All right, everybody, this episode of Wrestling Magic, we were having an interview with Donovan die Jack. And Man, this is somebody that I've watched over the years, and I'm pretty excited for this because I feel like he hasn't really been given a fair shake really in some of the situations he's been in. But honestly, I'm really happy to see him here and I'm happy to really give him this conversation and this opportunity to tell his story. So,
mister die Jack, how you doing. Man, I'm doing great. How are you doing fine? And man, I'm really excited to have you on the show. And as always, also joining me will be the gardener, Michael Gross. Michael, how you doing.
I'm doing great. My nephew, and mister die Jack, it's great to actually meet you and talk to you in person. I followed your career for a little over ten years and probably about close to twelve or thirteen when I found found out about you in Ring of Honor, and I just want to say that this is a big honor to have you on the show, and thank you nephew for introducing me. So let's get down to the nitty gritty. Where do we want to start what do you think of math?
Well, oh, mister Daijack, are you comfortable talking about childhood a little bit? And just what got you into wrestling and when you started off?
Sure? Yeah, so I started watching. I mean, I guess I heard about wrestling. So for context, I'm thirty eight. So when I was a kid, my earliest memories are like five years old, six years old something like that, especially because we don't have like videos. Well, I mean there's some home and stuff, but like I think about it.
I think about this a lot actually, because my kids, like every day of their life is documented like nassively, Like there's a I can show my daughter like video from yesterday, video from two days ago, video from you know. So for her, like remembering her childhood is easy because it's there's a constant stream of reminders going on. For me,
not so much. My earliest memories are like little like glimpses, like pictures I can remember in kindergarten, like pretending that I was a wrestler, like we all pretended we were wrestlers. I had very little context for it outside of like like WWFD arcade game. I know some of my friends had that and played that, but like in terms of like the actual product, I'd only seen like maybe like commercials or stuff like that. Like as a six or seven year old kid, you don't even know like where
to turn on a channel or what to do. And you look at the TV guide and it says, you know, Saturday at whatever time. It's like, oh, I have soccer practice, you know whatever, whatever, you can't record it, and maybe I gotta get a VCR or something.
You know.
There's this whole thing right as a as a kid that's not as easy as it is now, which is like, oh, can I just watch it? And it's like yeah, you grab their mote and you can turn it on literally whenever you want. Not as simple. I was a kid, so I didn't I didn't really truly discover like full
time watching of professional wrestling until like nineteen ninety eight. Okay, again, it's right in the middle of the Attitude Era and I'm eleven at this time, so my parents weren't thrilled about that concept, and rightfully so, Like at the time, I was like, oh, they're kind of hard and they're kind of strict. Then going back and watching some of the content from the Attitude era, I'm like, oh my god, I wouldn't. I wouldn't let my my eleven year old
watch that. Ever, I don't have an eleven year old, but if my when my son turns eleven, like for sure, wouldn't let them watch Attitude Era stuff. So I don't think my parents were being strict at all. I think they were being you know, pretty solid parents. But as most kids do, I went behind their back and you know, started recording it and watching into my friend's house and things like that. So that's when I started watching pretty religiously.
And they sort of loosened up on that around late ninety nine, early two thousand, when I became about thirteen years old, they were more okay with it. So I started watching, you know, much more religiously, you know, both shows every week, things like that.
Go ahead, just to interject, who is that one character that you had to see that one wrestler.
He had to guess? What would you guess? Stone cold Stone cold Steve Boston. Absolutely, yeah, so much so that when the Rock turned Babyface and became like the megastar had the you know, the whole franchise, and I refused to accept that. I was like, absolutely not like this guy betrayed my favorite guy. He was a dick that whole time. Sorry, I told you I wouldn't swear.
Okay, we can find that one.
He was a jerk the entire time. Yeah, I refused to ever acknowledge The Rock, So yeah, I really didn't start to appreciate The Rock until I became a wrestler, and then I was like, oh, okay, I actually kind of like his work. He's actually really really entertaining. But at the time I was like, he's pompous, he's cock. Yeah, I don't care for him at all, you know, no matter what he did, the crowd was I was at.
I went to probably fifteen or twenty shows in my childhood every time they came to either Manchester, New Hampshire, Manchester, New Hampshire, Worcester, Massachusetts, Providence, Rhode Island, Boston, Massachusetts. Anytime they came to one of those four arenas between like early two thousand and late two thousand and three, I probably went to every single one of those shows. So yeah,
there was tons of love for the Rock. I was even at I think it was Backlash two thousand and two or two thousand and three, where it was the Rock versus Goldberg, and the Rock was a bad guy at that point, I think, but everyone was still cheering for him, and I was like, nope, now I like Goldberg, you know. So yeah, fast forward to to I guess two thousand So I guess I'll try to make this
a long story short. Around two thousand and three, two thousand and four, like I mentioned, that's sort of when high school sports took over for me, and I didn't really have time to you know, Monday nights were either basketball practice or a football practice or a game or whatever.
You know.
Friday night, same thing, so I didn't really have time to watch pro wrestling, and you know, DVRs weren't much of a thing. I think we had a TVO in like two thousand and five and six or something.
But right, yeah, real quick to sidebar and we're gonna get out of this real quick. Basketball at your height. Obviously, who is your favorite player? Just throw that in?
Well, depends on the like in two thousand and four and five, probably probably like Paul Pierce, I'm a big However, it's usually whoever it was the best for the Celtics. My my all time favorite is Kevin Garnett.
You know, he's just Larry Bird, come.
On, tired. Larry Bird retired before I even ever saw a game, So I mean, like, I love watching Larry Bird highlights and stuff, but I never I never saw him play.
Any guy who could call a shot in front of his own player and then do it. I mean, your guard men, I'm gonna step back, pump fake, and then I'm just gonna take a three. And he would do it to somebody. That's amazing that anyway, go ahead and miss Dodge. No.
I was just gonna say, you know, Larry Bird was tremendous, but I think he retired in ninety two or ninety three, so I was like six or seven, so I don't even have a memory of watching him on TV unfortunately. But yeah, I uh, the so long story short, I was, you know, high school sports turned to college sports, so basically from two thousand and three to twenty ten, I wasn't watching wrestling at all, just hearing about it and stuff.
But once I graduated from college, I was just working a full time job and I said, you know what, I have my night's free again. So I picked up right where I left off started watching wrestling full time again, and then through a series of coincidences, I happened to find the New England Pro Wrestling Academy, which is where I'm a trainer today in North Andover, Massachusetts. Yeah, and I started training there and that was in twenty twelve. So yeah, I've just been in a pro wrestling ring
for the last thirteen years. Wow.
It's really cool. Actually, and I do want to ask before we move on to the academy and everything. So what all sports did you play in high school?
Now?
I'm curious.
My three best were football American football, right, basketball, and track and field. I was a thrower like shot put in discus.
Okay, that's.
On a national scale. I was probably best at like probably a tie between football and shop. I was pretty good at shot put enough to be like top in the state, but I was also one of the top recruits for football. The sad part, though, is my favorite was basketball, like I wanted to be. I enjoyed playing basketball a lot more, but I was only good enough to play at like a Division three college level, which
I did. Because I played at a high high level for football that they wanted to move me to an offensive lineman position, which I didn't care for so I transferred to a smaller school so I could play football and basketball, which I'm very happy about.
I just remember that Ben Wallace played for Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland in basketball. Yeah, he also won a championship, So you never know.
Well, I mean, I know, I'm thirty eight, so it's not happened to me. But yeah, he was a little undersized, I.
Know, but I'm just saying like he was a phenom too, Like there's there's only super athletic.
I remember in high school I would sort of compare myself to him and say, oh, I'm a bit of a wider body and he's not the tallest guy in the world, but he can still play power forward at like at an NBA level, So like I have a chance too. And there was in my brain I couldn't connect the dots between, like he's wildly more athletic than me. So like because in my head I was like, I'm a pretty good athlete, you know, I can play multiple
sports and stuff. But he had like a probably a thirty eight inch vertical or something and just like probably ten.
Years so yeah, insane, great defender. But anyway, this is about you, it's not about like Ben Wallace, so like let's go forward. So I want to ask you a question when you got into school, like when you got into wrestling school and started training, Like did you feel it was grueling? Did you feel it was hard? Did you expect what you had or were you just like were you shocked? Like okay, like this is wrestling school, Like what was wrestling school for you?
So for me, I started with what we call fantasy camp, which is like everyone can sort of pay whatever seventy bucks or some seventy US dollars and come try a day as a professional wrestler. So the first time I stepped foot in a ring, I I did what we call it. I took a bump. It's a flat back bump, which is like land on your back, and then hit
the ropes a little bit. And just from watching it for so long, I had sort of like a like a muscle memory to it watching it and doing backyard wrestling, I would kind of portray it in my backyard like on you know, mattresses or whatever the ground sometimes where I would just you know, imitate what I was seeing on television. And quite frankly, that's kind of a good way to do a lot of things that you I mean, people do it in basketball, they do it in football.
You watch someone who's great, and you try to imitate someone who's great. So I was doing the same thing with pro wrestling, and it felt very natural to me, and I said, Oh, okay, I think this is what I was meant to do. This feels like something that I've been doing for a long time, even though it's my first time doing it. That being said, training was very strenuous, both mentally and physically. There's really nothing like pro wrestling in terms of athletic and certainly in terms
of cardio. An interesting story I like to tell is I did a tryout for WWE very early in my career that a lot of people don't know about. It was in June of twenty thirteen, so really i'd been training for less than a year and I had really just done my first match on a show. So it's very, very very early in my career. But I right from day one, I knew I wanted to wrestle for WWE.
So I was sending emails to all the recruiters and stuff like that, and I ended up getting a try out just based on, you know, my youth and my size and my look stuff like that. I say youth and it's funny because at the time I felt like I was kind of old because I was twenty five and I would look at the foster and it was like eighteen nineteen, and I was like, oh, oh, I'm kind of old. In hindsight, you know, twenty five is actually really young in pro wrestling. But yeah, I ended
up getting a trout and they asked me. They being Canyon Seeman, who was the head of talent relations for NXC for about a decade, but at this point he had only been there for about a year. But he mailed me back and asked if I wanted to do the tryout for wrestlers or if I wanted to do it for athletes. And I was like, ooh, I want to do it for athletes, because you know, I'm a Division one athlete and you know I can hang with those guys. But the wrestlers, they're all going to have
way more experience than me. I don't want to have to like get in the ring and wrestle guys who have ten years experience and I'm green as hell. So I did the try out with athletes, which was all It was like thirty probably Division one football players and like Olympic caliber athletes, guys who had like gold medals
and stuff. When you do pro wrestling conditioning, and I had the great fortune of having about nine months of pro wrestling conditioning under my belt, so I actually did really well in terms of the conditioning, like one of the top people there. People were dropping like flies. And I'm talking about like Olympic level caliber athletes, like extremely well conditioned men. I think it was all men. Yeah,
this was an all male tryout. I don't know, they probably did like male and female tryouts back then or something separately, but uh yeah, like people were just like after day one, like ten guys left, you know.
It was.
It's that kind of thing. And I still hear anecdotes
like this every day. I was talking to someone two days ago who did a tryout and there were there were, you know, real legitimate athletes who just were like, this is not for me, right, because it's it's just an incredibly You really to get through the sort of mental and physical anguish and conditioning of professional wrestling, you really have to love the business of professional wrestling because if you think about it, like, imagine doing something so physically
and mentally grueling that you didn't even know what it was and someone just told you to try it and you see it and you're like, this is silly, Like I don't understand. It's not even a real competition. It's more of a theater that you know. You so people don't and that's fine. I don't hold anything against that, But like if you put yourself in their their shoes,
you're like, oh, I would absolutely not. Why would I condition myself and my body to smash myself and do all these painful, tiring, exhausting things for something that I don't really care about, you know. So so really it takes a level of like fandom to sort of be able to push yourself and continually push yourself at a level to be at where you need to be physically to succeed in the Ring.
I see, And that makes a lot of sense, because I mean, to me, it is the last true theater art at this point. You know, you don't really see many others that are actually you know, cutting themselves open to get the real blood effect and actually look that good in the ring as well as uh, just doing their best to make everything look perfect and stay in that kind of condition. It is one of those things that it's not for everybody. And I don't blame anybody
that's like, yeah, I just couldn't do it. It's too much, And I don't put that against anybody, but I will say I give hats off to you man for sticking with us a lot.
Interesting now that you mention it, you just sparked an idea in my head because I do. I do a lot of acting training. I was doing a lot.
I love this now I keep going.
Yeah, now, I'm a little busy with my independent bookings. But ironically, when I was in WW I had a little bit more free time, so so I would spend a lot of my free time training with Howard Fine, who's one of the best acting coaches in the world, and thankfully he does online classes, so I did a bunch of levels of his class and he trains for
both screen and theater. And whenever we talk about like theater acting, a lot of the concept is like being able to mentally commit yourself to the act that's happening without actually doing it right. You don't want to actually like drink to get drunk or actually be like sleepy and wake up and be tired, to act like you're tired, right. A lot of it is just like convincing yourself that you're in those scenarios so you can act the part and convince yourself that you you feel sick without actually
being sick. But now that you mentioned like what we do in professional wrestling and how that translates, I almost want to like do or direct a play one day that's like the opposite side of that where you do all of the things on stage, because like, like pro wrestling is one thing, right we can actually hit each other and do all those other things, but like real life on stage would be such a wild thing to
like actually have people like drinking or whatever. Maybe you don't want to do fighting unless you have trained professional wrestlers up there, But as a professional wrestler, I know some guys and we could for sure do portray that
part of it. And then I don't know if you can portray falling asleep or all the different you know, getting sick like that, But like that that'd be an interesting experiment if you could design a screen written play that has elements of reality all sort of coursed throughout it. That would be a very interesting play that I think people would like.
Yeah, Donovan, I think it would be called the Plane Rod from Hell.
I wasn't on that.
I wish. I know, I know, I know you're you're way too young, but but I do. You said your friend Howard Fine. Is that a real name or is that a stage name? Because you know who Howard find is.
I don't are you pronouncing the last name right? It's f I N E. Fine? Yeah, yeah, do I know who he is?
Well, it was one of the names of three stooges.
Oh was it?
Yes? It was. It was it was Fine, Howard and Fine or something like that. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was. Yes that people do not know that that the name of the Stooges. You can look it up Mo Fine, Curly Fine, and Larry Howard. I think it was Larry Howard, Mo Fine, and Curly Fire. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, so that I thought you were making that because wrestling you always have a stooge. I thought it was like a stage thing, so I had to call you on that.
But anyway, I'm loving this, this interesting stuff. What match like made you say I gotta turn it up? And be like a star. What match like when you're yeah, like when you were in training and you're going through the Indies and you saw a match on TV and you said, Okay, this match has made me say I got to be a star, Like I want that match, I want that situation.
I had a bit of a light bulb moment when I was watching I just started training and I was watching one of the early early NXT. I don't know if it was Takeover or if it was just an episode of TV, And I don't think I've watched the match many times since, but I remember watching it live and it was Cizarro and Sammy Zane, and I remember thinking, oh,
they they they've taken this to another level. And interestingly enough, I got the wrestle in that ring and in that venue at full sale many many times after that and have great matches where I was trying to outdo them,
you know, in a lot of ways. But at that time I remember watching that and as someone who was just learning, like lock ups and shoot offs and hit the ropes and this is how you pin and this is and I'm watching them do all that stuff combined with the with the psychology of it and the impact and the violence and the storytelling and all that stuff, and I'm like, wow, this is a completely different level, and I need to I need to push myself harder than I've ever pushed before if I ever want to
get to that level. So, you know, it was it was cool in the moment because this is twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen maybe at the time, and to kind of escalate and elevate myself to the point where I started to have matches that were sort of in that realm conceptually, maybe a year or a year and a half later, because that's when I really started, you know, to hit the round running with Ring of Honor and stuff. So I really had to sort of step my game
up in that capacity. And then obviously, as I elevated through NXT, we started to you know, push harder and harder and push that envelope in terms of you know, trying to you know, break ground and sort of reinvent the wheel.
It's really awesome, man. Nov I'm gonna let you take the next couple of questions because I've got a couple of questions that I've had some fans that want me to ask him. So I want you to actually take a lead a little bit here for a little bit.
Okay, no problem, man. So I do want to ask about So, given where you are now, what advice would you give to your younger self starting out training and just your first couple of years in.
What advice would I give myself Earlier? I'd probably say, like, don't be in such a rush. I felt like I was in this huge, huge rush, which because as I mentioned earlier, I thought I started when I was twenty five, and I felt like I was like really behind the eight ball because in my mind, pro wrestlers like you had to start training at fifteen and living out of your car at sixteen, and then you were ready to hit the road at seventeen and you were a world
champion by eighteen. Like that was my mindset of how professional wrestling worked. And I would look at the developmental roster and there was a lot of young guys on there, and I'd say, oh, I'm way behind the eight ball. I need to at least be in WWE by the time I'm you know, twenty nine or thirty something like that. So when that opportunity came, you know, I jumped all over it. In hindsight, I feel like I could have
used a little bit more. So I want I don't I don't want to dissuade myself from having that push and having that drive and continuing to push and feel like my back is against the wall, because I still have that to this day and it's still what drives
me and motivates me. I just want to make sure that my decisions that I made weren't so hasty, because I, you know, I jumped at Ring of Honor, and then I jumped at WWE and I and it feels like it like sometimes I didn't survey the whole situation and say, you know, maybe six months from now might be a little bit better of a scenario, or or have the conversations that I could have had in those scenarios instead of just saying like, oh, here's the contract, sign on
the dotted line as quick as possible, right, I could have had a conversation before that and been like, what's the what's the plan? What are the thought process here? But in my mind it was like, oh, they're offering you a contract, don't ask what the plan is. That's disrespectful, Right, They're going to have a plan for you, you know, so in if I could give advice to my younger self, it'ld be it. Don't be afraid to, you know, ask those questions. Don't be afraid to broach those those topics
and things like that. You know, this is a it's a two way street, like you're signing a contract, but like that, there's there's a reason, right, there's agreements on both ends of a contract, and you should you should feel comfortable having those conversations and things like that. So that would be my advice.
Oh absolutely, I mean, yeah, you got to read the fine print and realize like, okay, I'm signing here, here's what they're asking of me, and where do I feel that I need to fit in as well? And there's a lot to it when you're signing into anything, I feel like, you know, I mean, I've signed many contracts so far in my life and it's always like you never know what exactly could happen, especially if you just
don't read it. You have to really read in the fine print, like a I don't mean to get too much in my personal life here, but every time that I sign off a job or anything saying an aircraft is good to go, as I'm a mechanic on them. It is a contract saying this is perfectly fliable, there's no issues with it. If I just pencil whipped in just didn't care, then yeah, everything could fall apart if
I'm not paying enough attention. So that's understandable that you would look back at your old self and just say, well, maybe I should have read the room a little bit more figured out everything that could have been in my plans. But I do also want to ask you about so you weren't pushed correctly. I don't feel like when you were in your WWE time, I kind of felt like you had a lot more potential and you could have
done a lot more. But it feels like I want to use almost Bronze Strowman in a way as an example, because like, you have this guy with a lot of talent, but what are you going to do with him? And then they just kind of don't know. Maybe it's the image. How did you feel about the situation?
So, I mean, pro wrestling is a lot about sort of timing. There's elements of timing, there's elements of luck, there's elements of talent and ability, and there's also a lot of like business factors and moneymaking factors and boxes that are checked and things like that. So I referred to it as a pie chart almost. It's this big pie chart where a lot of it is stuff you don't control, and a smaller piece of it is that
you do control. You want to fill out as much of that as possible and then just kind of like hope that the rest of it like rounds out as much as possible. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't,
and that's that's just part of it. I mean, like, I was in WW for seven years, so I knew a lot of people, and I had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, and I was around a lot of people, from the people all the way at the top of the car to the people who you know, were only there for a cup of coffee and barely you know, had anything. It's a double edged sword for everybody. No nobody is like one thousand percent happy with one hundred percent of the scenarios that happened.
You know, there's there's oh, I gotta go do this media appearance, or I gotta do this, I gotta do that, and meanwhile, someone else on the other end of the spectrum is like, oh, I would love to do a media appearance. You know that that's actually a conversation. I had a lot of times as I was asking to be on house shows, and I was like, please, can I be on these house shows? Because I know that there's one hundred guys who don't want to be on house shows. I'll take that exactly please.
Yeah.
But the just the business model and the way that it is is the house shows aren't there to like get reps and stuff or to have good matches. They're there to here's the stars, here's the people you see on TV and come see them and buy a bunch of tickets and stuff like that. So so I get it, you know, I get a lot of it from a business aspect. The reality of the situation is I I wanted to be a top guy, and I asked many times what I needed to be and needed to do
to be a top guy. I don't think that. Uh So, on the one hand, I don't. I don't hold it against anyone because you know, there was a lot of like, oh, well, you know, just keep doing this and keep doing and so in a sense that's not wrong, right, No one, No one would ever come to me and say like, oh, just you know, just cross your finger. You know they'll work real hard and and uh and and and hope because you know that that would all be be you know, sort of detrimental advice to a talent. But so I
understand like why they didn't say that. But you know, again, it's a lot of it's timing. That being said, I had a great I was given a lot of things that ended up being very fortunate for me in the realm of professional wrestling.
Right. So, like I.
Especially my runs in NXT. Right, I was on multiple premium live events. I was in relevant storylines. I was able to have marquee matches on big stages. As recently as a year ago, I had the biggest match of my entire career, which was to stand and deliver for the North American Championship in front of sixteen thousand people, Right, So I can't look back at it and be like, whoa it was me. I'm so you know, it's it's it's that was a wonderful, mainstream sort of opportunity that's
still paying dividends to this day. You know, did I want more? Did I want to be a representative champion for the company, absolutely, and I tried everything in my power to get that, but again, a lot of it's, you know, stuff that's out of your control and timing
and things like that. So what I did get I'm very thankful for because it gives me the opportunity to come out on shows like I did last night, for example, Beyond Wrestling in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is you know, my home where I'm build from, and you know, as soon as my music hits and I come out, people recognize me. They've seen me on TV, they see me on these premium live events, they come to my merch stand, they buy a lot of my merchandise and stuff like that.
So I'm able to make a living off of professional wrestling. So for that, I'm extremely grateful because there's so many people who even people who have time in WWE, who aren't able to make a living off of this once they're done with pro wrestling, and that's that would be a very unfortunate situation, right if I. If I were unable to do that, I'm extremely lucky in that sense, So I'm very thankful for my time and the opportunities that I got with WWE.
I see. So you seem like a very positive person and a big go getter with every opportunity you could possibly go after. And there is somebody that I do want to reference with this. I think it was Matt Cardona who had talked about after being released and everything. Or it feels like every time that WWE goes through a list of new people who have been released. Hey, you have a couple of options here. You can either let yourself fade into obscurity and say what was me?
Or you can get up and you can do your best outside of that company and build yourself. And I feel like you've done that very well, you know. I mean a few months ago, I was watching a little bit of MLW here and there, and I remember watching your match with Kenta, and I thought, man, this is probably best on the card. I really liked it, and I thought, man, I think this guy has a lot more than what he was given. But either way, he's
still building on himself. And that's something that I think you are very good at right now, is you are keeping yourself relevant even if you may not be in the top company. But you don't have to make yourself relevant anymore. You know, the Internet and all these indie shows, they are willing to hire you, and I know that for a fact, and I'm very glad that you're able to keep yourself going. But I do want to ask you, do you have anything in the future that you like to promote?
Real quick? I mean, yeah, like you mentioned MLW, that's going extremely well for me. I'm very happy with with the Like I said earlier, the advice I gave my I wanted to give my younger self, Well, that's the advice I'm giving myself right now. Right So, I've I've had those conversations with Court, with with Jared A at MLW about you know, here's where I am in my career, Here's what I want out of this partnership. And they've
fulfilled their end of the bargain, like very much. So you know, I've we're less than a year in and I've already been just two or three weeks ago. I was in Mexico for cm ME Wrestling at Arena Mexico, wrestled LW World Championship twice. Now the storylines are there, they're consistent, they listen to my creative ideas, you know. So my whole goal has been to rebrand myself. Right, I had a I have an image, I have a brand. I have how people picture me. And it's good.
Right.
It's a very positive thing for people to look at you and say, oh, that's that's one of the best wrestlers in the world. Every time he wrestles, he is a great match. Right. So that's a positive thing. But I need to continue to adjust that, right because I I'm past the point where I need people to look at me and say, that's that guy's always going to have a great match. Right now, I need people to look at me and say, oh, that's the guy that wins,
that's the champion, right, That's that's my guy. Right. He represents me, right, because having a great match is awesome. It's having a great match, but you know, call space to space. I never want a championship in WWE, so I was the guy who always, you know, had great matches but usually lost them. Right. So now I'm working on rebranding that image and making people so that I can be viewed as a top guy because that's my goal, right. I want to be the face of a company, and
MLW is giving me that opportunity. So I'm extremely thankful for them. We have a show coming up in New York City on June twenty sixth. I'm gonna double check that date just to make sure that it's right. I'm pretty sure it's a Thursday, June twenty sixth, Yes, in New York City. So that will be my next appearance for MLW. I'm very much looking forward to it. I mean, that's my number one company, so I'm very excited to be with them consistently. It's been a wonderful partnership and
opportunity though so far. And I, like you mentioned, I'm just continually trying to reb and rebuild myself less, rebuild more, rebrand and you know, give people and myself the opportunity to to see what it looks like to have me as the face of a company.
Absolutely well, dude, do you mind if I ask a couple of fan questions?
Jar?
Go ahead, all right? So, first of all, Josh Turner wants to know what was it like when they approached you to do retribution and just change yourself and become this other character, And how'd you feel about it knowing it was pandemic and you knew basically this was just a weird thing. You're smiling.
So it was funny because the second you said, can I ask you a fan question? I said, sure, go ahead, And in my mind I said, it's gonna be about retribution. It's going to be about what Vince said to me. It's gonna be that's all fans want to know because it's such a fascinating thing. So he asked how I was approached about it? Is that coo? I wasn't. I wasn't approached by it. I I approached Vince with with
the idea because he he came up with retribution. The timeline is very weird, and again I don't I don't blame anyone for not having this correct because it was the pandemic, right, so we were all like, you know, freaking It's it's funny when you think back to it, it's there's almost like a pre pandemic life and then a post pandemic life, and then everything in that two years is like a complete blur, like our heads were
spinning and stuff. So I totally understand how how everyone's like a perception of time is way off, just as a as a general refresher for those who were only casually paying attention at the time, which is a lot of Yeah, we had just we were still we uh Monday night, Raw was still in the performance center at
the time. There were fans there, but they were behind like the glass thing, and Vince had introduced on Twitter for some reason, uh like tonight, I'm gonna raw a Roague group of bandits Sarga are gonna be doing something. They're calling themselves Retribution or something like that. And then that night they showed some CCTV footage of like a bunch of people in ninja outfits, like throwing a mall
tof cocktail at something that didn't really look like a generator. Basically, what I had come to find out was they were throwing all this stuff together like hours in advance.
How can you still broadcast to be took out the generator? Go ahead?
There's lots of questions like that. But again I wasn't involved in any of this. I was just watching it from not even from Afar because like I was one of the people in the crowd, like I was like a fan, like just cheering and doing and stuff. So I'm watching this stuff and in my mind, I don't I don't want to make this a big, long story about me and my call ups and things like that. But let's just say at this point I was quote
unquote on the roster of RAW. Things were extremely volatile at that point, so like the contract was different and who knew who was where and all this different stuff. But like, theoretically speaking, I was done with NXT at this point. Carrying Cross had like hit his submission on me and choked me out to build to him and Keith Lee for the NXC Championship. So I was effectively done as far as I knew with NXT, and I
was now a member on Monday Night Raw. That being said, Monday Night Raw had no creative plan for me as far as I knew. So I'm just kind of like in purgatory basically, and I see this thing with retribution, and I see, you know what it is, and I have all the same questions that you and lots of fans have, and I'm saying, oh, they need wrestlers to populate this, right because I again, I'm in the company, so I know that the people who are doing it
are not wrestlers. They had like extra who are wrestlers, but they're like, you know, indie wrestlers or whatever and or local talent will call them and and some of them were writers, right, so they needed like ten people or whatever to like you know, chainsaw the ropes or whatever and all that all that stuff and like throw cinder blocks through a through a glass window. But none of them are like roster talent. They're all either local
talent or writers extras. Yeah, so I'm so I'm watching this and I'm saying, oh, they need Obviously this is going to be a focal point of of of the show because it's it's it's being introduced in like relevant segments like I don't know if you remember this, but like Randy Yorton like did his punt kick on Rick Flair, Like that's a massive moment in WWE history, And the lights flickered and went out because of retribution, so that at the end of the day, it was a solution
a problem, which was they didn't want to punt Rick Flair for real. But you know, it's still part of the storylines and stuff like that. So I'm saying, Okay, this is gonna be a part of this brand going forward of WWE. So I want to be a part of it. And I have people I know people who can be a part of this. So I long story short, I went directly to Vince. I introduced myself. I pitched myself and a bunch of other people to populate Retribution,
and I showed him my idea, my presentation. Ultimately, all told, he took about half of what I said and used it between the names that I had and the presentation that I had, and then the other half of it he put his spin on it. So that's kind of on.
So you were the brains behind Retribution.
About half of it? Yeah, yeah, about half of it what I what I would refer to as the good half. Here, I'll tell you exactly what I pitched. I pitched. I pitched myself, uh Dio Madden, who's who ended up being Mason is now Mason Madden in uh In MXM and a W. I pitched Shane Thorne, who's now Shane Haste in New Japan, the Mighty O'Neil.
I love those guys. I followed them like I'm a wrestling historian, so I've loved those guys.
Go ahead, sir, I think I also pitched Killian Dane, who's now Big Demo. I pitched Tomaso Champa, and I pitched I think Nikki Cross and maybe one other but that might be it, So I think it was those six. So so it ended up being me, Shane, do O or Mason, and uh Mia mia Yim who I think was still like actively on NXT at the time, so that's probably. And then Ali ended up being our our our leader.
Mastafa.
Yeah, so I didn't I didn't pitch him obviously because he was like on SmackDown or so that that ended up coming into play later. Uh So again about half of the stuff that I had there. And then in terms of the presentation, I did want masks, so I did pitch masks, but I wanted them as entrance masks
that we would would take off. And in terms of the names that I pitched the names in the backstory, I wanted it as one name all caps, so I guess theoretically he liked that, but I pitched die Jack, do O, Thorn and then whatever for for the other ones.
I don't I don't remember what I ended what I pitched, but obviously what we ended up getting was t bar, Mace and Slapjacks one word all cap, so like it had a lot of the element that I'd pitched, but it was like, ooh, we changed just enough to make that really weird.
They're they're so. I don't know if anybody knows this, this is a great admission. This is a great wrestling
admission that nobody knows about. I don't know if you've talked about this and other podcasts before and if you have, great but for us, this is a very big thing because everybody's asked about that and in you know, like the early two thousands or not early two thousands, by twenty twenty one on the on the podcast here at WWE podcast dot com, Matt the host and I would do some shows together and he'd be like, what do you think about retribution? I was like that that boat
has sailed into the sunset. It's gone, you know, And I felt bad because you guys were doing the best you could giving what you were given. You know, you were giving a bowl of rice and you were asked for a stirfry. It's like, Okay, well I can make run, but I can only flavor it with so many things. So I just I think it's amazing that you were one of the pioneers of the situation and what you wanted it to be, and as far as you know, your cohorts and everybody who was there, I wished way
better for it. And I being a follower of you since twenty probably twenty twelve, twenty thirteen or whatever, when I first started seeing you on Ring of mon or probably twenty thirteen or fourteen, I just wanted bigger things for you. So can I lead you into my next question?
Sure?
Sure? All right? So do you feel that there's a stigmatism because you're what six seven six eight six seven?
Yeah?
Yeah, that you have to wrestle different. This is from Chrismasanti, by the way, you have to wrestle different as a small man who's a star versus a small man who's not a star.
Yes, yeah, there, they're not just a small man, but every man. You need to take star power and booking into account. Right, it doesn't matter what their size is.
Right.
If if I'm everything plays a role in terms of my psychology, in how I wrestle, how I talk to someone, how I encounter someone at all, It all plays a role, because that's that's how you know life works.
Right.
If I'm If I'm walking down the street and I encounter a guy who's six one, two twenty and he's he's running his mouth at me, Like that's not a major threat. But if I walk into a UFC cage and I'm wrestling and I'm fighting Matt Riddle who's six one, two twenty, that's a whole different and he's running his mouth at me, that's a whole different ballgame. I need to approach that differently. I'm speaking to him differently, I'm
fighting him differently. That's life, right, Size plays a role, right, it plays a role, but it's not the be all end all right, So I approach it. Yeah, I understand what he's getting at. Right, he's saying like, sometimes there's this, like there's a huge size difference and it ends up being a squash match. But sometimes you're wrestling like a Finn Balor and it's not a squash match. Right, He's he's beating me and he's beating me clean or whatever.
And I've done both of those many times. Around the same time, I was wrestling squash matches on main event a lot of the time, and it'd be a smaller guy, and then I'd go and I'd have to wrestle Finn Ballart Madison square Garden. That's obviously not a squash match. Obviously, it honestly would trend more in the direction of him getting over on me pretty handily, like I would hit a false finish or two on him. But he was
the star and I wasn't. I was bar right, So even though there's a massive size difference, So yeah, we take it into account, but I'm gonna all over the ring and making him look like a goof Right, this is a former Universal champion, so and he's one of
the most over guys in the company. So I'm not just tossing around like a rag doll like you have to give him some you know, some some purpose, some gravitas, and quite frankly, he's you know, got more experience than me, and he's more veteran than me, so he would probably call most of the match, and he's not going to call a bunch of nonsense where I'm just chucking him out of the ring and stuff like that. You know, he's gonna you know, he beat him me up pretty well.
So so yeah, you know, there's there's obviously a it plays a factor in terms of how you structure things and what your psychology is for sure.
Like it all right. So my last question is from Eli Brow, and Eli would like to know basically, when you go into match if you have basically I don't know how to say this, diarrhea or something like that, how do you deal with it? I hate, but it's a question for you. It's a fair question.
Someone actually asked me something similar recently. I've been fortunate that I've never been that sick when I have to wrestle. Interestingly, this has come up sort of recently because I was wrestling, like I mentioned in Mexico, and that did get to a bunch of us.
More so than me.
Mine. Mine wasn't so bad. I mean, we're all human beings, so we know that. Like you usually you you you go and then you get like you know, a certain amount of time as a reprieve, right you're not is like going, going, going, going, unless you're massively ill.
Right. The only time novirus or something like that.
The only time in my progress and career where I've ever been that sick where I felt like I had to live in the bathroom but I had to go do something on television was actually, interestingly, it was actually the first NXT TV taping we ever did at the Performance Center, which, if you remember the timeline, was the last NXT TV taping we ever did with a crowd
because the pandemic hit that night. And then the next day SmackDown or whatever or two days later, SmackDown was at the Performance Center in that exact same setup, in that exact same building. In hindsight, it makes me wonder if they did that show at the perform Center because they knew that the COVID shutdown was coming. But yeah, we did NXT TV, and at that time it was on and Wednesday nights, I think, so, so yeah, that night,
thank goodness, all I had was a run in. If you go watch it back, I think I think Keith wrestled Trevor Lee maybe or something like whose name was Cameron Grimes, and then something and like knocked him out or something, and I came in to make the save and to run priestuff and then I picked Keith up and Keith gave me his power bomb finish because he was distracted or thought it was me or something. So thankfully, all I had was that little thirty second segment or whatever.
But like I went from the bathroom, washed my hands to the ring directly back to the bath because I was so sick, and in my mind I was like, oh, COVID, because if you remember, nobody knew what COVID was and nobody knew what the symptoms were. So for me, I was like, Oh, I have this such bad like stomach virus. This must be what COVID was. And you know, in hindsight, it was obviously not COVID. But the yeah, the shutdown came like literally that night or like the next day
or something like that. But yeah, I've not so so to answer the question, I've never been so sick. Where it is the problem isn't solved by going to the bathroom, you know, a few minutes before I have to go out for the match, And almost not almost every show that I've ever done in my life, there's a bathroom accessible somewhere in the locker room or near the locker room.
So yeah, I just I get my gear on, I call the match, I go to the bathroom, and then I wash my hands and I go wrestle, you know, and then your body takes over from that point and you don't have to worry about it. But I've heard, you know, horror stories of some guys who have to, like you know, usually I.
Heard a story about like sid Vicious, which a guy I prank called one time. And you listen to old shows, it's it's really funny one of our old shows. But yeah, seditious, power bomb, jyd and in the middle of the three he just shies.
So I've heard some guys who use what's called a muffler before. I don't know you've ever heard that term.
No, it's like a.
I'll leave it to your imagination. You do something something, you do something interesting with, like with like a roll of toilet paper. So we'll just leave it at that rather than going into.
The gruesome details here Lord the Lord.
Yeah, I've never done that.
This conversation took an interesting turn.
Oh we are.
Yeah, we definitely do.
If anything, if anything's gonna go viral, it's gonna be this. I want I want to name the person who told me that they do that. I'm not going to do it. They're very popular right now, in very mainstream, so it would go viral and I'm not going to out him like that. So take take that for what it's worth. Maybe he said it on another podcasts. People can connect the dots.
Oh yeah, sometime down in the future, can we do a show called Russell Muffler just talking about ribs and that. I mean, that's another one. Like, you know, I don't know how we're doing on the timeline, how we're doing math.
We got about eight minutes.
Yeah, okay, So basically, tell me a good rib you've pulled, or a rib that you've done on. Somebody else already.
Asks me this. I don't have one. Ribbing is not much of a thing as it used to be. It really isn't.
I know.
I know people love the stories from like the eighties and the nineties where these guys were like doing these horrible, heinous things to each other. I've never seen it. I've never encountered it. The worst ribs that I see nowadays, or like people will like hide someone's boots or whatever, and that was like ten years ago. I really don't see it anymore. It's just it's no longer the culture. It really isn't. I I saw a video the other day of like Zeleena Vega like prank calling Dominic Mysterio
as a child. That's probably like the worst thing you're gonna that's probably like the worst rib you're gonna get nowadays. Unfortunately, if you guys have heard something more recent than by all means, I'd love to hear it. But I don't hear any of these anecdotes. Maybe people just don't don't mess with me specifically because I don't mess with them. I don't know, maybe, but yeah, I have none. Unfortunately, that's fair.
Times have changed, you know.
It is what it is.
Yeah, it's the locker It's just it's just a completely different thing, right. I was even sort of part of the transition because there was a little bit of that like sort of old school, old guard mentality when I started in twenty twelve.
Where it was like.
Don't speak unless spoken to, and everyone in locker room was these huge, huge guys. There was a you know, a lot of them were on pills or or in the corner drinking. And then there was this whole thing where they're trying to find the female fans from that night, who are you know, are gonna continue the night and
things like that. So that was like part of it, But then there was this also this trend in a different direction, and it's just it's it's really sort of parted ways from that over time, where now I go to the locker room and there's no like there used to be fights in the locker room. There used to be brawls people all the time. There's just everyone was on edge about everything, and everyone was. Now now there's a really sort of I don't encounter that much anymore.
Especially and this isn't like me like putting myself over
is some sage wizard or whatever. But the reality is most locker rooms I go into nowadays like I'm the veteran for the most part, I'm both the person with the most experienced and the person or the person with the most ears in the business and the person with the highest level of I've been on TV the longest in terms of most of the locker rooms, and now outside of MLWMLW is a lot of veterans and stuff like that, but most like indie locker rooms like last
Night for example. So so yeah, maybe it's a trend just because I'm a boring Nancy who just kind of like shows up and laughs and is gets along with everyone, and we call our match and the goal is to have the best match of the night and things like that, rather than like where we going after like who has the somas and things like that. You know that maybe that was the trend fifteen twenty years ago or whatever, but you know now, it's just.
It's just not.
In a different world. It makes sense.
I love this of you. I love the fact that you're very candidate and you're just like going straight forward and talking about, like, you know, the difference between you know, locker rooms for years and years. That's really awesome that you're like opening up about that.
Yeah, used to used to smell like baby oil and hot stuff too, which I kind of miss. I kind of have like a nostalgia for that, which is funny because I used baby oil. I never used hot stuff. But now when I'm in a locker room and I smell baby oil and hot stuff, I'm like, oh, I'm it peaks my like nostalgia for when I was younger and just starting off in the business. But at the same time, I'm like, I'm like, who's wearing baby oil
and who's wearing hot stuff? Because get it off, the baby oil makes the rope saltce slippery, the hot stuff burns my eyes. I'm just screaming about it the whole match because it's such a nightmare to have to worry about that. Like I'm a two hundred and seventy five pound guy doing moon salts off the top rope. Somebody
hits the and there's baby oil all over it. Think about how much that could like potentially harm me as a human being, Like if I slid and pencil into the ground, Like that's a ton of weight coming down on my neck and my vertebrate just because somebody wanted to be like glistening or whatever. Like, there's tons of other options. I put on a top sheer coat of of of shininess when I'm wrestling on TV, and it's
not slippery. It's it's like a it's like a it's like it's almost like oily in a way, but it like has some grip to it. But it's it's from if any progress just to.
Use tea tree oil. It's it's it's good for your body.
Well, the thing I use is from a company that does the tanning. They do it for like competitions.
Oh you can plug you can plug it here if you want to plug it, go ahead, plug it.
I don't make any money off of it.
Well we need you need to make it. Yeah, we do need you to make money though, so you will plug at the end.
All right, So we're getting close to the end here, guys. So as we always ask at the end of Wrestle Magic, mister d Jack, could we get some recommendations for from you for the audience. Just anything that you like, movie, TV show, video game, poem, cat dog breed, doesn't matter what it is.
Yeah, my favorite movie of all time is Seven by David Fincher. I love that movie. I go back and watch it all the time. I think it's great. The show that I'm currently watching on TV is Why can't I remember the name of it? Tom Hardy's in it. I don't know if anyone else is watching this. It's UK based, it's London based.
What the.
Somebody will figure it out. Somebody posted remember the name of it? But uh yeah, that's it.
Fair enough, No problem there. And so if anybody wants to try to reach you or reach out to you or book you or anything, how can they do that?
All my social media stuff is at die Jack Fye. Booking me is Bookdijack at gmail dot com. My school you can check out my school, The Dijack Wrestling Academy. It's dijack wrestling dot com. It's an online school just like this. I actually have it in one minute. It starts. My class starts in one minute, so everybody's probably waiting for me right now to get to hop onto that. But I'm gonna teach a two hour course. It's once a week every week. Check it out dijack wrestling dot com.
But you probably you missed the first week already, and by the time this comes out, you'll miss the second week. So maybe maybe wait for the next round, which will be in probably three or four months.
All right, mister die Jack, my name is Michael Gross. I am AT one captain on x Twitter, whatever you want to call it. I think that you're incredible and I want you to do this. I want you to go into your school today and just look at one recruit, stone cold faced, stoic as possible, and just scream, lather up cupcake and then just walk away.
Well you do, It'll be on zoom and I can promise you that I will absolutely not do that. That sounds.
That sounds like, well will you do that? Well? Will you do it? For for like when you do an actual in person, will you just scream at somebody and say lather up, cupcake and just walk away. Just let them try me. Not.
No, I'm not doing that. No, you do it?
Well, I don't. I don't have a wrestler school and I'm fifty years old. Come on, man, I can't do this always time.
All right, I gotta go, I gotta I gotta got to Mike.
All right, guys, you have a great one. Thank you, thank you, all right bye.
All right, guys. So well, that concludes the interview that we had with mister Donovan die Jack. You guys know how I end the episode every single time, do something nice for somebody and never know who needs it out there. Somebody's always going to uh with that. Michael, do you have a movie recommendation for this week?
I think I sure do. I'm gonna go with Old Boy, and that's just really wrong, but I'm talking about the Korean version and it's gonna mess you up. But hey, it's old Boy, fair enough, all right.
Well, for anybody out there listening, I will recommend a match this time, and that match is just gonna be from MLW. I believe it was Kings of Colosseum and that match with Kenta. It was very good, and yeah, it was one of those that actually kept me at
least a little bit interested in the show. The rest of it I wasn't hugely thrilled on or hugely high on it, but that that one match, I thought, you know, this is good and seeing what I did want to bring up but we didn't quite have the time for was the fact that die Jack and Kenta have similar finishing moves, but it feels like it's more inverted from his end. But either way, with that, in the words of my friend Match, we're out.
Thanks for listening to the WWE podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss a show, or head to wwepodcast dot com and for all of these shows add free head over to Patreon dot com slash WWE podcast. Until then, we'll see you next time.