Podcast Highlights: Steve Austin Show, Grilling JR, House of Hardcore With Tommy Dreamer & more

Recap by: Christopher Jay, rajah.com
Please send all feedback to: [email protected] or @wrestlingfancs

THE STEVE AUSTIN SHOW 3/31/20

20:00 Austin wearing a t-shirt to the ring at WrestleMania. ” At that time, I was going through a sloppy ass messy divorce in my mind was frazzled. All I can do to pack my bags and head over to Philly and work against The Great One, the Rock, I forgot to put in my trusty black vest with silver writing on it. I’ll tell you what, when I opened my suitcase in the building that night, and realized that I forgot to pack my vest, I was mad as a hornet. Here you are, the biggest stage of all, a high-profile match, Rock as your opponent, and I have to go out there in a rinky dink ass T-shirt. Now don’t get me wrong. The shirt I wore there was cool, but you never ever want to walk out in chump change gear instead of your trademark stuff that people expect you to be in. I kicked myself in the ass over and over and over again about that particular night.”

24:00 Austin on the rumor of Undertaker having his hands taped up in case Shaw Michaels did not do what he was supposed to against Austin at WrestleMania: “I’ve always heard a rumor and I’ve heard Shawn talk about it. I can’t speak to how valid or true this rumor was. I think it was for the most part probably was a shoot… There was a time when the Undertaker was not very enamored with Shawn Michaels, the person or the wrestler. Speaking for myself, we both, Undertaker and myself, always respected Shawn’s ability of his work, the talent in the things he can do in the writing was pretty much unparalleled, he was that the damn good. But as a person, I didn’t like him. I did not like him at all. But now, all these years later, like I said, it was great to interview him and talk to him about his book and the changes he made in his life, and I made changes in my life. You would have to ask Undertaker if that rumor is true, but that was the word on the street.”

47:00 Austin on his “Blood from a Stone” T-shirt: “I came up with that shirt when I was talking to Jimmy Miranda, who was the merchandise guy who worked his ass off to sell our merchandise. Everybody loved Jimmy. We were talking about the WRESTLEMANIA 13 match and that iconic picture of the image of me in the sharpshooter bleeding like a stuffed pig from my head, blood coming from my forehead, from my mustache and my goatee, my teeth, dripping down and he goes you know Steve sometimes dealing with these guys in WWF is like getting blood from the stone. I said Jimmy, that’s a shirt. I say you take that picture, put blood from a stone on it and you put Austin 3:16 on the front of it and have it bleeding down like paint.”

GRILLING JR 4/1/20: DARK SIDE OF THE PODCAST: THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF NEW JACK

25:00 Producers trying to reach out to Erich Kulas’ mom: “Erich Kulas’ mom answered the phone and right from the get-go it became very apparent that this incident was an extremely traumatic experience for the entire family. And actually, more or less, completely destroyed it. My biggest regret in the entire Dark Side of the Ring perhaps, is not being able to convince her to participate in the show. Because that perspective would have added so much to the episode because basically the narrative you get on this story for so many years is essentially New Jacks side of the story. You don’t really get to see the Mass Transit’s site of the story. So, when we were talking to her she was very upset about the whole thing and she basically told us that she could not go back there. She couldn’t go back there to even talk about this. That was too difficult for her. The reasons for that is essentially after it happened for my understanding and we hadn’t had the chance to interview her, my understanding is after this happened as Tiny the Terrible said in the episode it changed Eric. And over the course of the next few years, he was struggling with his weight, he got in operation and he was essentially dealing with a lot of mental health issues following this. And he more or less ate himself to death is what kind of happened. And after that, Eric’s brother who was also there on the night the incident took place, put him on that path and has just gotten out of prison and lived an entire life of crime and getting in and out of jail since this happened, and it spiraled him downward and then the father just recently passed away like a few years ago he had been struggling with it ever since. So, this would be like a bombshell to be able to put in the episode to show this completely different perspective. This is why it lease that gather the episode we listed that the attempt was made.”

46:00 On New Jack being a bounty hunter: “After a match one night, his beeper goes off. Whenever the beeper goes off, he has another bounty coming in. He turns to D’Lo Brown and says he has a bounty one town away. Do you want to come with me, and we can split the bounty? D lo never went on a bounty so he agrees to go with New Jack. He tells the story that after the match, they hop in the car, drive an hour wait to this other town and this is like 2:00 AM. New Jack tells D’Lo to go around the back if the guy runs out the back, just grab him. New Jack walks in this guy’s house and D’Lo is awaiting around back thinking am I going to get shot, is this the moment I’m going to die? New Jack gets the guy, they throw him in the car, and they have to drive him all night like five or 6 hours from where they picked him up to where he originates or where they’re going to prosecute him.

PRIME TIME WITH SEAN MOONEY 4/21/20: DUTCH MANTELL

49:30 MANTELL ON WHICH NEW TALENT TO PUSH: “Say I bring in a brand-new guy and he is debuting on Saturday night we send him out there. I stand up high in the arena and I would watch the crowd. If they would respond to him, not knowing anything about him, if he got a little better response or did a little bit in the ring that got a response, that told me organically that if I did something with them, they would buy. It doesn’t matter if you won or lost OR anything else and this is another thing I always did. I put the baby faces over because when they paid money at the door, when they should leave happy and looking forward to the next week… When that final bell rings and you are ready to go, you’re ready to get the hell out of their… When that final match was over, of course with the good guys with their hand in the air and everybody was happy but nobody left because I educated them, don’t leave because we’re going to get the trailer for next week and boom something would happen and it probably took me about three weeks and they were educated.”

1:15:00 Mantell on not being on this season of Dark Side of the Ring: ” Jericho is doing it and it’s not they didn’t want to use me, they couldn’t use me and the reason being because this is in Canada, and they partnered with another TV station that is like the PBS of Canada, and since they used government money, one of the rules is anybody that worked on the show other than talent, if you had a cameraman you had to be Canadian. If you have a sound engineer, he had to be Canadian, the narrator had to be Canadian and guess what? I’m not Canadian… The guy told me he said I’ve been trying to work this out to get you back up her and we could work together because the people were enjoying you, but I can’t do it. I tried to put all kind of titles on you but your still American”

1:39:00 Mantell on the Zeb Colter character: ” They were coming into town and the talent relations guy called me to have told me to come down and talk to HHH. I seriously thought they wanted me to be an advisor or instructor. I drive down there about 330 PM, and they brought me in around 4:30 and said triple H wanted to talk to me, and what they were looking for was a mouthpiece for Swagger because they wanted to start using him again. So, they said can you do a promo so we can show Vince at 5:30. I did the interview and all the information they gave me was this was the character is one that is almost left over from the tea party. They didn’t say that but of somebody who thought the country who believes has lost their vision and didn’t know which direction it was moving and it’s going to hell in a handbasket… They said we will give you a few minutes and they did not give me long. Did you see the movie Grand Torino with Clint Eastwood? That’s what I thought of immediately. He saw all those factories closed and all these immigrants were around, so I started channeling Clint Eastwood. So, I said when I walk down the street, and they did not give me these words, I just made am up on the spot. When I walked down the street, I see people that don’t look like me, who don’t talk like me, who don’t eat the same food I do, and I say what happened to my America? Where did my American go? I did about three of them but in the last one I said We The People. Well that was at 430. Vince saw it at 5:30, they hired me at 6:30 and I went to work at RAW that night at 7:30 and I was live on RAW at 8:00. I believe I was the oldest on-air character they ever hired. The one thing I tell people when I walked in that dressing room is only 75% of the dressing room had no idea why was there and were looking at me like who brought the Uber driver here. Natalya asked who I was.”

HOUSE OF HARDCORE WITH TOMMY DREAMER 4/1/20: WRESTLING IN FRONT ON NO ONE

22:00 Mantell on Tank Toland: “One time, John Laurinaitis, Stephanie McMahon who was head of creative, some writers and Vince were going to come down to OVW. Tank Toland tore his pec up the night before at a taping, and still, he had bruising, had become one of the Dicks (wrestling tag team), who was the main player for OVW. He put on a display in front of john and Stephanie with the torn pec and he said he was not going to lose this opportunity and not only did they hire him with the torn pec, they paid him, they took care of his surgery, and he was then under contract.”

28:00 Dreamer on WrestleMania ” The Orlando WrestleMania did not make a lot of money because they had to redo the locker rooms. They made more money going to smaller venues of stocks as opposed to bigger places.”

32:00 Dreamer on the Pope and The Boogeyman: ” again, in front of Johnny, in front of Stephanie, in front of the writers… Another performance, all never forgets the pope. The Pope showed up late. He was taking care of elderly people show up in an old age home at the time because he couldn’t get out of work and he literally know when someone slacks and shadow ripped off his suit, when in the ring and wrestled in slacks and shoes. He cut one hell of a promo saying he was wiping an elderly man’s ass and couldn’t leave. He cut a passionate promo saying he wanted to make his parents proud. I was able to hire the Pope… Stephanie McMahon said that is what we’re looking for. We’re looking for personal stories. We want wrestlers to connect with the audience. He came from tough enough and was an unknown. All of a sudden, the Boogeyman stood up and he says I want a do over. He comes from the top of the steps from the bleachers in the Davis Arena, he says he wanted talk about passion, you want to talk about poor, I lived on a dirt floor. I ate mangoes for three months. As he is cutting this promo, and yelling at Stephanie McMahon, the bogeyman is coming down the steps, he’s coming near Stephanie and she is not going to move her ground. I saw this coming, so I had to quickly intercept the Boogeyman, but he is enraged and just wants a job. He comes right up to her face at the guardrail and I quickly stepped in… He was then hired due to the passionate promo.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN WITH TONY SCHIAVONE 4/1/30: WRESTLEMANIA VI

3:34:00 Schiavone on the Ultimate Warrior: “I know it is not really cool to talk about somebody who is no longer with us, but the common denominator is the Ultimate Warrior was the shits. Not only in the ring, but as a person as well, and that’s well documented. Lisa Murphy, who was the one that, was my assistant, she ended up being hired by the Ultimate Warrior to be his personal assistant. She called me about it, and I said don’t do it. He is not known for being a nice guy. She lived in Connecticut. She packed up everything and drove her shit in a U-Haul van to Arizona to be with him and when she got there, he fired her after she drove all the way there. She called Lois and I crying miserably I think we gave her money to drive back.