As regular readers will know, we at Royal Ramblings have a huge soft spot for both TNA’s iconic British underdog Rockstar Spud and the MC of MC’s Jeremy Borash. We therefore jumped at the chance to sit down with the two of them together to talk about TNA’s forthcoming UK tour (tickets here), the state of the company and new exclusive digital content coming our way! Read on…
Spud, with EC3 as champion, will we see another feud between you and him? And Jeremy, we were in Glasgow when you flew off the turnbuckle, had you always planned to get in the ring?!
RS: I firmly believe that what you saw between me and EC3 was the Empire Strikes back and you haven’t seen return of the jedi yet! I’m still going to take down that evil empire!
JB: Did it look like it was planned? I would say the most agile part of that whole thing was how quickly I climbed to the top rope! Lightning Fast, Cat-like quickness but from there it was pretty like a brick into the swimming pool. I’d like to thank Tyrus for the amazing catch though…
You’re back in January in London, Birmingham and Manchester?
JB: Yes! Tickets are available and going fast. Its exciting – our eighth tour. It will be completely different to our other tours and there’ll be lots of new things this time around including a new VIP experience. You need to change it up and keep bringing something fresh, this time is no different.
That’s not all, you have exclusive news for us?
JB: Yes! Mark this date in your calendar! August 3rd. In my travels, I’ve noticed there’s a lot of digital programming coming out and so on August 3rd we launch ‘TNA Digital Originals’. These will be all-original shows, a new one every day, Mondays through Fridays. We’re starting with ‘My First Day’ which will be a look back at the stars own perspectives on their first days. Like when Mark Andrews showed up at Impact, to show you what that was like for him and the intimidation factor. The one I’m looking forward to is ‘Knockouts Workout’ with Gail Kim, Brooke and Madison Rayne. It was described to me as “gym porn”, the Instagram phrase for watching attractive people work out. We’ve got another show which is a complete piece of garbage – EC3’s fireside chat. The first episode I believe is called ‘Why Your Facebook Page Sucks’ and he goes into why wrestling fans’ pages are terrible – which is pretty amusing. Every day there’s going to be a new show, we’re taking Wednesdays off for Impact! In the US but that’s four new shows as part of whats called Digital Originals on impactwrestling.com. It’s our answer to the network in some ways, in the fact that we’re just creating our original content, except that this is going to be very concise and very fun.
Gunner and Samuel Shaw were heralded as future stars, why were they released?
JB: It’s a two-hour show and there’s 50 talent under contract. How many TV shows have 50 characters involved? Maybe Game Of Thrones, Eastenders? There’s really talented guys all over the place but talent doesn’t necessarily mean a job for life. Its entertainment and that’s the long and short of it. Spuds going to find that out very soon, I’m sure! The reality is most people won’t make it. 99% of the people trying to be a wrestler will never make it to television, the 1% that do will last maybe a year and past that you may have a career out of it. You’ve got to have a backup plan and I tell every wrestler, it doesn’t matter how talented you are, you’re on borrowed time and that’s the reality.
RS: It’s also not fair to keep those talents off TV and to the side and exclusive to TNA. I know full well that if another opportunity comes for you and you’re under contract, then that’s not fair. Those two guys are great, great dudes and I wish them all the best in the future – whatever they do they’re going to be a success.
Spud, you wrote a moving blog about your experience of visiting a child named Reegon with the Starlight Children’s Foundation, can you tell us about it?
RS: Basically, I always remembered how this business made me feel when I was a child. Wrestling can drag you down a bit but I always think of the positives and look at it through the eyes of a child and how I felt. A lady contacted me and let me know about her son and she told me that his dream was to meet me. I’d been told by our PR in the office that they’d arranged a skype call with him but I told them I didn’t want to do that and asked why we couldn’t arranged things for when I was in the UK. I chased the office, sometimes daily, to make it happen. My thinking was that if a visit is going to take his mind off the fact that he’s going to have another operation or to go to the doctors again, even for a few hours, then I’ve done my job. And would I rather just waste my time sitting around in the house? Or I could go out and make a positive impact on someone’s life. My father was there and in tears. You could see it in his face when Reegon’s mother was explain what his life expectancy was If he had to have his surgery, what it is to be a father. I haven’t had the privilege of being a father but you could see in my father’s face that it’s a different world when you’re a father. It’s upsetting that at six years old you can end up having to go through the stuff Reegon has. I’d do that for any child though. If it puts a smile on a child’s face, that’s what this business is about. It’s not about money, it’s not about great matches or anything like that. It’s about putting smiles on people’s faces and I think if you can make a positive impact on people with this business then I’m all for it.
Where TNA be in a year’s time?
JB: That’s a great question – here in the UK we’ll be happily broadcasting on Challenge TV!
You can see the stars of TNA impact wrestling on tour in January and catch them every Sunday night at 9pm on Challenge TV.
