Excalibur | AEW Unrestricted Podcast

[Music] this is the only wrestling podcast it's called all the wrestling unrestricted the official podcasts of atw you're really excited about there I really am how you've been stuck at home so you're probably like a real desperate fridge yes I'm stuck I'm real I'm real desperate for content I'm gonna straight for for contact human contact and by the way Tildy Shivani all Bri Edwards hey cohost and boy are we excited today and we always say that but we really are every time but I'm really more excited because we will be talking to one of my colleagues and a young man who I consider the the next generation of announcers in Pro Wrestling he's the man Excalibur hey excalibur how are you hey hey guys it's it's great to be talking with you it's we went from speaking almost constantly to never speaking in a matter of a month something yeah I don't think I've seen you in person for like Salt Lake City no Jeff Salt Lake City first-first Jackson yeah the first one came Jacksonville yeah it's been wild the first week of the undisclosed location in northern Florida nobody tell Jeff Jones to listener Oh does he still get mad about things like well Jeff Jones mad about everything he does the Pope in the woods Tony anyway hi so Excalibur you're incredible commentator for aw but a lot of people don't know that you're also commentator and one of the original founders of pwg protists and gorilla one of the biggest Indy promotions in wrestling yes I then what people also don't know and this you know somewhat by design is that I used to be a professional wrestler as well it wasn't a highly regarded professional wrestler but I made I had a lot of friends that were highly regarded professional wrestlers and so I sort of glommed on to them and we started pro wrestling guerrilla in 2003 and myself and five other guys just independent wrestlers in Southern California super dragon disco machine mister excitement Top Gun Talwar and Scott lost and joy Ryan where the the original six people that started pwg and we were just kind of sick of you know there was a lot of shady indie promoters back then there was kind of in the early days of the internet when word didn't travel quite as quickly and so guys could you know rip people off and we you know we were kind of sick of that and we we saw that we were going out there and kind of busting our asses and having you know it's what we considered to be really great matches and you know therefore promoters that weren't necessarily that thankful for it and so we just decided why not try it do it ourselves and so we all got a couple bucks together and we did our first show back in July of 2003 the main event was Frankie Kazarian vs AJ Styles yeah and that was kind of where Paris and gorilla all started and that's also the start of my commentary career as well yeah so you wrestled for how long before switching to commentary I wrestled for about seven years from 99 to 2006 and I started doing commentary in 2003 for that first pwg show I had done I've done a little bit of commentary before that for you know some other SoCal promotions but pwg was really where I got started and it was pretty much it was out of necessity because those first shows we were charging fifteen bucks a ticket and we had maybe a hundred people there and someone you have Frankie Kazarian and AJ Styles in your main event there's you know airfare and pay and all these other things to worry about we had to pay for the venue all this stuff and so we had to release the shows on well at the time VHS and DVD hopefully and just out of total necessity I myself and disco machine we did did commentary on those those shows and that was kind of worth where it got rolling and I've done I think every pwg show except for one of them what was the one I don't remember I think it's made one where the European shows ah interesting who came up with the name pro wrestling guerrilla I think it was but it would you know this was 17 years ago take the credit it's fine no one remembers it so yeah I say that a good cause it's really it's a cool name well so it actually started out as a joke because there was a promoter in Southern California that he was a you know to use the the inside baseball term of money mark and he said that you know indie wrestling is is pro wrestling at its most guerrilla and we all kind of laughed at that because he just kind of came in with you know his checkbook and that and so it was it was a name that that amused to us but then I also really like to be able to use the pun of having a gorilla as our as our mascot so that was right it served two masters right I get that so tell us about how the mass came into think in the bean for you what's the significance of the mask well I was I was into wrestling as a kid you know uh Hulk Hogan macho man those kind of stuff Alton warrior and then in the early 90s I got out of it I'm not sure what it was but that's just kind of you know like I guess just part of growing up your friends are into different things I started getting into basketball but then in about 96 a friend of mine showed me a copy of the WCW when worlds collide and the pay-per-view with you know that had shows the matches a Nega Casas and octagon versus art bar and Eddie Guerrero and you know he was just you know it's like basically like a kind of a WCW versus triple-a pay-per-view and I was just like oh my god this is amazing and right around that time nitro was about to start I think the the Hillman and like a match had happened the first one happened you know it like a year so before that I saw that on videotape and I just started I became enthralled with Japanese wrestling and you know because I I loved the aesthetics of Lucha Libre but the athleticism of the Japanese style and then when I discovered the Japanese junior heavyweight style that was kind of pioneered by grant Hamada with UWF which would then turn out guys like great Sasuke último dragón all those guys started in Hamada zwf in and that kind of was the precursor from ichiraku crow which is you know that was also right around the same time that liger and all those guys New Japan were kind of pioneering that junior heavyweight style and that was something that I really I really found myself drawn toward and so I was always a big fan of superhero comics growing up and so to be able to have a kind of masked superhero persona but with actual in-ring super heroic feats of athleticism that checked both those boxes for me and that kind of drew me in and so the guy that I was most drawn to at that time was great Sasuke and so my mask is kind of a homage to to his style I've got the you know that the tassels the black mask with the white faceplate but then also like the the crest on the top of the mask is no Maj - Black Bolt from the Immortals and Marvel Comics and so it's kind of marrying both of those those two passions of mine as a younger person together and you know Here I am all these 25 plus years later still wearing this mask and sweating constantly yes and it's got to be tough to see through as well it is yeah three to four men luckily you know luckily when we're doing our show I've got a monitor about arms arm's length from me but what I'm doing pwg shows you know I've got the lights in my face the the screens on the mask and so I'm kind of just seeing shapes that are moving and you know giving my best guess of what they're doing and you know what I'd say about I got 95% accuracy at 95 still really good when you're blind yeah right I love pwg became kind of an in thing to do in Southern California talk about that how that all developed you know we we started out we were really inspired there was a tournament in 2001 called the king of Indies all pro wrestling in San Francisco put it on and it was basically the American independent version of the super Jakob tournament and we saw that and we saw these guys come together have this these great matches over the course of a weekend I said wouldn't that be cool if we were able to do that and so that was kind of the first mission statement I guess of pwg was to just get all the best indie guys from you know not only Southern California but around the country get them together and just put on great shows and you know it took a couple years of us doing that before we really got noticed and I think the the thing that did get us noticed was on a global scale was we have the battle of Los Angeles tournament and and I believe it was 2006 was the first time that the Dragon Gate guys came over from Japan and after that after they got to wrestle with a lot of the the North American indie guys they said hey you guys are pretty good would you like to come over to Japan for a tour and so that was when Kevin Steen El Generico Chris Bosh and I believe b-boy maybe all went over for Dragon Gate and from then it became within the American indie community it was like oh this is a way to get booked in Japan if I can get on pwg and so it all kind of snowballed from there because to me when I started watching indie wrestling I've seen all these guys and there's the same like shitty room in Reseda California that became like synonymous with like these are the next big names in wrestling like pwg is essentially like when you've made it to pwg you've made it in indie wrestling that's how kind of I always saw it and I don't know if you kind of ever saw it that way or like even understood like what it meant to be running a promotion that was that highly regarded we're so inside of it you kind of failed to notice what the outside perception is and so there was there was a time when Desmond Xavier when he first came to Peter ug we were still we're still in Reseda and it had rained for I don't know about three weeks in Southern California which in Southern California that's a big deal and the leak here the roof of the the Legion Hall and Reseda was leaking it the whole building smelled like mildew it just it was in its worst state that had ever been in and des walks in and he's just wide-eyed and he comes and he just gases I can't believe I'm finally here and like him in this dump like you're gonna get black mold you know look you're gonna get black lung just by being in here here it's awesome and you know it's like when people had that kind of reaction coming into the building you know that was when I kind of felt that you know we had something really special and you know like I talked about the the Dragon Gate guys coming over that the kind of second wave of that was and I believe 2012 was the first time that Steve regal came to battle Los Angeles tournament and shortly after that I mean you could just see every every year that he would come out to battle Los Angeles there would be two or three or four or five guys that shortly thereafter would get signed to NXT and so that also kind of is what gave pwg the reputation of you know being the place to be found right to be found but if there was more than just that Excalibur celebrities came to right and it was it was a big deal for celebrities to get in and you have their picture taken I was told that at the ringside that they were there I mean it was a big deal right yeah yeah it was you know the great thing about pro wrestling guerrilla is that it was kept intentionally small and it still is you know it's there's a finite amount of tickets there's no real preferential treatment to you know if you know celebrity emails us and asked and says hey can I get a ticket the answer is more often than not no and yeah and so that was kind of what made it really really sought after in some circles and the first celebrity that we really had come to the show was this guy named Chris Bower who is an actor that's been on many of the David Simon HBO shows he's been on the wire he's been on how should the one that was just the one that just ended about about in New York in the 70s hunters no no I know that's your favorite yeah now at the end and so he was on a show called True Blood on HBO and so he would kind and he would bring some of his friends from the show you tell them about it and then for the the wrap party for True Blood his gift to the cast was that he bought out an entire section at one of our shows and so Joe Manganiello was on True Blood and that's when he first started dating Sofia Vergara and that's when she came and got her picture taken with that was when we had like a big big angle with the the young bucks Roderick Strong Adam Cole and super dragon lying laying waste to the entire roster and so Sofia Vergara has this selfie where she's like posing next to the Rings is he says like I think they're dead and I am the the corpse laying immediately behind her that's that was my big claim to fame for the longest time but you know around that time we said we had musicians come Billy Corgan before you know he got involved in wrestling came to check us out Adam Jones from from Toole was always a big supporter of ours and he would bring other musicians one of the biggest things for me was Mike Patton from Faith No More tomahawk mr. bungle all those great bands he came to one of our shows and the great thing about the PWG audience is that they're there to see the wrestling they're not there to see the celebrities and so you know a couple people will go up and say hi and just you know talk to people but for the most part a very respectful and just really cool about you know having a good familial atmosphere that we're all here to see the wrestling you know that just who happens to be here is kind of secondary I think my favorite part like a weird thing that happened in battle of Lane Los Angeles's last year is the first day there was Mara Wilson in the crowd who Matilda and like I didn't know it but then Jeff Cobb comes downstairs he's like dude Matilda's in the crowd and he like has this look on his face like he just woke up and it's Christmas and he's like I used to watch that movie all the time and you see like Brody King come by like what Matilda's here and they're apparently like both the biggest Matilda marks so like during intermission there's guys like sitting next to the wrestlers and taking pictures and then Jeff Cobbs like hey hey Matilda can I get a picture and it's so funny seeing these like big scary giant guys asking this like girl who's just there to watch wrestling she's like yeah sure I guess like it was just a very very funny picture but awesome at the same time fun story yeah all right we want to talk to Excalibur bodies transition from a wrestler to an announcer and how that has blossom into a great career for him and also want to talk about his fandom as well this is a that you unrestricted today we've got Excalibur we've been talking a little bit about pwg about his time as a wrestler what got him into wrestling all these awesome things but eventually you know you'd started announcing for pwg back the first show and then eventually turned into announcing full time what was sort of the transition there my in-ring career came to an end and that was pretty much it it was you know combination of of injuries and I guess you know kind of lack of motivation on my part I felt like pwg was getting to a certain point where you know that the level of wrestling on our shows was so high that I felt for you know variety of reasons that I couldn't really keep up with that that level of wrestling and mostly due to you know my my knees were bad my back was bad you know I'd had a couple of concussions that I was pretty worried about and I knew that I you know by being part of you know the management of pwg I could give myself a spot on the show if I wanted to but I felt like that would have been unfair to the guys that were you know either the local Southern California guys or the guys coming from around the country that were really trying to make a career in professional wrestling I knew that being a pro wrestler was not going to be my long-term career and so for me to take a spot away from somebody else that did have those aspirations that felt to be a little selfish on my part and so you know there's a variety of factors but that's what ended up leading to me you know hanging up the trunks but not the mask and so you know as I transitioned to outside of the ring role I was the the Commissioner of food and beverage for a long time you know the figurehead as well as the announcer and so you know it was it was convenient to have you know a head mouthpiece person for us if you know like if a guy missed his flight or flight got cancelled or something or we had to shuffle around the card you know we don't really have anybody that could announce that and so for me to be in that position no that was helpful but you know for my primary focus was the announcing and and that was you know around the time that I started to take it a little more seriously as I noticed that you know guys were we're going places based on what pwg was doing and so it I felt it incumbent upon me to do a better job as an announcer if these guys are going out there busting their ass in the ring for us and you just chose to keep the mask because you had been wearing it the whole time or was there another reason for that yeah yeah that was I mean the Excalibur is the only thing I've ever been in professional wrestling and you know even though it was on a very very low level that you know to this day people still don't understand why I wear the mask it's the only is the only persona I've ever done in professional wrestling and you know for me there is you know kind of that that separation when I put on the mask this is wrestling when I take off the mask this is everything else in my life that's true it's a really good point starting pwg wrestling and then moving into the the announcing side of it obviously you loved wrestling growing up talk about your fandom talk about how you started when you first started loving professional wrestling when that started and how it continued up until your professional career started well you know I touched that a little bit before you know Hulk Hogan Macho Man those were my guys when I was a kid and growing up in Detroit having WrestleMania 3 in Detroit that was a big kind of touchstone for everybody that you know when I was in school everybody was talking about it for weeks leading up to it and then the weeks after and it's like you know the kids that got to go to Wrestlemania they were the lucky ones the rest of us you know either have to watch it on a closed-circuit or wait for the the the home video release and you know I mean there I grew up in in the in the 80s and Detroit historically is a big wrestling city and so you know those combinations of factors led to you know just me me being interested in it and you know I mentioned as you know I guess in the early 90s maybe 93 I kind of fell out of it but there was that ember burning you know in the in the back of my mind that all it took was just like a little bit of kindling that little bit yeah was was that you know seeing that the Lucha Libre style and seeing these guys in masks flying around and that just you know reignited everything and then turned it into a huge passion of mine to to the point where I remember when I got my my first car on my lunch break in high school I would actually drive to a Japanese video store that was I think they're only open to like like 5:00 p.m. and it was it was about 25 minutes away and so I Drive there I run over to the sports section I learned what you know Pro Wrestling looked like in Japanese I would just go and I'd grab every tape off the shelf I rent it and then I you know go home and a record ID of all the tapes then next day bring them back and I'd ask them like when are you getting more and then like I'm not getting more until next week and I'd be like okay and then I come back the next week and I would do that and and so I really became fanatical about it to the point where my dad said if you spent one tenth of the energy you do on Pro Wrestling on your schoolwork you'd be a straight-a student so your dad is not too cool on wrestling is that what you're saying um he's come around to it he's you okay UI derivation he's got sartorial criticisms for me you know about my suit but my my tie everything he watches dark he watches all the stuff and he's come around into it now but you know I mean the thing that that kind of caused a rift between my dad and I was that I I left Detroit in 1999 to move all the way to Los Angeles with $22,000 in my pocket and it was to pursue my passion of pro wrestling and you know so I I quit school I did that and he's like this is a terrible idea I don't like this I don't agree with this and so things were rough between us for a couple years but then after I was in LA for a while and I kind of you know set up my own life out there and you know I through I you know I've given myself this pat on the back I never I never asked him for a handout I never asked him for for money I kind of did it did it all on my own and I think he respected that and after a while you know I think after I retired and I was retired from wrestling was still volved in pwg on the you know the the other aspects of it he came around to it you know he saw that there was you know he could google it and find find stuff about it and find that it was not just this insignificant little organization out there that there were people around the world talking about it and so you know over time he you know began to he began to come around and now he's you know I'd like to think that he you'd watch dynamite without me but I think I'm a big part of it but actually on the last couple weeks Tony know where it's only been you he's like hey Tony and Jericho doing a pretty good job or you were I'm like hey dead go after you saw did you ask him if he's watching the post show uh he did watch the post show last week he's asking me about uh he's like hey Taz and Jay are like Ozark how come you haven't watched it yet yeah how come you haven't watched it yet because I don't have my AARP card Tony tell your dad that we are all a team okay and the only reason Jericho and I are doing all the shows now is because of the virus I know Hina and and he was actually very thankful uh Aubrey there uh you know when when we're at shows I will routinely iron my own shirt and Jack and stuff and every time I'm doing that sander has a billion other things to be doing instead of ironing my clothes she's got and every time I do that Tony Tony walks by and he and me like your parents raised you right and I told my dad that because you know like when I was watching nitro you know I was still at his house I'd be watching nitro and you know it would be on and you'd see it so of course he knows who Tony Shivani isn't so I be like dad Tony Shivani told me he did a good job raising me and he's like oh that means a lot so good good you as an announcer and of course we're gonna be talking about your transition to aew but you as an announcer and here's a little behind the scenes thing as well when I found out that I was going to be doing one with Cody and Kenny Omega the first one by myself which is kind of the first play by play I was really nervous and I I don't get nervous never been nervous I don't know the right word it's concerned and I sent you a text and I said you need to help me out with naming these moves because you're so good at it and I so yeah I'm just going to make sure that I'm on top of paying us and I found out quickly who I'm not but how did you learn all this just studying and watching tapes and just by doing it it it's absolutely amazing I mean everything it used to not be Excalibur's you know you should not be that everything had a name but it seems like everything's got a name now and most of the names work out quite well yeah it like I said during during my high school days when I was dedicating a lot of time to wrestling I was you know I was watching the the Japanese tapes and after a while I figured out it's like oh they're actually saying English words just kind of like in accent to Japanese and you know it starting to break down what what those words were and the other thing that really kind of pushed me in that wrestling nerd direction was there was this game that came out for Sega Saturn called fire pro wrestling s6 men scramble and it was there's this legendary series of video games called fire pro wrestling which started out on the Super Nintendo and then kind of won through different iterations but this was the first one that came out during the early Internet age and I was super super into this game and actually helped work on that the FAQ like the translation the fan translation of this game and so that really provided me like the foundation of knowledge of wrestling moves because I would you know be working with people that were translating the and this is all fan driven stuff and we'd all be working on translations together this was way before Google Translate you know if you had like a Japanese friend you would you would ask them or their parents or something to translate one specific phrase or move or thing like that and that's you know through through working on that type of project that's what provided me this foundational knowledge and then just throughout the years of watching watching wrestling and building upon it and just I don't know making mental notes about what things are calling and you know having been involved in in-person gorillas for so long you know I the the first Kenny Omega match I called was in 2007 or 2008 and so I've been very closely you know monitoring his in-ring career and you know making mental notes about these moves or you know he would give me be like hey I'm gonna do you know I've got this this finisher that I want to I'm calling this and so you know I've got this this Bank this long-running Bank of knowledge where you know Tony I think that the first Kenny Omega match you called was probably in 2019 yes and so you know if I if I had to call a you know Greenwich stripers game you know I might not have the er a at hand whereas you might have that just you know something rummaging around in the back of your head you might have that right sure I get it I get it some of these names of these moves that we hear you say and they they throw off the tongue so easily so effortlessly did you come up with some of these names not unless somebody specifically asked me what should I call this everything that eyes not everything but you know I'd say 99% of the the things that I call have been called that somewhere else either by the guy that came up with it you know like Kenny omegas finisher the one weighing an angel that's a move that he named but you know tope a sua Sita that is the my face the Spanish translation of you know suicide dive Brian right you know then there's topic on hero which is mistranslated to Japanese is topic on Hilo because Japanese people sometimes will transpose ELLs and ours but topic on hero is dive with a flip or with a rotation or a gyro you know like right you think about in that and so a lot of it is just my my wrestling Spanish is much more proficient than my you know my day-to-day conversational Spanish well it's remarkable thank you is there anyone that's asked you to name their moves yeah yeah a lot of times you guys will come up to me like hey I got an idea for a thing so you know if you if you see me do it just name it something cool and I'll be like you're not giving me a lot of notes you know like you know actually during a Pac and Omega at all out Tony Kahn one of the few times that he gets in my ear he got my ear and he's like he's like hey think of a name for PAX finisher and this was 30 seconds before no pressure yeah and so that's I just blurted out brutalizer so that was one that I named but very good thank you but it was it was just on the spot and something that I I had to come up with well I got one more for you well the first day that I had to do the the commentary alone when we were in Jacksonville Sammy Guevara was gonna win a match and I said what's the name of your finish called he said I don't know I haven't come home I got a name I haven't come up with a name yet and went okay I said you need to call Excalibur if they so maybe you got maybe you'll have to name another one we'll see anyway we're talking with Excalibur and next we're going to hear about Excalibur's transition to work for all elite Wrestling we're here aw unrestricted official podcast of aw talking to Excalibur I'm Aubrey Edwards that Tony Shivani talked a little bit about time on the Indies starting pwg going from wrestling to announcing lots of fun stuff how you got into wrestling but now you're here ATW a very integral part of aew day-to-day Wednesday's announce team all these things how did that all start when was the first time you heard about aew well the it kind of the the impetus for this was all in and in September of 2018 and the Bucks were putting together the the show along with Cody and Kenny and and they asked me to be a part of the announce team and that was the first time that I had ever done anything on pay-per-view anything that it was actually broadcast around I guess live live done live stream stuff but you know like that that level of something and ache was the first time I'd ever worked with Don Callas and he and Ricky Bonnie and I think for you know just sitting you know meeting that afternoon sitting down and calling a show together I think we did really well and after the show was over Matt Jackson came up to me he said hey we've got something in the works just you know keep your you know keep yours open you know the we will we'll be in touch and I said yeah okay sure and you know I had no idea what was really happening and then you know I saw them a month or so later and they were like hey you know things are things are happening where we're really working on something here you know just kind of you know keep it keep an open mind and then you know January 1st 2019 the big announcement on being the elite aw is formed and I said oh wow this is actually happening and it seems to be happening in a very big way and so they they asked me to do the the ticket on sale press conference in in Las Vegas in February and they said hey how would you feel about announcing the show and I said I'd love it and they said how would you feel about announcing the show with Jim Ross and I said you're absolutely out of your minds that will never happen in a million years and they said yes this is this is the team and so I said yes I'd love to do that and so they along with Alex Marv as they flew us to to Atlanta and we did some some chemistry tests with jr. and you know at first he was very skeptical he saw saw me in the mask and he said what the hell is this why exactly yeah why are you doing this you know you know the announcers job is to is to put over the product in the ring and not themselves and I said jr. I know and I hope that I can earn your trust and you know I hope you could see the job that I do is all about you know promoting the entering product and he said well you know we'll see and so we called a we called a few hours of matches that were that were on tape and initially he said I'm gonna do lead play-by-play you know Excalibur you do analysis Marv as you do you know you do color like statistics or whatever and he said okay and then slowly after you know after we've done a couple matches things started to me going into the more play-by-play role junior doing some color Marva is doing the analysis or you know statistics and things like that and you know depending on the type of match we would kind of shift roles back and forth were and I think that's ultimately the the formula that that we've adopted for aew is that on certain types of matches that are more traditional style pro-wrestling j.r takes the lead and on matches that are more you know fast-paced I guess you know 2010 Zoar in this case 2020s professional wrestling style I'll I'll take the lead on that and it's not something that Tony and you can attest to this that we've ever discussed it's just something that that's kind of happened organically that's jr. mentioned one time that one of the fans I guess it was on Twitter said why do you let Excalibur do play-by-play jrjr says because he's good at it and so that's how we work is it I think as a team Excalibur takes the lead Jared takes the lead and I say you're right X guy you're right jr. and run away with the paycheck basically okay Tony just rides everyone's coattails that's not listen I like that buddy Tony like that Tony Shivani is the the highest paid member per syllable of the the yo you announce team that's exactly right I heard that once I was like how do I get that deal no I think it was after I think it was actually after fight for the phone in Jacksonville last July jr. paid a very very big compliment to me which I was very surprised by still still very memorable he said you know why I like working with you cuz it's a night off for me Oh jr. is one of the most like honest people and I absolutely love that about him he's just like here's how it is yeah you know to have him say that and you know to know that that you know despite his early skepticism that you know then over the course of three shows he had kind of come to trust my mind literally our third show and knowledge and then you know when when we took that break over Christmas and came back January 1st it felt very good to sit down with jr. and Tony and just to be back in the saddle and you know like that one-week break I don't I don't think we've either any of us felt like we missed a beat and just because we're you know we're all very good at the type of commentary that we do and so if jr. does DJ our stuff Excalibur does Excalibur stuff and Tony does Tony stuff we're gonna be just fine right yeah I agree with all that I really think that on a personal note I just think working with jr. again for me is a big treat because we hadn't done it since really the early 90s and being able to work with you and actually learning a lot from you and has made it a great broadcast as well so yeah I you know for me as well it's jr. and more specifically Tony because I was always a nitro guy are you know the voices of you know that those formative wrestling years for me and so I would always watch watch nitro live and raw on tape and so you know as cool as it is to get to work with jr. he was almost a bigger thrill to be able to work with Tony so it's this has been very special and very rewarding for me and I can't wait until we get to get back to it you guys are adorable this is great and we always put over the referees to shut up shut up you do you know it's actually like that's one of the things I really like about our announce team is they're invested in literally every single talent that's in the ring sure you gotta be the other thing I try to do too is I mean it's not not just you know mentioning the referee by name but but also giving the referees something of personalities like you know we have our our multi man match specialist and in Rick Knox you know our the our title match specialist is either over your Paul Turner or you know I mean there's different different representational these things and so of course it makes sense for the referee core in aw to have different specialties I mean it gives it kind of that more sports like products right like a fight in MMA might be stopped earlier by one ref than it would another it's like the ref has as much impact on the finish as anything else so yeah it's really nice like you guys recognize that and actually hope because it's like we're all building the product together so you're doing the aw post show with jr. and Tazz now during this very extraordinary time for all of us how you like in that it's great I mean obviously it's it'd be better if we were all sitting in the same room together but you know it's like I mean just like this is it's it's a chance for me to get talk to my friends who I haven't seen in a long time and so in that instance it's it's great you know having having Tazz and jr. and for me it's it's kind of a different role too because you know I talked in other interviews or podcasts about how much I've learned from jr. and Tony and how it's you know cuz I can you know I can do play-by-play for a fast-paced wrestling match in my sleep but throwing to break or doing a live read for you know upcoming ticket sales or something these are things that I've never had to worry about in person gorillas but they're things that jr. and Tony can do in their sleep and so I've learned a lot about that aspect of the job from them and you know doing the doing the post show with jr. and Taz it's given me a whole other thing where I'm almost kind of like the host of the show and I'm just teeing those guys up for questions and so that's been really interesting and really fun because you know I'll have my thoughts about you know something that we saw in dynamite but I can ask jr. and then I can ask Taz what were your thoughts about it and then we could see how they all line up together and you know sometimes we all have the same thought but then other times we see it from completely different perspectives and it's been really cool and really rewarding what's uh what's been your favorite match to call at aw so far um it's tough there's or do you have any that are like specifically memorable yeah the the Bucks lucha Bros ladder match that was kind of the the culmination of you know the the young bucks that you know I began calling them and you know I first met them in 2004 I first met Matt and then started first started calling them in 2006 I think and so to see that match be kind of like the the culmination of their they're indie career and had now led to this point and I know that you know they've gone to New Japan they've done stuff there and that's that's that's great but you know there's something that felt very special about them wrestling with lucha brothers in a ladder match because that same type of match could have happened in pwg you know like if the young bucks wrestled rocky Romero Andrew skate to Gucci that wouldn't necessarily feel like a pwg match but dem wrestling the lucha bros in a ladder match felt very pwg to me and so that was special and then another match that was really special was when Scorpio sky wrestled Chris Jericho because sky is another gun that I've known for 18 years and I was there from the very first stages of his career when he first started training in Southern California and then to see him wrestle a main event match on you know national television against one of the best in the world was so yeah it was just so fulfilling to me and and you know I mean that's pwg was never about being the biggest promotion in the world it was it started out as being like a place for us to do cool wrestling and then it kind of be transformed over the years into a place where this is kind of like a way station this is where you stop before you go out into the bigger world onto the bigger thing and so you know seeing so many guys whether they're in WWE or aew or Japan or wherever that have gone through pwg that's very rewarding and then to be able to call one of those matches with our then at the time world champion Chris Jericho a guy that I you know have an immense level of fandom for and Scorpio sky a guy that I've known for nearly 20 years that was so rewarding and so meaningful for me that's so awesome yeah good stuff what about the dusty Cody match are the Dustin coding match turned double or nothing that was very emotional just because it was two brothers beating the out of each other you know there was there was so much yes so much obviously history between the two brothers but you know so many so much history in terms of what dusty had done for pro wrestling and you know for his two sons to be blazing their own their own trail here in aew you know much much like he was able to do in the you know in the South in Florida and everywhere that's that was that was so rewarding but you know that was unmatch where you know I let junior take the lead on and not not that I let him Junior would have taken elite no matter well I got that but but you know I knew just instinctually that this is a junior mesh this sure this needs the junior touch of storytelling and so that was really special because to be able to sit there for a such a great match between Dustin and Cody and be such a great call I mean literally a master class from jr. in how to call that type of wrestling match and I got to sit there you know elbow to elbow with him that was an unbelievable experience and that was on the very first aew show yeah send the bar kind of high yeah yeah so now we're in the in the era where it and you you did a little bit of it calling matches without an audience and you've seen matches in that an audience what's your reaction all this it's tough because there's there's so many times where you know as broadcasters will lay out for the swell of the crowd or you know things like that and with without that it's it's a lot of silence and that's a little tough because they you know requires it requires a shift in in your your instincts because you know as when you hear the crowd starting to to get ready to erupt you're yeah you want to lay out you want to let them be heard but without that they're you kind of have to fill fill that space and you know there is a is a time and place for for silences but you know it's I think we end up speaking more on these these empty arena shows than we would on an on an average dynamite broadcast and for the past few years at pro wrestling girl I've called things by myself and so I you know I have nobody to play off of and one of one of the things that that jr. has has chided me on is that we don't get paid by the word kid you know so unless you're Tony Shivani but so so in these empty arena matches it's I think having having my mark more verbose tendencies of speaking more does kind of help because then you can kind of fill in those those what would be silences one thing with Tony Khan he is as you know xcalibur he is not although he can be in our ear and has been in our ear at times he's not one to over coaches or overdrive us he lets us do our thing which certainly we all appreciate but during these I found out during the last couple of weeks during the empty arena matches he kind of stays on he coaches me and tells us you know we have no fans so you gonna need to talk a lot and so he lets us know that so yeah it's a change so listen during this time where no one can get out and or should get out what it is your words is you're a binge-watching recommendations during hashtag stay home there's I've been watching watching Wesleyan tapes I'm sorry well you watch it now watch West world on HBO been watching a better call Saul which is phenomenal getting through season two of narcos Mexico I'd actually for a little-known show that everybody should watch in the and I hopefully are Turner media or Warner Media family be very happy and me promoting but I am promoting through no duress you know there's no gun off-camera pointed to my head this is one of the best comedy shows of the last probably ten years there's two seasons of it the episodes are ten to fifteen minutes each and it is perfect in every way it's on Adult Swim it's called Joe Peres talks with you and I'm so easily digestible so funny so wholesome it is so great and I cannot give enough love to that show Joe Peres talks with you Joe Peres talks with you will write it down as a magnet down making a note yeah hey so whatever happened to your extensive wrestling collection all the dubs you made it is still in my dad's basement every time I go for a visit it'll ask me he's like hey can I get rid of these I was like maybe just hold on to him for a little longer and yeah I I hope he doesn't throw them out but I have not had a VCR plugged into my television in probably 18 years and so if he did throw him out he could he could replace them all with blank tapes or just empty boxes and I probably wouldn't even know well I tell you dad's got to be really proud of you he really does because you've done a phenomenal job even though he can tell people that's my son they say how do you know he's got a mask on he can still say that everybody out there and he has to be proud of it's a great story well yeah thank you and and I'll have you know Tony that he wears a mask to the golf course yeah as well he should that's well he should in honor of his son Excalibur thanks a lot buddy always great talking to you thanks so much for being here thank you Tony thank you I'll be a really great pleasure to be here thanks guys all right thanks this caliber uh don't forget all BRE well well what huh subscribe to what subscribe to a EWN restricted I think you can get it for for free that's right wherever you get your podcasts well free wherever get your podcast make sure you hit that subscribe button we got new audio episodes every Thursday morning the day after IEW dynamite is on TV 8 o'clock Eastern 7 central on TNT I'm Audrey Edwards I'm told each Avani down here in that frame of that frame depending on how this is recording yeah this is a EWN restricted thanks again for listening thank you Excalibur this has been awesome thanks guys you

Channel: TNT

Views: 37,682

Keywords: tnt, tnt network, comedy, tnt shows, AEW, all, All elite wrestling, aew on tnt, all elite wrestling on tnt, aew wrestling, all elite, pro wrestling, aew dynamite, wednesday night dynamite, aew features, aew highlights, aew fyter fest, aew double or nothing, aew fight for the fallen, the young bucks, cody rhodes, brandi rhodes, nick jackson, matt jackson, chris jericho, tony kahn, jon moxley, kenny omega, dean ambrose, ric flair, jungle boy, jack perry, Excalibur

Id: Vevm4IFfOAE

Length: 48min 49sec (2929 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020