announced, there were some people that were thinking it was going to be somebody else, maybe hoping it was going to be somebody else. I mean, there were a lot of people who were happy it was me too. But when you do something like that, that’s not a surprise. When you hype something, you’re giving people the opportunity to have an opinion. Either good or bad and they’re gonna voice that after. I heard all those things that were said after, that maybe it wasn’t big enough for the hype and all those sorts of things.
“When we were doing these press conferences after I took the TNT Championship, which was basically thrown on the scrap heap, and I revived that title to make it at one point, I’ll die on this hill, that it was as prestigious, if not more prestigious than the world title when I had that run. We were main eventing WrestleDream with it. We were sitting in the scrum after and I had my opportunity to, there were people and there’s a lot probably a lot of people in the room that thought that the signing was overhyped, and I just wanted to make them eat their words.”
“Like I said, when you promote something you give people a chance to be let down. They are going to be happy or let down, either or. If I just showed up out of the blue as a surprise, the universe probably would have been like ‘Oh, this is amazing!’ But when you give people a choice it changes things. I understand why Tony did it, because he is a promoter and he wants to get people to tune in.”
On when he might retire and how long is left on his contract: “I always said that I would do it till it wasn’t fun, that was my barometer on it. How can I not be having fun right now? I have no timeline, I signed a contract. I think I have another three years left on this contract. So we’ll get to the end of that, and then see what happens. But you know, I feel like I have a lot of knowledge. I feel like I don’t know everything, but I know a lot. And I feel like I think the business differently and I layout matches and I see matches differently than other people do. I would like to, at some point, when the time is right obviously to give back to the business that has done what it’s done for me.”
On telling Adam Copeland “Go f— yourself”: “When he hugged me and most of the time, 99.9 percent of the time, you’d hear somebody say yes or no. I wanted to leave people’s jaws on the floor with my response, something so out of left field that they weren’t gonna believe that was my response to my childhood lifelong friend. Closer than friends, brothers. I just wanted something that would just get people talking, and it did. I expected it to be big, I don’t know if I expected to be as viral as it was. I was at a Tool concert. I went in to watch soundcheck and the guitarist Adam Jones, I could see him whispering to his security guy that knew that I was there. And he pointed over to me. He’s playing, getting ready for his big show. He looks at me and goes ‘Go f— yourself’ from the stage. Yeah, it resonated with people.”
>>“You know how wrestling fans are, right? Nothing’s ever good enough.<<
Yep, and they also have a tribal mentality…"OMG AEW SUCKS!" if you like WWE, and "OMG WWE SUCKS!" if they like AEW. Most pathetic part? Some still watch the "other" show, whichever that is, JUST to find things to complain about, and even MORE pathetic, some don't even watch and just come to sites like this to bash the "other" show. So sad.
On a sidenote, I'm surprised he has 3 years left….I figured he'd do a 2 year or 3 year contract, TOPS, but good for him.