The SmarK Rant For RF Video’s Shoot Interview With Raven

The SmarK Rant for the RF Shoot Interview with Raven

– Okay, the new book is FINISHED, so it’s time to start catching up on my ridiculously huge pile of wrestling tapes and DVDs, all of which are just begging to be reviewed. I got this one with my last shipment of ROH tapes, and since I love reviewing these things and you guys love reading them, I might as well start with a shoot interview on my way to clearing out the backlog.

– This was done pretty recently, because he’s in TNA at the time of this interview.

– Raven always loved wrestling as a kid, but lost his athleticism in high school. “I was more of a mid-carder” is the way he puts it. He thinks you need a certain amount of self-confidence problems to want to be loved or hated by so many people. Meeting the Barrio Brothers (who lied to him about being tag champions at the time) put him over the edge and gave him the push to become a wrestler. He talks about people being too scared of failure to even try.

– He wanted to go to the Malenko wrestling school, but they had terrible advertising and he couldn’t find them. So he went after the Larry Sharpe Monster Factory next, and that worked out better.

– He started in Memphis (“Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave”), which is of course where he ended up today. He can’t remember his first match, although he swore to himself 15 years ago that he wouldn’t be one of those guys who forgets his first match 15 years later. Larry couldn’t really teach him much because he had the moves and all he needed was work in front of a crowd.

– He started sending letters to the smaller territories and no one hired him until Jerry Lawler finally called him back, and he goes into a crotchety old-timer rant about how kids today have it too easy with developmental deals.

– Met Marty Jannetty down there and they forged a friendship while Marty was on the outs with Shawn. Tells a story about going over in a match for the first time and needing a finisher, and then blowing a match against a jobber due to stage fright. The next night he wrestled Jesse Barr in a 10-minute draw and suddenly learned stuff he had no idea about, but lost his standing after a bad match with the Zebra Warriors. So he was a jobber for weeks, and he got upset that terrible old-timers were getting pushed over him. He spoke up about it and got fired, which would become a recurring theme in his career. He was fired with an angle where Missy Hyatt would give him a date if he could beat Lawler, and at the time he thought that meant they were using him more.

– Down to Florida, where Mike Graham had a role as a smart-ass heel for him. Talks about learning from Graham about doing things in the ring for a reason, rather than just as a spot. He hated everyone in the locker room, however, and had a miserable time of it. He of course has a story about getting fired – Steve Keirn asked him to lose and he hemmed and hawed about it, and got fired the next day for being a primadonna. He took the lesson out of that and never worried about doing jobs from then on.

– Went down to Hawaii on a tour and saw a script for the first time, which pissed off the old-timers to no end. While there, he met Moose Morowski from Vancouver and got a job in Portland via that connection. He drove to Vancouver for the tryout and they made him a babyface (Jamie Scott – rings a bell but I can’t specifically remember him). He tells a funny story about Al Tomko pushing his sons while complaining about Verne Gagne doing the same thing. He’s glad he didn’t break big because he would have went to Stampede and probably gotten the shit beat out of him for being a smart-ass. So he’s doing a six-man with the Tomko kids, and they tell him to turn himself heel for no reason because they’re threatened, and he gets the hell out of there because they start making up stories about a girl threatening legal action, and he sees the writing on the wall.

– So he drives down to Portland for the hell of it and meets Barry Owens, who charges him admission. Fidel Sierra remembered him and pushed for him to get a job, which prompted an interview with Roddy Piper. Piper gave him 3 weeks to get over as a heel commentator or get lost. His focus had always been “How can I get myself over” rather than “How can the promotion get me over”, which is why the WWE experience annoyed him so much. So he starts dressing like a pimp and bringing chicks with him (which was also a good way to get laid) and won himself a job for two years. It was good times – drugs, debauchery and wrestling knowledge. They worked 15-20 minutes a night and he learned tons of stuff. He thinks Vince should invest more into OVW because how much can it cost to run a bunch of armories? Talks about the great drives for the spot shows and the great money. He thought it was cool that he was a heel who was selling merchandise. Talks about driving with Len Denton and picking his brain on booking ideas and how to book episodically.

– Talks about developing your own character back in the day and how all the guys today would be dead without writers doing it for you.

– We skip over the “coke filled days of Portland”, although he stops to brag about all the drugs and ring rats he did in those two years. Basically, the key to Portland was that there was nothing else to do so people watched wrestling. So he’s at his coke dealer’s house and he meets this chick smoking crack named Ginger, who becomes his valet. His description is priceless. She was a “sloppy whore”, but she got heat and took directions well. This leads to a discussion about an angle with Ginger and a new valet named Veronica that was leading to a blowoff with Steve Doll. This led to a marriage angle, and it was so believable that a ring rat slept with him because she thought he was really getting married. So of course he leaves Ginger at the altar and cuts a promo on her about how he was stringing her along the whole time, which led to a Christmas match against Steve Doll, and they were promptly split apart for no reason when it got hot.

– So finally to the firing story, as Len Denton interpreted his creative input as making a play for the book, and thus he was fired at Christmas. He thinks it’s because he’s Jewish. So WCW calls him with a heel commentator job and part-time wrestling. So Len Denton offers to broker a deal for him, and basically fucks him over in the process. From this he learns to do your own business. So he moves to Atlanta hoping to bump into someone and get a connection.

– Joe Pedicino hired him for GWF and he was one of the few guys to have a contract there, and he took a second job as a male stripper to pay the bills. More pussy, drugs and alcohol, in his words. So he devised the “Scott Anthony” persona with hopes of acting jobs in the future. In hindsight, he feels that was pretty stupid.

– Global fell apart but he built a good buzz around himself, so we move to WCW, as DDP bugged Dusty about giving him a job. He worked a dark match and annoyed the crowd so much that he got himself over. Dusty promised to make him the next Ric Flair, which he of course believed. And then Bill Watts came in, and the dream died because he was pegged as a stooge. He offers a quick “Fuck you” to Watts. Talks about showing Pillman how to work around a torn quad with ga-ga and promos instead of highspots. Talks about being the weak link in the Austin/Pillman/Levy comedy trio while driving. They never booked him on house shows and fucked him over on booking dates that he specifically asked for off. So he finally wins the lightheavyweight title from Pillman and he thinks things are picking up. He has a quick aside about Ole Anderson, who he LIKED, just because he was so incredibly blunt. He suspects Bill Watts was against him because of being Jewish.

– Back to Memphis, as he thinks his career is over because he’s too small for the WWF. But Jerry Jarrett always liked him, so they got along. The WWF called while he was there, but they wanted him as a manager, which he interpreted as “wrestler who manages”, not MANAGER. Whoops.

– Johnny Polo is thus created, as he starts doing the stupidest shit possible to get over, but Vince never got the character and wouldn’t get behind it. He hated the character for a long time, but in retrospect he thinks it was funny stuff. He had no problem with the Quebecers, but Bryan Clarke was an idiot who thought he was really supposed to be managing his career. He really liked hosting Prime Time Wrestling with Gorilla.

– He talks about the period where he was producing RAW, as he actually showed up prepared for a color commentary gig and impressed Vince enough that he suddenly had an office job. But Vince realized that Johnny Polo just wasn’t the right character for him, and took him off TV to become a producer full-time. This entailed “writing” the recap shows, which took him five minutes to do and bored the shit out of him. He used the extra time to watch matches in the library for classic match segments, which was the best part of the job for him. He didn’t get along with anyone and didn’t get anywhere near the inner circle. He has no interest in booking or writing.

– He was close friends with Shane-O-Mac and would keep him out until 4:00 every night, which got him heat with Vince. Shane started imitating his annoying heel mannerisms and Vince got pissed off about it. Shane could hang with him all the way. They grew apart, however. He quit the promotion because of his frustration with the job situation, giving up 100K a year.

– He started talking with Art Barr about coming into AAA as the third Gringos Locos, but Konnan wanted that spot and talked shit behind his back to make sure he didn’t get the job. However, he met up with DDP while in New York, who advised him to change his image to a tough guy and ditch the chickenshit heel character. So Page saw Point Break and told him to go grunge, which led Scott to come up with Raven.

– He talked to Cornette, who promised to book him, but it never happened. So he started watching ECW TV and was blown away by it, and used DDP again to get an audience with Paul Heyman. So he did a shitload of coke and halcyons, and Page calls him while he’s all fucked up and gives him the number for Paul, which proved to be an interesting experience, as he immediately forgot all the details given to him.

– He doesn’t think Heyman liked him that much, but there wasn’t heat or anything. Heyman initially thought that Raven was going to be “Scotty the Body in flannel”, but he quickly got the real nature of the character. He doesn’t remember if he thought ECW was gonna take off at the time. He can’t remember whether WCW was interested at the time, either.

– When he first got there, he started adjusting his style upwards to meet the demands of the crazy fans. He offers praise to Axl Rotten as a worker. He loves Mikey Whipwreck. Thought Public Enemy were entertaining, but terrible workers, which Paul hid tremendously.

– The plan was to come in for three months, put Dreamer over huge, and then fuck off back to the WWF, but he loved it so much that he stuck around. He thought of himself as being part of a revolution and would have stayed forever had WCW not come calling.

– It was Paul’s idea for Stevie Richards to be his flunky with cut-off jeans and boy-band shirts, which unfortunately overshadowed his ability in the ring. He talks about the Nest being such geeks working to make sure he stayed a heel, because otherwise he’d be too cool and would get cheered. At the time, Stevie looked up to him, and he shit on Stevie. He thinks the drugs may have had something to do with it. He paid Stevie to do his errands, since he was a drugged-out slug at the time, but others interpreted that as Raven treating him like a servant. He admits that he was a dick, alcohol or not. He lived vicariously through the Stevie character, allowing him to parody his heroes and do goofy shit that the tough guy Raven wouldn’t be able to. Talks about the creation of the Blue Meanie character and how he was originally supposed to be a cartoon supervillain who was trying to take over the world, and was such a bad lackey that he didn’t even know how to take abuse properly. He also came up with the Dudley Boyz. Tod Gordon wrote off the Meanie as a “drunken Raven idea”, but gave it one show, and it got over huge.

– Next up, Beulah, as Raven runs into Ron Gant, who is with Teresa Hayes. Teresa tells them that she used to be Pillman’s sister, and gives him nude pictures of herself. So Heyman hires her as Raven’s valet, and they devise the summer camp storyline (Tommy blows off a fat pig in summer camp and young Raven sleeps with her, and Stevie brings her back years later as a fox). The piledriver spot was devised so that you could see her panties.

– He saw Nova at an indy show and pitched it to Paul, who again wrote it off as a Drunken Raven Idea, but they gave it a shot and it worked.

– He likes the hardcore style because the silly stuff like garbage cans don’t really hurt and it’s an easier match. Thinks Rock is great at making chairshots look real. Talks about the double dog-collar match a bit and how the Pitbulls pussied out when asked to take abuse from Raven & Stevie. He talks about using REAL ether for one of the falls, just for the sake of realism.

– He complains about the WWF stealing the crucifixion angle and his character with Edge. So anyway, Sandman built the cross himself because Raven isn’t very good with tools. He goes into a technical explanation of the proper way to shoot a crucifixion so that the audience can’t tell what’s going on until it’s already happened. Well, nothing worse than a crucifixion messed up because it’s not believable. Anyway, he goes into the story about Paul trying to bring Kurt Angle in and people getting offended and stuff. He blames Tazz for the whole thing, but they get along great now that he’s not such a miserable motherfucker anymore.

– Up next, the Chairshot Heard Round the World. His plan was for Dreamer to be the mirror image of him, down to the finisher. He thinks Dreamer’s memory is all screwed up on many things, and he did his first bladejob on Tommy, resulting in blood gushing out, and then he pounded him with the chair as hard as he could. And then they did it a bunch of times, leading up to Dreamer getting him back. Heyman wanted 10 or 15 shots, but Raven stood up for the side of keeping people from getting desensitized to it, so he promised to sell one chairshot like death. And the rest is history.

– Onto the stuff with Sandman and his family, as Beulah went babyface and he needed a new valet. So they dressed Lori Fullington up as Courtney Love and Raven thought she was hotter than hell like that. He thought Tyler knew his cues better than he did.

– Both Raven and Dreamer protested that Dreamer shouldn’t get the final win over Raven because everyone knew that he’d be back someday, but Heyman wanted closure. It was a tribute match to the fans, as they did all the stuff they wanted to see, one last time.

– Heyman “punished” him for the drug problems by making him win the belt back in a barbed-wire match, which he was terrified of. Turns out it was easy to do.

– Onto rehab, as it had less to do with booze than an emotional breakdown. He was depressed and tried stopping drinking to deal with it, but it didn’t work. Heyman was cool about it.

– He really enjoyed working with Sandman because it was an easy night most of the time. Ditto with Dreamer, although their WWE stuff was shit because they couldn’t do the garbage.

– He thought that they should have gone to PPV sooner, but they’d beaten his character to death anyway and it was time to leave. And they weren’t a creative force anymore because everyone was changing to match them and there were no new ideas left. And WCW’s talent raids were killing them. So once it’s just a regular company, he felt it was time to take the big money and go. His relationship with Heyman was strained because he just wanted more money to stay, and Paul couldn’t even match 1/3 of what WCW was offering.

– By Barely Legal, he had already given notice, and his stuff with Funk was overshadowed by Sabu-Tazz, which also pissed him off. Heyman blamed Tazz, Tazz blamed Heyman. He thinks his stuff with Dreamer & Sandman carried the company for the early years and he should have been given more credit in the long run.

– He had a love-hate relationship with Paul, and drove each other nuts outside of the ring. A lot of it was personality clash because they’re both so obnoxious. It’s even worse these days because they’re no longer working together.

– He talks about teaching classes on wrestling backstage at ECW shows, which benefited the Dudleyz greatly. He loves teaching, mainly because of his ego.

– Onto the quick program with Shane Douglas, as Kimona couldn’t even remember one line and Douglas was getting pissed off while the locker room was laughing their ass off. He thinks Shane is a good guy and a great worker. OKAY then.

– He puts over Cactus Jack’s brilliant anti-hardcore promos and how he’d tie together these bizarre points during the course of a 10-minute promo.

– It was easy to keep everything going with Dreamer and Sandman because they always had something fresh to replace it.

– Heyman considered the Terry Gordy match one of the best of his career. I forget if I’ve even reviewed that one. Probably. Raven credits that match with Gordy getting a job in the WWF afterwards. He goes off on a tangent about how all his early characters were based on wanting to be Michael Hayes, and from there onto a GWF story as he finally met Michael Hayes in a bar. Turned out that Hayes was a big fan of his, which made his head explode.

– Goes back to the double-dog collar match and all the stuff surrounding it, including how Pitbull #1 intentionally bounced his head off a table because he was throwing a tantrum over having to take his own finisher. The Pitbulls don’t come across too well in this interview.

– Other favorites include Raven being jealous of Francine and making Stevie choose between them, and Tyler calling his dad a drunk.

– Overall, he liked ECW better than Portland. And that wraps things up for this part, with a second part promised for later.

The Bottom Line:

TREMENDOUSLY entertaining 3 hours here, as Raven is a funny and engaging speaker who loves to talk about himself. He holds nothing back and freely admits to all his demons and mistakes, and the result is a Cornette-level interview that flies by and has you wanting more.

Highly recommended, and you can pick it up via RF Video here: http://www.rfvideo.com/merchant/index.cfm?action=moreinfo&id=7801

I believe part two is also available either now or soon, which I will gladly review once RF sends it my way.