April 18, 2024 • 40 mins
A brand new weekly segment featuring some of our classic content debuts this week with one of our favorite interviews of all time, Mike Bucci, aka Nova. Nova is one of the most interesting stories to come out of ECW, and he shares all of the amazing things he has done since leaving the wrestling business as well as chronicling his journey with classic stories as told like only he can!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
Can you.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I don't know how I'm in here. I'm always back.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Here, not too far back, because then we don't want
to not hear him. So as oppose as we get
a lot of noble, then that's fine.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Can I just say I have not seen you in years?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It's five years? Why is this so zoomed in on me?
What the hell is going on?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
You're face cute?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
What kind of joint you're running here? All right? Let
me this is I didn't even do you want to start?
You want to do it straight? You want to do
a hot from here?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
All right?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
They go from here, and that's a hot intro.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
I'm not calling you Simon Dean ever, this is my
friend Nova from E c W everybody, because now this
is just between you and I, buddy, I have not
I have not seen you or talked to you honestly
in years, except for like text messaging.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, the same anywhere you're I come up. They're actually
coming here like two weeks to visit us for Olivia's birthday,
but I usually some time and sometimes at Christmas?
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Right, But I I left Facebook because I couldn't take
it anymore. And when I left there, you did you
totally he's such a dick. He will heal me, heal
me to no end. But I was you did.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Come on, you avoided that for a long time, like
like getting sucked into that subculture of the weirdos who
come after you guys, like the women of wrestling. You
actually did way better than most because you avoided it
for like tens.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, because I took a leave of absence for ten
years and you.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Didn't look for it either. Most of these marks, most
of these marquets look for it, so you didn't. Now
they have to pay to see you, It's true. Yeah, great,
give me a free means membership.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
OnlyFans dot com.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Give me a free breast code.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
If I knew how to do that, I would. I
don't even know how to do that. I don't even
know how to maneuver my page. Anyway, How have you been?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
What have you been up to? Let's let's start off
your gudea. How old is Olivia?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Olivia will be eleven years old on October twenty third.
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Do you remember when you guys just had Olivia and
you called me and you're like, hey, queen, what are
you doing?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And I go, I'm breasting and all, oh your hear
is you?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Olivia and Molly are around the same age, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
She's eleven and eight. Yeah yeah he's eight.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So is that crazy?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, they're they're getting too old too fasts.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
That's okay. I mean we age, well, we didn't. We
didn't come out as misfits and weirdo, you know what
I mean. Like, so that's just a natural what a
shock that we actually have normal lives and kids and
we didn't turn out to be dead drug addicts, weirdos, misfits. Yeah,
it happens.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
Every time I would speak to him, whether it be
on the phone or text or whatever, he would always say,
We're so normal.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We're like the most normal people in the locker room.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I'm like pretty much. And it wasn't Here's the thing
about it, It wasn't weird because nobody made, nobody ever
made anybody in E CW feel like they were an
outsider or like a piece of shit or anything like that,
because they didn't partake. You want to do your drinking,
your drugs, you're riting your craziness, whatever you did. No
one cared about any of that. It was the most
(04:01):
like weirdest non judgmental group of people I'd ever been
around in any setting, in anything I've ever done in
the real world.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Too, because we were accepting of their lifestyle and they
were accepting of ours. It just we were all friends.
It didn't matter what you did or what you didn't do.
We all just got.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Along, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, No one cared. No one was like, oh my god,
you didn't smoke, you're not cool, or you're not you're
not you're not yourn coke, or you're not ratting or
like what. No one cared. No one cared about any
of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Let's go back. Yeah, let's go back like before.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
E c W. So, for those who don't know, Nova
has a twin brother named Donnie B who I haven't seen.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Prob'll do your show one day, He'll come on your show.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I would like to have them on my show.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, I am.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
That's yeah. We need a few more sponsors before I
could start paying.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Let's start with one.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Let's start with one, exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
No, I have two.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Hey, Manscap Manscape doesn't uh you know that's those.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
And what else?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
No?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Our year anniversary, kid, we've been on the air for
a year now.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I had no idea this even existed until you contact
me a couple months ago and I was like, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Don't follow under this horrible Let's go back.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
So when you did you both get into wrestling at
the same time, did you guys like trained together?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
So we had a friend of ours name Rich. I
graduated high school in nineteen ninety me and Donnie. We
had a friend of ours name Rich And there was
a brand new wrestling school that opened up New Jersey
called Iron Mike Sharp's School Professional Wrestling. You don't know
who he is, go look him up, famous old timer
veteran Mike was awesome. So we used to go there
because Rich signed up and we would watching. We would
(05:53):
watch him train and practice because we were fans too.
So probably after about like two or three months of this,
Mike kept asking us to get into the ring. So
finally one day I tried it. You know, I was
like a little fat nerdy wrestling mark kind of I
was like, I'll give the shit, I don't care. So
I kind of liked it a little bit. Donnie b
tried a little bit. He never liked the physicality part
of it, but he was part of the school. He
(06:14):
got into like managing and being part of like the
wherever I went to do shows on the weekends, he
came to. So it was like myself, him, Rick Ratchet,
Devin storm a Starland, our whole rock o'dor all of
us together. We did all the Dino Santa shows. That's
where I first met Dreamer, a bunch of the North
(06:36):
East indie guys. Because that's how you started. Like you
went to a school, you bounced around, you sent your
tapes out to Dennis or Dino, or you worked for
down in Baltimore. You just worked for Tommy d and
Staten Island or Mike Dano like whoever had shows on
the weekend. Just get in a car and drive. You
brought your gear bag. If you got twenty bucks, maybe
you have to be on the Battle Royal, whatever the
(06:58):
hell you could be on, you know. So we were.
That's how we started. And Donnie has never gotten to
the physical part of it. It's not for everybody. And
then that's how you. I never met you before, U
before e c W. I doubt it. Like you didn't
start with garying them until when well.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
I started in ninety three with JJ Smith and I
trained with Stevie.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Okay, so you start like a year I started beginning
of ninety two, so a year after you never crossed
paths until E. C. Dub No.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I only went down to the arena to train.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
They had the you know, the ring that was in
the back, and I.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Mean that was honestly, that's how a lot of them
more like somebody had a building, a warehouse, a school
like something like that. I see these things now like
these stay in nice the training facilities, not even w
e s like other guys that have these amazing schools
and all these I'm like guys. I mean, Mike Sharp's
(07:56):
was the old boxing ring that got converted to a
rustling ring and we didn't know about it. So it
is a different time and we're not going to be
the old times that pound our fists and say hey
this is when we did it. But it was when
I tell you, it was different, it was different.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
And it's interesting you say that because I think about
this often too. Do you feel like, twenty twenty five
years ago, if it was that way, then do you
think you would have made it?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (08:24):
I don't really having to do the like the because
I watched I've seen them like the you know, the
girls and stuff go through the performance center and with
the drills and this and that and the other thing.
I was trained a lot different like for us. It
wasn't so like strict so to speak.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It was it was it was more that's what it
is now now it's like hey, Like when I came down,
it was part of OBW. It was Hey, eight thirty
in the morning, training more and more regimented, doing drills
and cardio and all that stuff, which I don't have
a problem with that. Like even now when I oversaw
the developmental system, I actually, you know, that's kind of
what we're moving towards. But I think the people now
(09:04):
it's easier to get into it, it's harder to stay
in it. Like it's easier to get signed, it's harder
to stay signed. So that's their penance, so to speak,
like getting signed off the street or they did another
sport or whatever hell they did before they before they
learned they had a lifelong dream or want to be
a wrestler. Brother, if this is what they have to
do to come in and be part of it, You're
(09:27):
doing drills and cardio and updowns and tackles and all that.
Ten thousand stuff because they're not doing any of this
stuff anywhere else, Like they're not getting matches, they're not
doing shows anywhere. So I mean that's the trade.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Off, right, But the way you see.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
You would have done it, we would have done it.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Mean the way you said you were a fan and
you would go and you would just watch right and
they said, oh, come in the ring. He said, come
in the ring. Would you have gone if you knew
like that? It was like this, like did he just
said get in the ring on a win? Right, and
you were like, yeah, let me try this.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, we would go all the time and watching Mike's Hey,
give it a shot. So I got the ring and
ran the ropes a little bit and then Mike helped
us out. Mike was not a uh, we didn't have
time to Hey, everybody, get there eight o'clock at night.
That's you know, the classes were later at night, and
none of the wrestling schools were like they are now though,
So yeah, what was it in the.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Back of your mind that you wanted to be in
this business?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I kind of thought it was pretty cool, but it
was so beyond like, you know, we had a dad
who had a garage door business this whole until he
passed away years ago. My mom was a stay at
home mom, like we had no relatives in the business,
no family. I sat at home watching Hogan versus Andre
at WrestleMania three, always a young Mark fan like it
was five 't ten at that point, two hundred something
(10:44):
pounds of like a little nerdy comic book, sci fi
nerdy fat kid. It's never a million years enter my
head that I could actually be a wrestler. Okay, So
for Mike's to jump in the ring in school around
it was cool, and for me it was, hey, this
is gonna be like my baseball soft ball like bowling
league kind of. Mike had shows it to school every
two weeks. That's where I first met Stide my Sharp shows.
(11:08):
So we would do those shows, and I was like,
this is it. This is never going to go I'm
gonna be like I was going to school for mathematics
and computer science. So I was like, this, that's what
I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna screw around with this
and I'm never ever gonna do anything with it. I
didn't care, like every time you ever got another milestone
of the business, at least when we were in it,
like you chalked it up to Wow, that's cool, man.
I can't believe I pulled that off. Like when I
(11:29):
stood in the ring of WrestleMania, I just kind of
looked around like that's it. Like I've just played for
the Yankees. There's nothing more than this. We accomplished the
grandest stage, so everything after that was shit. I mean
now the kids now, I do think for the guy,
the people that are in it now, I don't think
it's going to be as crippling to them or crushing
(11:50):
to a lot of them when they do eventually get
released or quit or move on like people that came
up in our era, which I think led a lot
to the pills, the alcohol, to the depression, all of that.
Because the spotlight got taken off of us. We didn't
get to be part of the life. Brother, we weren't
in it anymore. These fans, like I hate to use
(12:10):
this term, but like when I left the wrestling business,
it was it stung. I can it can it to
like getting divorced. So now if you if you love
that person when you got divorced, it really bothers you.
Like these people now, a lot of them, they got
in for a couple of years. Well, hell, they're in
three to four or five years and they're still like
thirty or thirty one. They got out, they got the
whole rest of their life. They're not gonna give a
shit that they were with the w NXT, whatever the
(12:32):
hell it was for two years. They shouldn't move on.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Do you remember do you remember the last show that
we did in Pine Bluff? And do you remember you
pulling up in the car next to me? Do you
remember what you did?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
No professional memory. I remember the show because it.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Was I'm crying, right, I'm so depressed. I'm crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
We all knew, we all knew everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, and everybody goes to the ring and everybody's having
a beer.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You hope a lot more than Oh so you really
did like you were an optimist all the way to
the end.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
I tried because Paul kept telling me, and Okay, So
I'm upset and I get in the car and we're
driving and Novill pulls up. I don't even know who
was in our cars. He goes like this, rolled down
the window. I rolled down the window and he starts
he goes, oh the we've come.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you were so sad.
It wasn't uncommon for e c W. Like I was
one hundred percent known as like the asshole, smart ass
smart alec.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Like you and I were always friends.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, of course we all were like nobody. Yeah, like
hated each other, even people and had the quote unquote
heat with brother. I never really hated any of them.
There was a couple of whom rubbed me the wrong way,
you know, and then but I never cared about it
years later, like to me, like Dreamers said at one time,
like the e CW heat died in e c W,
and I always felt the same way, like I just
(14:01):
never really, I don't know, man, it just never there.
There was no giant amount of enough money for me
to be so mad at somebody that I had stab
him in the back or finish them off for just
so incensed that they screwed me over for this pot
of gold, you know what I mean. It was just
it was fool gold. I mean, we were there for
the love of it. We all liked each other. We
(14:21):
had a great time. I've been asked way more in
my lifetime what was it like to wrestle at the
ECW Arena than I was ever asked about wrestling at
the Garden at a wrestle Mania and La and Tokyo
and any of it.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah, yeah, a lot to the table.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
A lot of the boys always say to me, you
know how lucky you are that you worked for ECW.
We would guess to work for ECW, like and I'm
just like I do.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah. There's a lot of guys who were fans or
in the business now, like guys I'm not gonna name
all the names. There's a shitload of guys who are
in the business now who I met over the years
who said to me their goal when they got into
wrestling was to wrestle for ECW, Like it wasn't to
be a W Superstars WW. Nobody ever. First of all,
nobody ever mentions WCW. Now that's not because we both
(15:09):
had a lot of friends that worked there. Oh of course.
Never had a single person that said to me, man,
I can't believe it. W W would have had a business
and that was it. Like never, Like there's talent on
the W roster right now, like main roster talent who
told me when they were growing up as kids that
they were huge ECW fans, that that's what they wanted
to wrestle.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
How did you get involved with ECW. You mentioned earlier
that you me and Stevie, you know, give you.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
A good in. We have a mutual benefactor in that
in Levy.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
So here's how it start. I was at a New
Jack City Wrestling show in New Jersey. We were all
there doing the show late ninety it was beginning of
ninety six. The main event on the show was Levy
versus Mikey. Mary, Kate was there, her mom was there,
Bella doing the TV shirts, everyone Money, everybody was there.
(16:00):
So intermission comes and I'm wrestling on the show, the
superhero Kate, the Outfit, the whole deal in a tag
match after are you super nov the whole deal? So
I met Lee and Pass and just like, Hey, what's
going on man at the show? I never met him before,
but Stevie was already teener with him and stuff. Hey,
Stevie was getting pushed at ECW Tag Team Champion all
(16:21):
this time because I went taking w Rena several times
as a fan, even though it's at Mike Sharps, just
like in the audience to see the show. Because Stevie
would get his tickets, and I was like, holy shit,
this is incredible. Never in a million years thought I'd
be there. So leeve he's on the show intermission, Bella
says to me, hey, Nova, Scotty wants to talk to you.
(16:41):
Because I was on early on the show. I'm like,
oh shit, what did I do wrong? And I only
knew him at this point. He's like Johnny Polo and
all that stuff and ring. He's like, oh my god,
why you want to talk to me? So he pulls
me aside. He's like, hey man, He's like, this superhero
thing isn't like are you serious with this or what?
It's like. This is like Adam West Batman kind of.
I go yeah. He goes, this is great. He goes,
get me a tape of just your ring. Entrance is
running around with the kids doing cartwheels and all that.
(17:02):
He goes, I want to show up to Paul and
Tommy and Taz. I'm making a little group in ECW.
He goes, I got Stevie there. He goes, We're getting
this big fat guy from Philadelphia named I'm gonna call
him the Blue MIENI from Yellow Submarine. And I had
no idea what the hell that was this is late
ninety five, beginning at the tape early in middle ninety five.
(17:22):
So I said, okay, I'll put the tape together. I
go home, and this is when you had to have
two VCRs to like record tape record. So I'm making
this highlight tape of me doing my shit, and Leevy says, hey,
you know, bring the tape up to Moon Dancers and
drop it off on me. I'm like, all right, no problem.
So I'm home and I'm looking at like the phone
book and all this. I said, what is Moon Dancers, Well,
(17:44):
it's the strip club. So I put the tape together,
and me and Donnie b and Rock o' dorsey we
go to Moon Dancers one night. To look now, imagine
us three walking in like our normal cities and all that,
walking into the Booby Club to go find me. Oh
my god. We walk in. There's Levy behind the DJ thing,
(18:06):
putting himself over doing whatever. Walk in. I give him
the tape. He says, oh, thanks a lot of kid,
the whole deal. I leave. Three days later, I get
home from Wendy's That's why I was working at the time,
and my mom's like, hey, there's some dynamic Raven or
something on the answer machine. He left you a message,
and I'm like, oh my god. Really, So he's like, yeah, hey.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
Kidd you know I saw your tape. You know, Taz
and Tommy and I really loved it. Man could come
on down to the next arena show and we'll see
what we can do for you. So I'm already freaking out, like,
oh my god. So the next arena show, I'd go
down there. And to this day, it was, besides Olivia's birth,
it was the scariest.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Moment in my life. Walking towards the entrance away where
it was and it was ron Ronnie Atlas was out there,
and I said, hey, can you go back there and
tell Raven and a guy named Nova's here for him.
So like five minutes later, Ronnie comes through the curt
and he goes, hey, come on back. I'm like, holy shit,
here there it is. I walk in the back. The
first one that came up through his Beulah. She's like, hey, hey,
(19:05):
I saw your tape too. I saw It's really funny.
You're the superhero, right, I'm like yeah. I was like, hey,
nice to meet you. And then Tommy came over eating
a hot dog. He's like, hey, Dino Santa, how you
doing because I knew him from Tom from Dinos. And
he hands me a hot dog and goes, uh, I
love your tape. Man. It's great. If you just want
to start showing up to the shows, we'll have your
car up to the ring with Scotty. You'd be part
of whatever the hell he wants to do with this
(19:25):
flock thing. Here's your first payday. And he had me
a hot dog and I was like thanks, and I
was I just started going to the shows doing the
flock stuff with Raven and Stevie and Meanie and we
were and looking back on it, we were nothing more
than the window dressing to his act. But and that's
what we were. I mean, Scotty brought a whole bunch
(19:46):
of us in, like we all a lot of us
got to be brought in. It's like extras. And then
through the hard work and what we did to get
ourselves over, we took the ball and ran with it.
We got off everybody. There were so many people that
would come to ECW and just kind of like showed up.
They tried to be part of the act. And you,
I mean, Jesus Christ, we can name a ton of
people like that, But that's how it all started.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
Do you feel like you said it earlier as people
just wanted to work in ECW.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You had a pretty good career in WWE. How did
you get Tommy's job in the off case?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
And which company did you like working for better? I,
because honestly, I want I was always I always. It's
gonna sound really crazy, but I'm telling you take this advice.
If you're listening to this, if you can be, try
to be successful outside the ring too, and not just
always come across as a wrestler. Like I always viewed
myself as someone who was in the wrestling business. I
(20:42):
never viewed myself as a wrestler. Brother I didn't. So
I was college educated, I was intelligent, I was well spoken,
I was regimented, and I always tried to not only
just worry about the working inside the ring. I worried
about the working outside of the ring, which carries over
into the real world. I tell him people all the time,
the real world doesn't work. If you learn how to
(21:03):
work the gimmick in the real world, you can get over.
That's all that matters. So I had been through OBW,
I've been through the system. I've been well traveled. I
knew everybody in the Independence. So when they were getting
ready to launch ECW, Tommy Dreamer in an office setting
was probably like somebody with a size twelve foot trying
to wear like a size five shoe. It just wasn't
(21:26):
a good fit. This is out of his mouth. He
hated it. The highlight of Tommy's day was walking around
Titan Tower with thumbtacks sticking him in his head to
walk into the offices of the other employees who were
there to freak them out, or taking pencils and throw
them in the ceiling and watch them a stick. But
Tommy helped out a lot of guys because you could
(21:46):
like good old boy a kind of back then still,
and the minute they were thinking about relaunching ec DUB,
I knew that Simon Dean I was kind of burnt
down on SmackDown. I kind of hate it going because
it just was a miserable place to be. There were
so many guys out maybe a hard time, and it
just allows in today's environment is apparently a million times better.
So I think a lot of the guys that are
(22:07):
now or should be very thankful what they had, but
there was a bunch of pieces shit I was around.
I hate it going, And they asked me the opportunity.
I says, you know what, if there's a chance to
be able to be behind the scenes and help out
young talent so they don't get lost in the mix,
to try to get him a shot, I took it.
So because I knew I was never going to be
a lifer either. I figured I'd be there for a
couple of years and maybe to move on. Like there
(22:28):
was no part I'm forty eight. There was no part
in any of my plan that ever said I'm gonna
be working in the pro wrestling business when I'm in
my forties. Ever, I never ever thought. I always wanted
to do more, always right, and I liked wrestling. There's
parts of WWF we like. I liked. I met some
lifelong fans friends there. It was cool and you know,
(22:50):
honestly we grew up. We were WV fans, Like that's
the place you always wanted to wind up. So so
nobody can ever tell us like something's impossible, because even
like when my employees do they say something's impossible, it
is that I hold up one of my action figures,
and I'm like, well, this was impossible. I'm like, getting
to twenty five new households for the month, that's not impossible. Guys.
This as like a fat Mark kid from Tom's Liver,
(23:12):
New Jersey. This was impossible. I mean you got to
push up from perspective, right. So, but I liked, I
love There's just something about ECW being part of it.
We just were all cool group. I hung out with
everybody from whether it was Van Dam or Sandman, the
top guys are talking to Paul or even travel with
Randy in the van or whatever the hell we were doing. Man,
(23:33):
we just all had a good time. There was never
we were all in our early late twenties, early thirties,
if that travel around having a good time. I mean,
you know, I didn't partake in a lot of the
craziness that everybody else. A lot of the guys did.
They had a lot more fun than I did in
that aspect. But I got to see the United States, man,
I got to travel. I had fun. We had a
(23:54):
great time.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Would you have left if the company continued.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I don't know, because like when they were getting ready
to collapse, we knew it was going south, Like before
the Pine Bluff show, I had already talked to Johnny
Ace who was in w W. Johnny As had called
me multiple times to bring me in the cruiseweight division,
so I knew East w F and I was like,
you know, Paul said, if something happens, he's gonna bring
us all in that kind of deal. That's cool, man,
(24:21):
and uh, you know, it is what it is. But
I was if they had kept going, me and C W.
Anderson would have feuded over the TV title. I would
because it right right when we collapsed, right when we folded.
I was in peak physical condition. I was over. I
had a huge following. I was getting one of the
best reactions of the night. I mean, that's just reality.
(24:41):
They go back and watch the pay per views, so
my music would hit the place we go ape shit,
and I was they just because they saw me go
from a flunky running around the ring with Scottie to
team with Meanie doing the BWO, the metamorphosis, through that
teaming with Chetty, all through that and now like the
fans felt like they took that five year ride with me,
so now it's getting ready to pay it off. Like
(25:03):
I was looking forward to wrestling Jerry Lynn and Van
Dam and like all those guys in legitimate matches, the
real matches where the fans would have bought the false finishes.
Not a ship would have been Nova from the Batwo
wrestling against Rob van Dam. It would have been like
Nova is kicking the kick ass Nova versus Rob Van Dam.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
I feel like we, you know, we had so much
experience at that point under our belt, and we had
so much more to give. And I think that's why
it hurt me so much the way it went under,
because a we hung on for dear life. We sunk
with the ship, right, we stayed, but we had come
so far and just all of us has We've grown
(25:44):
so much in that company, and we were all at
the top of our game, like you said, and then
it was just like the rug was pulled from under us,
and that is off to this day.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Imagine buying stocks, right, so let's envision all of us
are a stock, and we allow five year time, each
one of our stock keeps raising and raising and raising,
and the stock was about to go bananas, and then
all the companies go bankrupt. Like that's how I viewed
up us, Like all of our stock was about to
become Amazon, and then the company just went away, which
(26:15):
is crazy because we had video game deals, action figure deals,
the TNN thing collapsed. That was the shits. But I mean,
there are so many things that went wrong that it
was Especially what always bothered me was WWF buys WCW,
So that's one of the competitors went away. So in theory,
if we've been able to hold on for another like
(26:35):
six months to a year, it just would have been
us and the WF.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Do you have a theory?
Speaker 5 (26:41):
Because for me, I think back and people ask me
all the time and I never know how to answer
this question honestly, and maybe I'm just naive or I'm
just dumb and I miss something. Do you think that
Paul did not want to sell the company to, like
say a Billy Corgan who who allegedly offered him a
million dollars to take ECW right? Do you think Paul
(27:03):
did not want to sell it because that was his
baby and he didn't want anyone else.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
To have it.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I do I think that he ultimately no matter what,
like look, I have no ill will towards Paul Hayman.
He was a wrestling Here's the thing Paul Hayman was
a wrestling promoter, and I wrestled for Paul Hayman. That's it.
Our relationship never really went much further than that. He
was a boss. I was an employee. Hey Paul, what's up, boss?
Like that was it? Like, I mean, there was a
lot of resentment. Yeah, it was money owed after collapsing
(27:29):
all that, sure, whatever, I mean, but that's all like,
it's not tangible money that I can That was bonuses
and pay per view and like all that stuff. So
it sucked, but I'm not mad about it. But I
do think, you know, at the end of the day,
the company that Paul started went bankrupt and went under
and it went away. So I think that probably to
back his mind, he always thought that they could salvage
it or save it or something. I don't think he
(27:51):
sat around at the eleventh hour saying I'm good, I'm
gonna get out of here and let them hold the
bag and get the hell out of Dodge. I just
don't over the years changed my stance on that. I
just don't. You know. It definitely bothered him too, Like
there's no anner if he didn't sit up multiple nights
to be like I can't believe this is happening, because
there was no guarantee that he was gonna go walk
in the door somewhere either. I mean, Paul didn't. He
(28:13):
had probably nuclear heatd some places with people, and probably
still to this day there was that old, weird old
timers a heat thing where people hate each other until
they go to the grave. So I.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Know, I just never know how to answer that question,
because we were kind of in the dark for most
of the rock. We just showed up and worked and
if we got paid it was it was a bonus.
And if we didn't get paid, we would just all
sit around.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
And give.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
Buy a pizza and share slices and just kind of
hang out with each other.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
You know, if we sat there at the end of
the night and when Debbie Beaumont came walking over a
scent Finnigan or one of the guys of Pee Wee
but your little paper check and gave it to you,
and you opened it up and there's a couple of
weeks worth the pay on there. You're like, yes, and
then the big rib. I used to go to sound
guy Randy live near me. Yeah, so me and sound
(29:09):
guy Randy would drive up to JP Morgan Mellon Bank,
I think it was Melon Bank of Chase. We would
drive up to Woodbridge, you know. We would drive up
to that Woodbridge Bank parking lot and wait there on
Monday morning for the bank to open up because we
knew the depositive for the weekend. We're in that account,
and once a whole bunch of us went in and
got our checks by one or two o'clock in the afternoon,
(29:30):
that account was gonna be no good. So we'd beat
a parking lot at seven thirty eight o'clock in the morning,
waiting for the bank to open at nine so we
can run in there and cast our checks.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
Yes, at one hundred and I did that one.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
We beat Maloney there a bunch of times. Mahoney came
like he would call me at two o'clock. No, what
the hell, man, they said, you.
Speaker 5 (29:52):
Yeah, I remember, Dawn and I we went there and
we were standing there and the ladies like, there's no
money in this account.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
And we just looked into Jo We like, how can
there not be any funds? Like, there's no money in
the account. It's just it's beyond my comprehension.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
But it sucks.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
It did.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
But what do you do?
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Tell the people? What are you doing now with your life?
Speaker 2 (30:15):
I had for the last I retired basically over ten
years ago. I've done like a couple of little appearances,
a little couple of things here or there. I might
do something for Kevin Matthews and his guys next year
in Alaska with Meanie Donnie Bee had a rescheduled show
that was for this year. He's gonna do it next
year in Lacey and New Jersey. And I'll do that
(30:36):
with Meani And That'll probably be the last physical thing
I ever do. Uh. But I work in conventions. I
do a couple conventions every now and then, But even then,
like unless Ninie wants to do it or Stevie or
something like that, I really don't want to do them.
I've been very blessed and very lucky. Like I worked
really hard the last decade in the financial field. I
(30:57):
oversee a branch of a financial institution here in Louisville.
I have a great job, great benefits. The company loves me.
I love the company. They take great care of me.
So I don't really hustle the convention circuit a whole
lot and do a whole lot of those because there's
a lot of people that I worked with who are
still in the wrestling world who never really got out
of it. I'd rather than make the money. I honestly
don't care. Like even when it comes to the T
(31:18):
shirts and some other stuff, Kevin asked, Hey, do you
want a PROG wrestling tea store? Do you want to
do this? You want to do that? I'm like, Nah,
let the other boys and girls do it. Man, they're good.
I've been lucky, you know. I just I've been pretty
wise of my investments. I did pretty good with that.
But I've always even at the height of whatever you
want to call my career, even at the I was
(31:38):
always preparing for life after. Like I just never had
any faith that it was going to be a long
road and there was gonna be a gigantic pot of
gold at the end of it. Because for most people
in the business, there's very few that can lead the
industry and continue to make money by just being themselves,
Like they have to find something else too, Like Undertaker
(31:58):
is not going to be hurting, But a bunch of
these people who are NXT for a couple of years
and they get out, Like you can't tell promote or Hey,
I need five hundred dollars in trans because I was
NXT on their weekly TV show. It's just not going
to work.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, you've got to find other.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Things to do. You got to find a reason to
get out of bed in the morning, Like, find something
to put your energy into. And if you've made it
through the business, and you've learned the lessons from the business,
the hard lessons and the easy lessons. If you learn,
build up your toolbox with learning how to cut promos,
learning how to work the gimmick, learning how to read people,
learning how to read a room of people, learning how
(32:37):
to get over, learning how to be charismatic. If you
learn how to do all how to be confident. If
you learn how to do all of that from wrestling
and you put that in your tool belt, you made
more than just a paycheck. And people don't always take
stocking that.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
He's a smart guy. I'll put him over right now.
He's a smart guy. We always talked about life after
you and I, so I I think we did pretty
well for ourselves.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, you're married, you got kids, you look great, you
got shit going on. I mean, like, come on, let's
be honest here, Like we are. That's how many people
from our error are dead, bankrupt, underground nothing. I mean,
it sucks. It really sucks to talk about it. It does.
It's terrible and I hate it, but it's I just
feel like, and I hate when people blame wrestling for it,
because why are we blaming wrestling? Am I am I
(33:25):
crediting wrestling with my success in life? Yeah? I am,
And I'm also crediting good decision making, a good upbringing,
making good choices. So wrestling helped me out a lot,
just like it helped you out, Like you don't meet
your husband if it's not because of're wrestling.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
Yeah right, I feel like, like you said, it's the
choices that you do make. And for me, we were tempted,
so to speak. We couldn't need poor choices, but we
chose not to. So I always thank God that I
(34:00):
just had the right mindset not to go that certain path,
and the path that I did choose brought me to
what I have now. So I'm very blessed, as are you.
You know, we always joke about it, but we are
two of the lucky ones. Yeah, And we have to
give credit where credit is due and credit ourselves because
(34:21):
we made the choices.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Are we going to be remembered as ECW Hall of
Famers or like, oh my god, the greatest workers of what. No,
we're not, But we should be remembered as people who
always worked hard for the fan, the fans. We loved
the business, we loved our friends in the business. We
had a great time, and we made out of it
one piece. We made a couple of bucks. We made
(34:43):
success of ourselves outside of it. Look to me as
as impressive or more impressive than saying, oh my god,
he was the greatest wrestler of all time, or oh
my god, he was so great, Like we're good parents,
you're a good wife. You know I'm single, hit.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Him up, lad single? Ready to guys?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Can I say something quickly? So? I mean, I've interviewed
you a couple of times in the past.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
The last time I saw you was the Pat Bucks
show in New Jersey with Road Warrior Animals, an outdoor show.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
I don't know if you remember that. That was like yeah, yeah, yeah,
that was great.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
But here's what I'm gonna just say to anybody listening,
aspiring wrestlers, people who want to get into the business.
Anytime Nova does an interview. You should study it and
you should listen to every word he says, because he's basically.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Giving you free advice.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
And that's anything I've ever taken from an interview you've
done or a story.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
You've told, is like you literally.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Give the beginning, middle, and the end of what like
how you should approach getting into the business or staying
in the business. And I love it every time you
do something, I'm there, I'm right up front.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I started in nineteen ninety two. I literally, over the
course of my career was a trainee, a trainer. I
built wrestling rings, I set up wrestling rings. I booked
show I booked territories, I wrote TV. I was the
head of a developmental system. I was a talent that
wrestled for every independent wrestling promotion in the United States.
(36:10):
I wrestled in fifty countries. I wrestled for all the
major promotion. I was basically in the ring with almost
every top fifty superstar the last twenty years. All of
that and I did it and came out one piece.
So usually when I talk, I mean i'll talk to people.
I'll give as much advice as I can, and if
they don't listen, I'm cool man, I wake up tomorrow
and can go to work like I don't. I just
(36:31):
tell you what I think I would do, and it's
usually right. And I hired a lot of good guys
like I hired Kobie Kingston, Drew McIntyre, Santino Morella. I
hired a whole host of guys that and I also,
I still to this day, will talk to a mentor
a lot of younger guys in the business, some in WBF,
some and Ring of Honor, some of out Impact, and
(36:53):
then they'll shoot the shoot one day they'll cont, hey, no,
but can I run something by it? Because they know
it's gonna be stayed between us, and I'm giving them.
When you lead the wrestling bubble, as crazy as it
sounds of France, team will one hundred percent know what
I mean. When you leave the wrestling bubble, your mind
becomes clearer. You look at it differently. You're not as
so like mine worked by it, where you're you're smarter
(37:15):
about the business. You're just smart about how things would work,
how things would click. You know, my friends in AW
I tell them all the time. If this was ten
years ago, I'd be sitting there right next to them
as an agent on the show, taking part of something
at their building because it's awesome, Like Frankie Daniels, De Bucks,
all those guys Codey, the're killing it and I love it.
I'm proud of them. But uh, when you step away
(37:36):
from this and just take a breath for a second,
you know, if you're a young wrestler out there, don't
You're gonna get hired, You're gonna get fired, you're gonna
get pushed, you're gonna sit in catering, You're gonna not
do anything. You're not gonna have your This is a
work sport run by the ultimate marks, and all we
can do is control our look, our attitude, our image,
(37:56):
our how we show up to the shows, how our
our attitude is to our opponents. That's it. Nothing else
you can control, none of it. Get in, don't get hurt,
make some money, have fun, get out.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
And there is life after wrestling. There is life after wrestling.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Correct. I love my life and I love I love
traveling the world. We've Francine, we've seen stuff that will
never forget, and we've done things will always remember. But
now a point in my life, what a ten year
old daughter a great job. I do about one thousand
hours of community service to work a year. I mean,
I'm all over the place in Louisville, and I wouldn't
trade any of them for anything. I had a great
(38:32):
time in our careers. But yes, every journey we take
is prepared as for the next.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Tie, I have one hundred percent agree.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
I am so glad I finally got you on this
show because I asked you a while ago and we
just couldn't find the right time.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Probably no, you didn't you said anything for you, queen,
but then I didn't.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Then we kind of did our own thing. But I'm
glad you did.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
I did you show ten years ago. That's one when
we did a show for your sister.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah, that's when I was Yeah, my sister my dad
had cast. It's twelve years believe that.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, that was one of the last one. That was
the last time I ever stepped in the arena. And
when I did it, I said I will never Yep,
I said I will never wrest on leac w Arena
ever again. I never did. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Well, I there might be something that I can talk
to you off the air later, But there might be
something that you might be interested in for next year
that I'm going to keep you in.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Mind, figure it out for you.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I'll do anything.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Yeah, I know. I well, thank you for coming on.
This was fun. I hope to see you somewhere. I
don't know. You know, we'll figure it. We'll figure it out.
Speaker 5 (39:34):
But tell your brother and everybody said yeah, tell everybody
I said, hi, and just keep.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Tell me who else you want to get on this.
You want Donnie or some man, the other ones, whatever,
We'll get you a bunch of guests, whoever you want.
We'll get your ratings up. Don't worry.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
I appreciate it, all right, Take care The
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Barbar
Can you.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I don't know how I'm in here. I'm always back.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Here, not too far back, because then we don't want
to not hear him. So as oppose as we get
a lot of noble, then that's fine.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Can I just say I have not seen you in years?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It's five years? Why is this so zoomed in on me?
What the hell is going on?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
You're face cute?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
What kind of joint you're running here? All right? Let
me this is I didn't even do you want to start?
You want to do it straight? You want to do
a hot from here?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
All right?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
They go from here, and that's a hot intro.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
I'm not calling you Simon Dean ever, this is my
friend Nova from E c W everybody, because now this
is just between you and I, buddy, I have not
I have not seen you or talked to you honestly
in years, except for like text messaging.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, the same anywhere you're I come up. They're actually
coming here like two weeks to visit us for Olivia's birthday,
but I usually some time and sometimes at Christmas?
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Right, But I I left Facebook because I couldn't take
it anymore. And when I left there, you did you
totally he's such a dick. He will heal me, heal
me to no end. But I was you did.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Come on, you avoided that for a long time, like
like getting sucked into that subculture of the weirdos who
come after you guys, like the women of wrestling. You
actually did way better than most because you avoided it
for like tens.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, because I took a leave of absence for ten
years and you.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Didn't look for it either. Most of these marks, most
of these marquets look for it, so you didn't. Now
they have to pay to see you, It's true. Yeah, great,
give me a free means membership.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
OnlyFans dot com.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Give me a free breast code.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
If I knew how to do that, I would. I
don't even know how to do that. I don't even
know how to maneuver my page. Anyway, How have you been?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
What have you been up to? Let's let's start off
your gudea. How old is Olivia?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Olivia will be eleven years old on October twenty third.
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Do you remember when you guys just had Olivia and
you called me and you're like, hey, queen, what are
you doing?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And I go, I'm breasting and all, oh your hear
is you?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Olivia and Molly are around the same age, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
She's eleven and eight. Yeah yeah he's eight.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So is that crazy?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, they're they're getting too old too fasts.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
That's okay. I mean we age, well, we didn't. We
didn't come out as misfits and weirdo, you know what
I mean. Like, so that's just a natural what a
shock that we actually have normal lives and kids and
we didn't turn out to be dead drug addicts, weirdos, misfits. Yeah,
it happens.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
Every time I would speak to him, whether it be
on the phone or text or whatever, he would always say,
We're so normal.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We're like the most normal people in the locker room.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I'm like pretty much. And it wasn't Here's the thing
about it, It wasn't weird because nobody made, nobody ever
made anybody in E CW feel like they were an
outsider or like a piece of shit or anything like that,
because they didn't partake. You want to do your drinking,
your drugs, you're riting your craziness, whatever you did. No
one cared about any of that. It was the most
(04:01):
like weirdest non judgmental group of people I'd ever been
around in any setting, in anything I've ever done in
the real world.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Too, because we were accepting of their lifestyle and they
were accepting of ours. It just we were all friends.
It didn't matter what you did or what you didn't do.
We all just got.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Along, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, No one cared. No one was like, oh my god,
you didn't smoke, you're not cool, or you're not you're
not you're not yourn coke, or you're not ratting or
like what. No one cared. No one cared about any
of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Let's go back. Yeah, let's go back like before.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
E c W. So, for those who don't know, Nova
has a twin brother named Donnie B who I haven't seen.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Prob'll do your show one day, He'll come on your show.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I would like to have them on my show.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, I am.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
That's yeah. We need a few more sponsors before I
could start paying.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Let's start with one.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Let's start with one, exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
No, I have two.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Hey, Manscap Manscape doesn't uh you know that's those.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
And what else?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
No?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Our year anniversary, kid, we've been on the air for
a year now.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I had no idea this even existed until you contact
me a couple months ago and I was like, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Don't follow under this horrible Let's go back.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
So when you did you both get into wrestling at
the same time, did you guys like trained together?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
So we had a friend of ours name Rich. I
graduated high school in nineteen ninety me and Donnie. We
had a friend of ours name Rich And there was
a brand new wrestling school that opened up New Jersey
called Iron Mike Sharp's School Professional Wrestling. You don't know
who he is, go look him up, famous old timer
veteran Mike was awesome. So we used to go there
because Rich signed up and we would watching. We would
(05:53):
watch him train and practice because we were fans too.
So probably after about like two or three months of this,
Mike kept asking us to get into the ring. So
finally one day I tried it. You know, I was
like a little fat nerdy wrestling mark kind of I
was like, I'll give the shit, I don't care. So
I kind of liked it a little bit. Donnie b
tried a little bit. He never liked the physicality part
of it, but he was part of the school. He
(06:14):
got into like managing and being part of like the
wherever I went to do shows on the weekends, he
came to. So it was like myself, him, Rick Ratchet,
Devin storm a Starland, our whole rock o'dor all of
us together. We did all the Dino Santa shows. That's
where I first met Dreamer, a bunch of the North
(06:36):
East indie guys. Because that's how you started. Like you
went to a school, you bounced around, you sent your
tapes out to Dennis or Dino, or you worked for
down in Baltimore. You just worked for Tommy d and
Staten Island or Mike Dano like whoever had shows on
the weekend. Just get in a car and drive. You
brought your gear bag. If you got twenty bucks, maybe
you have to be on the Battle Royal, whatever the
(06:58):
hell you could be on, you know. So we were.
That's how we started. And Donnie has never gotten to
the physical part of it. It's not for everybody. And
then that's how you. I never met you before, U
before e c W. I doubt it. Like you didn't
start with garying them until when well.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
I started in ninety three with JJ Smith and I
trained with Stevie.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Okay, so you start like a year I started beginning
of ninety two, so a year after you never crossed
paths until E. C. Dub No.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I only went down to the arena to train.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
They had the you know, the ring that was in
the back, and I.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Mean that was honestly, that's how a lot of them
more like somebody had a building, a warehouse, a school
like something like that. I see these things now like
these stay in nice the training facilities, not even w
e s like other guys that have these amazing schools
and all these I'm like guys. I mean, Mike Sharp's
(07:56):
was the old boxing ring that got converted to a
rustling ring and we didn't know about it. So it
is a different time and we're not going to be
the old times that pound our fists and say hey
this is when we did it. But it was when
I tell you, it was different, it was different.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
And it's interesting you say that because I think about
this often too. Do you feel like, twenty twenty five
years ago, if it was that way, then do you
think you would have made it?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (08:24):
I don't really having to do the like the because
I watched I've seen them like the you know, the
girls and stuff go through the performance center and with
the drills and this and that and the other thing.
I was trained a lot different like for us. It
wasn't so like strict so to speak.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It was it was it was more that's what it
is now now it's like hey, Like when I came down,
it was part of OBW. It was Hey, eight thirty
in the morning, training more and more regimented, doing drills
and cardio and all that stuff, which I don't have
a problem with that. Like even now when I oversaw
the developmental system, I actually, you know, that's kind of
what we're moving towards. But I think the people now
(09:04):
it's easier to get into it, it's harder to stay
in it. Like it's easier to get signed, it's harder
to stay signed. So that's their penance, so to speak,
like getting signed off the street or they did another
sport or whatever hell they did before they before they
learned they had a lifelong dream or want to be
a wrestler. Brother, if this is what they have to
do to come in and be part of it, You're
(09:27):
doing drills and cardio and updowns and tackles and all that.
Ten thousand stuff because they're not doing any of this
stuff anywhere else, Like they're not getting matches, they're not
doing shows anywhere. So I mean that's the trade.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Off, right, But the way you see.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
You would have done it, we would have done it.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Mean the way you said you were a fan and
you would go and you would just watch right and
they said, oh, come in the ring. He said, come
in the ring. Would you have gone if you knew
like that? It was like this, like did he just
said get in the ring on a win? Right, and
you were like, yeah, let me try this.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, we would go all the time and watching Mike's Hey,
give it a shot. So I got the ring and
ran the ropes a little bit and then Mike helped
us out. Mike was not a uh, we didn't have
time to Hey, everybody, get there eight o'clock at night.
That's you know, the classes were later at night, and
none of the wrestling schools were like they are now though,
So yeah, what was it in the.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Back of your mind that you wanted to be in
this business?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I kind of thought it was pretty cool, but it
was so beyond like, you know, we had a dad
who had a garage door business this whole until he
passed away years ago. My mom was a stay at
home mom, like we had no relatives in the business,
no family. I sat at home watching Hogan versus Andre
at WrestleMania three, always a young Mark fan like it
was five 't ten at that point, two hundred something
(10:44):
pounds of like a little nerdy comic book, sci fi
nerdy fat kid. It's never a million years enter my
head that I could actually be a wrestler. Okay, So
for Mike's to jump in the ring in school around
it was cool, and for me it was, hey, this
is gonna be like my baseball soft ball like bowling
league kind of. Mike had shows it to school every
two weeks. That's where I first met Stide my Sharp shows.
(11:08):
So we would do those shows, and I was like,
this is it. This is never going to go I'm
gonna be like I was going to school for mathematics
and computer science. So I was like, this, that's what
I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna screw around with this
and I'm never ever gonna do anything with it. I
didn't care, like every time you ever got another milestone
of the business, at least when we were in it,
like you chalked it up to Wow, that's cool, man.
I can't believe I pulled that off. Like when I
(11:29):
stood in the ring of WrestleMania, I just kind of
looked around like that's it. Like I've just played for
the Yankees. There's nothing more than this. We accomplished the
grandest stage, so everything after that was shit. I mean
now the kids now, I do think for the guy,
the people that are in it now, I don't think
it's going to be as crippling to them or crushing
(11:50):
to a lot of them when they do eventually get
released or quit or move on like people that came
up in our era, which I think led a lot
to the pills, the alcohol, to the depression, all of that.
Because the spotlight got taken off of us. We didn't
get to be part of the life. Brother, we weren't
in it anymore. These fans, like I hate to use
(12:10):
this term, but like when I left the wrestling business,
it was it stung. I can it can it to
like getting divorced. So now if you if you love
that person when you got divorced, it really bothers you.
Like these people now, a lot of them, they got
in for a couple of years. Well, hell, they're in
three to four or five years and they're still like
thirty or thirty one. They got out, they got the
whole rest of their life. They're not gonna give a
shit that they were with the w NXT, whatever the
(12:32):
hell it was for two years. They shouldn't move on.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Do you remember do you remember the last show that
we did in Pine Bluff? And do you remember you
pulling up in the car next to me? Do you
remember what you did?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
No professional memory. I remember the show because it.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Was I'm crying, right, I'm so depressed. I'm crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
We all knew, we all knew everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, and everybody goes to the ring and everybody's having
a beer.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You hope a lot more than Oh so you really
did like you were an optimist all the way to
the end.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
I tried because Paul kept telling me, and Okay, So
I'm upset and I get in the car and we're
driving and Novill pulls up. I don't even know who
was in our cars. He goes like this, rolled down
the window. I rolled down the window and he starts
he goes, oh the we've come.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you were so sad.
It wasn't uncommon for e c W. Like I was
one hundred percent known as like the asshole, smart ass
smart alec.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Like you and I were always friends.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, of course we all were like nobody. Yeah, like
hated each other, even people and had the quote unquote
heat with brother. I never really hated any of them.
There was a couple of whom rubbed me the wrong way,
you know, and then but I never cared about it
years later, like to me, like Dreamers said at one time,
like the e CW heat died in e c W,
and I always felt the same way, like I just
(14:01):
never really, I don't know, man, it just never there.
There was no giant amount of enough money for me
to be so mad at somebody that I had stab
him in the back or finish them off for just
so incensed that they screwed me over for this pot
of gold, you know what I mean. It was just
it was fool gold. I mean, we were there for
the love of it. We all liked each other. We
(14:21):
had a great time. I've been asked way more in
my lifetime what was it like to wrestle at the
ECW Arena than I was ever asked about wrestling at
the Garden at a wrestle Mania and La and Tokyo
and any of it.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah, yeah, a lot to the table.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
A lot of the boys always say to me, you
know how lucky you are that you worked for ECW.
We would guess to work for ECW, like and I'm
just like I do.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah. There's a lot of guys who were fans or
in the business now, like guys I'm not gonna name
all the names. There's a shitload of guys who are
in the business now who I met over the years
who said to me their goal when they got into
wrestling was to wrestle for ECW, Like it wasn't to
be a W Superstars WW. Nobody ever. First of all,
nobody ever mentions WCW. Now that's not because we both
(15:09):
had a lot of friends that worked there. Oh of course.
Never had a single person that said to me, man,
I can't believe it. W W would have had a business
and that was it. Like never, Like there's talent on
the W roster right now, like main roster talent who
told me when they were growing up as kids that
they were huge ECW fans, that that's what they wanted
to wrestle.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
How did you get involved with ECW. You mentioned earlier
that you me and Stevie, you know, give you.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
A good in. We have a mutual benefactor in that
in Levy.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
So here's how it start. I was at a New
Jack City Wrestling show in New Jersey. We were all
there doing the show late ninety it was beginning of
ninety six. The main event on the show was Levy
versus Mikey. Mary, Kate was there, her mom was there,
Bella doing the TV shirts, everyone Money, everybody was there.
(16:00):
So intermission comes and I'm wrestling on the show, the
superhero Kate, the Outfit, the whole deal in a tag
match after are you super nov the whole deal? So
I met Lee and Pass and just like, Hey, what's
going on man at the show? I never met him before,
but Stevie was already teener with him and stuff. Hey,
Stevie was getting pushed at ECW Tag Team Champion all
(16:21):
this time because I went taking w Rena several times
as a fan, even though it's at Mike Sharps, just
like in the audience to see the show. Because Stevie
would get his tickets, and I was like, holy shit,
this is incredible. Never in a million years thought I'd
be there. So leeve he's on the show intermission, Bella
says to me, hey, Nova, Scotty wants to talk to you.
(16:41):
Because I was on early on the show. I'm like,
oh shit, what did I do wrong? And I only
knew him at this point. He's like Johnny Polo and
all that stuff and ring. He's like, oh my god,
why you want to talk to me? So he pulls
me aside. He's like, hey man, He's like, this superhero
thing isn't like are you serious with this or what?
It's like. This is like Adam West Batman kind of.
I go yeah. He goes, this is great. He goes,
get me a tape of just your ring. Entrance is
running around with the kids doing cartwheels and all that.
(17:02):
He goes, I want to show up to Paul and
Tommy and Taz. I'm making a little group in ECW.
He goes, I got Stevie there. He goes, We're getting
this big fat guy from Philadelphia named I'm gonna call
him the Blue MIENI from Yellow Submarine. And I had
no idea what the hell that was this is late
ninety five, beginning at the tape early in middle ninety five.
(17:22):
So I said, okay, I'll put the tape together. I
go home, and this is when you had to have
two VCRs to like record tape record. So I'm making
this highlight tape of me doing my shit, and Leevy says, hey,
you know, bring the tape up to Moon Dancers and
drop it off on me. I'm like, all right, no problem.
So I'm home and I'm looking at like the phone
book and all this. I said, what is Moon Dancers, Well,
(17:44):
it's the strip club. So I put the tape together,
and me and Donnie b and Rock o' dorsey we
go to Moon Dancers one night. To look now, imagine
us three walking in like our normal cities and all that,
walking into the Booby Club to go find me. Oh
my god. We walk in. There's Levy behind the DJ thing,
(18:06):
putting himself over doing whatever. Walk in. I give him
the tape. He says, oh, thanks a lot of kid,
the whole deal. I leave. Three days later, I get
home from Wendy's That's why I was working at the time,
and my mom's like, hey, there's some dynamic Raven or
something on the answer machine. He left you a message,
and I'm like, oh my god. Really, So he's like, yeah, hey.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
Kidd you know I saw your tape. You know, Taz
and Tommy and I really loved it. Man could come
on down to the next arena show and we'll see
what we can do for you. So I'm already freaking out, like,
oh my god. So the next arena show, I'd go
down there. And to this day, it was, besides Olivia's birth,
it was the scariest.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Moment in my life. Walking towards the entrance away where
it was and it was ron Ronnie Atlas was out there,
and I said, hey, can you go back there and
tell Raven and a guy named Nova's here for him.
So like five minutes later, Ronnie comes through the curt
and he goes, hey, come on back. I'm like, holy shit,
here there it is. I walk in the back. The
first one that came up through his Beulah. She's like, hey, hey,
(19:05):
I saw your tape too. I saw It's really funny.
You're the superhero, right, I'm like yeah. I was like, hey,
nice to meet you. And then Tommy came over eating
a hot dog. He's like, hey, Dino Santa, how you
doing because I knew him from Tom from Dinos. And
he hands me a hot dog and goes, uh, I
love your tape. Man. It's great. If you just want
to start showing up to the shows, we'll have your
car up to the ring with Scotty. You'd be part
of whatever the hell he wants to do with this
(19:25):
flock thing. Here's your first payday. And he had me
a hot dog and I was like thanks, and I
was I just started going to the shows doing the
flock stuff with Raven and Stevie and Meanie and we
were and looking back on it, we were nothing more
than the window dressing to his act. But and that's
what we were. I mean, Scotty brought a whole bunch
(19:46):
of us in, like we all a lot of us
got to be brought in. It's like extras. And then
through the hard work and what we did to get
ourselves over, we took the ball and ran with it.
We got off everybody. There were so many people that
would come to ECW and just kind of like showed up.
They tried to be part of the act. And you,
I mean, Jesus Christ, we can name a ton of
people like that, But that's how it all started.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
Do you feel like you said it earlier as people
just wanted to work in ECW.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You had a pretty good career in WWE. How did
you get Tommy's job in the off case?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
And which company did you like working for better? I,
because honestly, I want I was always I always. It's
gonna sound really crazy, but I'm telling you take this advice.
If you're listening to this, if you can be, try
to be successful outside the ring too, and not just
always come across as a wrestler. Like I always viewed
myself as someone who was in the wrestling business. I
(20:42):
never viewed myself as a wrestler. Brother I didn't. So
I was college educated, I was intelligent, I was well spoken,
I was regimented, and I always tried to not only
just worry about the working inside the ring. I worried
about the working outside of the ring, which carries over
into the real world. I tell him people all the time,
the real world doesn't work. If you learn how to
(21:03):
work the gimmick in the real world, you can get over.
That's all that matters. So I had been through OBW,
I've been through the system. I've been well traveled. I
knew everybody in the Independence. So when they were getting
ready to launch ECW, Tommy Dreamer in an office setting
was probably like somebody with a size twelve foot trying
to wear like a size five shoe. It just wasn't
(21:26):
a good fit. This is out of his mouth. He
hated it. The highlight of Tommy's day was walking around
Titan Tower with thumbtacks sticking him in his head to
walk into the offices of the other employees who were
there to freak them out, or taking pencils and throw
them in the ceiling and watch them a stick. But
Tommy helped out a lot of guys because you could
(21:46):
like good old boy a kind of back then still,
and the minute they were thinking about relaunching ec DUB,
I knew that Simon Dean I was kind of burnt
down on SmackDown. I kind of hate it going because
it just was a miserable place to be. There were
so many guys out maybe a hard time, and it
just allows in today's environment is apparently a million times better.
So I think a lot of the guys that are
(22:07):
now or should be very thankful what they had, but
there was a bunch of pieces shit I was around.
I hate it going, And they asked me the opportunity.
I says, you know what, if there's a chance to
be able to be behind the scenes and help out
young talent so they don't get lost in the mix,
to try to get him a shot, I took it.
So because I knew I was never going to be
a lifer either. I figured I'd be there for a
couple of years and maybe to move on. Like there
(22:28):
was no part I'm forty eight. There was no part
in any of my plan that ever said I'm gonna
be working in the pro wrestling business when I'm in
my forties. Ever, I never ever thought. I always wanted
to do more, always right, and I liked wrestling. There's
parts of WWF we like. I liked. I met some
lifelong fans friends there. It was cool and you know,
(22:50):
honestly we grew up. We were WV fans, Like that's
the place you always wanted to wind up. So so
nobody can ever tell us like something's impossible, because even
like when my employees do they say something's impossible, it
is that I hold up one of my action figures,
and I'm like, well, this was impossible. I'm like, getting
to twenty five new households for the month, that's not impossible. Guys.
This as like a fat Mark kid from Tom's Liver,
(23:12):
New Jersey. This was impossible. I mean you got to
push up from perspective, right. So, but I liked, I
love There's just something about ECW being part of it.
We just were all cool group. I hung out with
everybody from whether it was Van Dam or Sandman, the
top guys are talking to Paul or even travel with
Randy in the van or whatever the hell we were doing. Man,
(23:33):
we just all had a good time. There was never
we were all in our early late twenties, early thirties,
if that travel around having a good time. I mean,
you know, I didn't partake in a lot of the
craziness that everybody else. A lot of the guys did.
They had a lot more fun than I did in
that aspect. But I got to see the United States, man,
I got to travel. I had fun. We had a
(23:54):
great time.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Would you have left if the company continued.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I don't know, because like when they were getting ready
to collapse, we knew it was going south, Like before
the Pine Bluff show, I had already talked to Johnny
Ace who was in w W. Johnny As had called
me multiple times to bring me in the cruiseweight division,
so I knew East w F and I was like,
you know, Paul said, if something happens, he's gonna bring
us all in that kind of deal. That's cool, man,
(24:21):
and uh, you know, it is what it is. But
I was if they had kept going, me and C W.
Anderson would have feuded over the TV title. I would
because it right right when we collapsed, right when we folded.
I was in peak physical condition. I was over. I
had a huge following. I was getting one of the
best reactions of the night. I mean, that's just reality.
(24:41):
They go back and watch the pay per views, so
my music would hit the place we go ape shit,
and I was they just because they saw me go
from a flunky running around the ring with Scottie to
team with Meanie doing the BWO, the metamorphosis, through that
teaming with Chetty, all through that and now like the
fans felt like they took that five year ride with me,
so now it's getting ready to pay it off. Like
(25:03):
I was looking forward to wrestling Jerry Lynn and Van
Dam and like all those guys in legitimate matches, the
real matches where the fans would have bought the false finishes.
Not a ship would have been Nova from the Batwo
wrestling against Rob van Dam. It would have been like
Nova is kicking the kick ass Nova versus Rob Van Dam.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
I feel like we, you know, we had so much
experience at that point under our belt, and we had
so much more to give. And I think that's why
it hurt me so much the way it went under,
because a we hung on for dear life. We sunk
with the ship, right, we stayed, but we had come
so far and just all of us has We've grown
(25:44):
so much in that company, and we were all at
the top of our game, like you said, and then
it was just like the rug was pulled from under us,
and that is off to this day.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Imagine buying stocks, right, so let's envision all of us
are a stock, and we allow five year time, each
one of our stock keeps raising and raising and raising,
and the stock was about to go bananas, and then
all the companies go bankrupt. Like that's how I viewed
up us, Like all of our stock was about to
become Amazon, and then the company just went away, which
(26:15):
is crazy because we had video game deals, action figure deals,
the TNN thing collapsed. That was the shits. But I mean,
there are so many things that went wrong that it
was Especially what always bothered me was WWF buys WCW,
So that's one of the competitors went away. So in theory,
if we've been able to hold on for another like
(26:35):
six months to a year, it just would have been
us and the WF.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Do you have a theory?
Speaker 5 (26:41):
Because for me, I think back and people ask me
all the time and I never know how to answer
this question honestly, and maybe I'm just naive or I'm
just dumb and I miss something. Do you think that
Paul did not want to sell the company to, like
say a Billy Corgan who who allegedly offered him a
million dollars to take ECW right? Do you think Paul
(27:03):
did not want to sell it because that was his
baby and he didn't want anyone else.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
To have it.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I do I think that he ultimately no matter what,
like look, I have no ill will towards Paul Hayman.
He was a wrestling Here's the thing Paul Hayman was
a wrestling promoter, and I wrestled for Paul Hayman. That's it.
Our relationship never really went much further than that. He
was a boss. I was an employee. Hey Paul, what's up, boss?
Like that was it? Like, I mean, there was a
lot of resentment. Yeah, it was money owed after collapsing
(27:29):
all that, sure, whatever, I mean, but that's all like,
it's not tangible money that I can That was bonuses
and pay per view and like all that stuff. So
it sucked, but I'm not mad about it. But I
do think, you know, at the end of the day,
the company that Paul started went bankrupt and went under
and it went away. So I think that probably to
back his mind, he always thought that they could salvage
it or save it or something. I don't think he
(27:51):
sat around at the eleventh hour saying I'm good, I'm
gonna get out of here and let them hold the
bag and get the hell out of Dodge. I just
don't over the years changed my stance on that. I
just don't. You know. It definitely bothered him too, Like
there's no anner if he didn't sit up multiple nights
to be like I can't believe this is happening, because
there was no guarantee that he was gonna go walk
in the door somewhere either. I mean, Paul didn't. He
(28:13):
had probably nuclear heatd some places with people, and probably
still to this day there was that old, weird old
timers a heat thing where people hate each other until
they go to the grave. So I.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Know, I just never know how to answer that question,
because we were kind of in the dark for most
of the rock. We just showed up and worked and
if we got paid it was it was a bonus.
And if we didn't get paid, we would just all
sit around.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
And give.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
Buy a pizza and share slices and just kind of
hang out with each other.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
You know, if we sat there at the end of
the night and when Debbie Beaumont came walking over a
scent Finnigan or one of the guys of Pee Wee
but your little paper check and gave it to you,
and you opened it up and there's a couple of
weeks worth the pay on there. You're like, yes, and
then the big rib. I used to go to sound
guy Randy live near me. Yeah, so me and sound
(29:09):
guy Randy would drive up to JP Morgan Mellon Bank,
I think it was Melon Bank of Chase. We would
drive up to Woodbridge, you know. We would drive up
to that Woodbridge Bank parking lot and wait there on
Monday morning for the bank to open up because we
knew the depositive for the weekend. We're in that account,
and once a whole bunch of us went in and
got our checks by one or two o'clock in the afternoon,
(29:30):
that account was gonna be no good. So we'd beat
a parking lot at seven thirty eight o'clock in the morning,
waiting for the bank to open at nine so we
can run in there and cast our checks.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
Yes, at one hundred and I did that one.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
We beat Maloney there a bunch of times. Mahoney came
like he would call me at two o'clock. No, what
the hell, man, they said, you.
Speaker 5 (29:52):
Yeah, I remember, Dawn and I we went there and
we were standing there and the ladies like, there's no
money in this account.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
And we just looked into Jo We like, how can
there not be any funds? Like, there's no money in
the account. It's just it's beyond my comprehension.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
But it sucks.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
It did.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
But what do you do?
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Tell the people? What are you doing now with your life?
Speaker 2 (30:15):
I had for the last I retired basically over ten
years ago. I've done like a couple of little appearances,
a little couple of things here or there. I might
do something for Kevin Matthews and his guys next year
in Alaska with Meanie Donnie Bee had a rescheduled show
that was for this year. He's gonna do it next
year in Lacey and New Jersey. And I'll do that
(30:36):
with Meani And That'll probably be the last physical thing
I ever do. Uh. But I work in conventions. I
do a couple conventions every now and then, But even then,
like unless Ninie wants to do it or Stevie or
something like that, I really don't want to do them.
I've been very blessed and very lucky. Like I worked
really hard the last decade in the financial field. I
(30:57):
oversee a branch of a financial institution here in Louisville.
I have a great job, great benefits. The company loves me.
I love the company. They take great care of me.
So I don't really hustle the convention circuit a whole
lot and do a whole lot of those because there's
a lot of people that I worked with who are
still in the wrestling world who never really got out
of it. I'd rather than make the money. I honestly
don't care. Like even when it comes to the T
(31:18):
shirts and some other stuff, Kevin asked, Hey, do you
want a PROG wrestling tea store? Do you want to
do this? You want to do that? I'm like, Nah,
let the other boys and girls do it. Man, they're good.
I've been lucky, you know. I just I've been pretty
wise of my investments. I did pretty good with that.
But I've always even at the height of whatever you
want to call my career, even at the I was
(31:38):
always preparing for life after. Like I just never had
any faith that it was going to be a long
road and there was gonna be a gigantic pot of
gold at the end of it. Because for most people
in the business, there's very few that can lead the
industry and continue to make money by just being themselves,
Like they have to find something else too, Like Undertaker
(31:58):
is not going to be hurting, But a bunch of
these people who are NXT for a couple of years
and they get out, Like you can't tell promote or Hey,
I need five hundred dollars in trans because I was
NXT on their weekly TV show. It's just not going
to work.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, you've got to find other.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Things to do. You got to find a reason to
get out of bed in the morning, Like, find something
to put your energy into. And if you've made it
through the business, and you've learned the lessons from the business,
the hard lessons and the easy lessons. If you learn,
build up your toolbox with learning how to cut promos,
learning how to work the gimmick, learning how to read people,
learning how to read a room of people, learning how
(32:37):
to get over, learning how to be charismatic. If you
learn how to do all how to be confident. If
you learn how to do all of that from wrestling
and you put that in your tool belt, you made
more than just a paycheck. And people don't always take
stocking that.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
He's a smart guy. I'll put him over right now.
He's a smart guy. We always talked about life after
you and I, so I I think we did pretty
well for ourselves.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, you're married, you got kids, you look great, you
got shit going on. I mean, like, come on, let's
be honest here, Like we are. That's how many people
from our error are dead, bankrupt, underground nothing. I mean,
it sucks. It really sucks to talk about it. It does.
It's terrible and I hate it, but it's I just
feel like, and I hate when people blame wrestling for it,
because why are we blaming wrestling? Am I am I
(33:25):
crediting wrestling with my success in life? Yeah? I am,
And I'm also crediting good decision making, a good upbringing,
making good choices. So wrestling helped me out a lot,
just like it helped you out, Like you don't meet
your husband if it's not because of're wrestling.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
Yeah right, I feel like, like you said, it's the
choices that you do make. And for me, we were tempted,
so to speak. We couldn't need poor choices, but we
chose not to. So I always thank God that I
(34:00):
just had the right mindset not to go that certain path,
and the path that I did choose brought me to
what I have now. So I'm very blessed, as are you.
You know, we always joke about it, but we are
two of the lucky ones. Yeah, And we have to
give credit where credit is due and credit ourselves because
(34:21):
we made the choices.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Are we going to be remembered as ECW Hall of
Famers or like, oh my god, the greatest workers of what. No,
we're not, But we should be remembered as people who
always worked hard for the fan, the fans. We loved
the business, we loved our friends in the business. We
had a great time, and we made out of it
one piece. We made a couple of bucks. We made
(34:43):
success of ourselves outside of it. Look to me as
as impressive or more impressive than saying, oh my god,
he was the greatest wrestler of all time, or oh
my god, he was so great, Like we're good parents,
you're a good wife. You know I'm single, hit.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Him up, lad single? Ready to guys?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Can I say something quickly? So? I mean, I've interviewed
you a couple of times in the past.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
The last time I saw you was the Pat Bucks
show in New Jersey with Road Warrior Animals, an outdoor show.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
I don't know if you remember that. That was like yeah, yeah, yeah,
that was great.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
But here's what I'm gonna just say to anybody listening,
aspiring wrestlers, people who want to get into the business.
Anytime Nova does an interview. You should study it and
you should listen to every word he says, because he's basically.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Giving you free advice.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
And that's anything I've ever taken from an interview you've
done or a story.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
You've told, is like you literally.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Give the beginning, middle, and the end of what like
how you should approach getting into the business or staying
in the business. And I love it every time you
do something, I'm there, I'm right up front.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I started in nineteen ninety two. I literally, over the
course of my career was a trainee, a trainer. I
built wrestling rings, I set up wrestling rings. I booked
show I booked territories, I wrote TV. I was the
head of a developmental system. I was a talent that
wrestled for every independent wrestling promotion in the United States.
(36:10):
I wrestled in fifty countries. I wrestled for all the
major promotion. I was basically in the ring with almost
every top fifty superstar the last twenty years. All of
that and I did it and came out one piece.
So usually when I talk, I mean i'll talk to people.
I'll give as much advice as I can, and if
they don't listen, I'm cool man, I wake up tomorrow
and can go to work like I don't. I just
(36:31):
tell you what I think I would do, and it's
usually right. And I hired a lot of good guys
like I hired Kobie Kingston, Drew McIntyre, Santino Morella. I
hired a whole host of guys that and I also,
I still to this day, will talk to a mentor
a lot of younger guys in the business, some in WBF,
some and Ring of Honor, some of out Impact, and
(36:53):
then they'll shoot the shoot one day they'll cont, hey, no,
but can I run something by it? Because they know
it's gonna be stayed between us, and I'm giving them.
When you lead the wrestling bubble, as crazy as it
sounds of France, team will one hundred percent know what
I mean. When you leave the wrestling bubble, your mind
becomes clearer. You look at it differently. You're not as
so like mine worked by it, where you're you're smarter
(37:15):
about the business. You're just smart about how things would work,
how things would click. You know, my friends in AW
I tell them all the time. If this was ten
years ago, I'd be sitting there right next to them
as an agent on the show, taking part of something
at their building because it's awesome, Like Frankie Daniels, De Bucks,
all those guys Codey, the're killing it and I love it.
I'm proud of them. But uh, when you step away
(37:36):
from this and just take a breath for a second,
you know, if you're a young wrestler out there, don't
You're gonna get hired, You're gonna get fired, you're gonna
get pushed, you're gonna sit in catering, You're gonna not
do anything. You're not gonna have your This is a
work sport run by the ultimate marks, and all we
can do is control our look, our attitude, our image,
(37:56):
our how we show up to the shows, how our
our attitude is to our opponents. That's it. Nothing else
you can control, none of it. Get in, don't get hurt,
make some money, have fun, get out.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
And there is life after wrestling. There is life after wrestling.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Correct. I love my life and I love I love
traveling the world. We've Francine, we've seen stuff that will
never forget, and we've done things will always remember. But
now a point in my life, what a ten year
old daughter a great job. I do about one thousand
hours of community service to work a year. I mean,
I'm all over the place in Louisville, and I wouldn't
trade any of them for anything. I had a great
(38:32):
time in our careers. But yes, every journey we take
is prepared as for the next.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Tie, I have one hundred percent agree.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
I am so glad I finally got you on this
show because I asked you a while ago and we
just couldn't find the right time.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Probably no, you didn't you said anything for you, queen,
but then I didn't.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Then we kind of did our own thing. But I'm
glad you did.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
I did you show ten years ago. That's one when
we did a show for your sister.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah, that's when I was Yeah, my sister my dad
had cast. It's twelve years believe that.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, that was one of the last one. That was
the last time I ever stepped in the arena. And
when I did it, I said I will never Yep,
I said I will never wrest on leac w Arena
ever again. I never did. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Well, I there might be something that I can talk
to you off the air later, But there might be
something that you might be interested in for next year
that I'm going to keep you in.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Mind, figure it out for you.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I'll do anything.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Yeah, I know. I well, thank you for coming on.
This was fun. I hope to see you somewhere. I
don't know. You know, we'll figure it. We'll figure it out.
Speaker 5 (39:34):
But tell your brother and everybody said yeah, tell everybody
I said, hi, and just keep.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Tell me who else you want to get on this.
You want Donnie or some man, the other ones, whatever,
We'll get you a bunch of guests, whoever you want.
We'll get your ratings up. Don't worry.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
I appreciate it, all right, Take care The
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Barbar
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