This interview took place in late 2002 or early 2003 at 1 am at Awesome’s house in Florida. Awesome seemed to misinterpret interviewer Michael Bochicchio’s question about “some of your early memories of being a wrestling fan” and answered his memories of his in-ring debut, but Bochicchio did a good job of bringing it back to his recollections of his time as a fan. I learned plenty of new from this interview, including that Awesome was in the same training class as Dennis Knight (Mideon).
They quickly go through his time in the U.S. before ending up in Japan, so maybe they could have spent more time on his, for instance, PWF tenure in Florida in 1989-1990. Mike did so much in FMW that it’s almost hard to cover it, and the viewer got that impression that Bochicchio felt the same way, as he said “I don’t even know where to begin” because “you’re the only one that I know that has wrestled for FMW that’s doing this interview,” but there could have been more FMW questions about specific opponents. There were some people covered, but I wouldn’t have complained if we got some talk about Mr. Gannosuke, Tarzan Goto, Mr. Pogo, The Headhunters, Jinsei Shinzaki, and Kanemura, who weren’t touched on. That being said, like Bochicchio said and given that this interview took place in the early 2000s before archived results web sites like Cagematch.net were readily available, FMW is a challenging subject to tackle with a guy like Awesome who did so much over there.
Awesome had an interesting perspective on ECW, saying that at first he was just brought in to get Masato Tanaka over to the American fans and that it took some time for him to decide to give America more of a chance than he previously had. He did not touch on his ECW manager, “Judge” Jeff Jones, which I was surprised about. Awesome reveals that most of the communication when he dropped the title to Taz while employed by WCW was done via fax between ECW and WCW, and interestingly says that he would have preferred to drop it to Rhino. Of course, if that happened, we wouldn’t have had the historic instance of a WCW wrestler wrestling a WWE wrester in ECW.
Some “name association” inquiries in the ECW, WCW, and/or WWE parts of the interview would have fit well, as one of the cool things about Awesome is he worked with a wide variety of talents in those companies, defending the ECW title against all challengers and feeling his way around the WCW and WWE midcards. This interview could have been better if his thoughts on more names he worked with had been tackled, but overall it was a solid analysis of his career, and in fact the only shoot Awesome ever did before his unfortunate passing, so it’s all the more historic.
PURCHASE: physical DVD – https://www.highspots.com/HIGHSPOTS-Originals/14015.html; digital – https://www.highspotswrestlingnetwork.com/media/mike-awesome-shoot-interview/55232/feature
GRADE: B
INDEX OF TOPICS DISCUSSED:
- Horace Hogan
- childhood memories
- Steve Keirn (his trainer)
- his educational background
- his family’s reaction to his wrestling
- his training
- his early career before going to Japan
- Jimmy Backlund (Jimmy Del Ray)
- his time in Memphis
- going to FMW
- wrestling with the Japanese language barrier
- the “Gladiator” name
- Atsushi Onita
- the pool death match
- FMW’s perception in Japan and the U.S.
- Hayabusa
- his FMW injuries
- The Original Sheik
- FMW bus rides
- his WWE tryout in the early ’90s
- his early ’90s short ECW tenure
- Paul Heyman
- JT Smith
- Masato Tanaka
- Damien 666
- Sabu
- how he developed his Japanese style
- FMW crowds
- feuding with Tanaka in ECW
- the ECW locker room
- getting injured in ECW
- his memories of his ’90s AJPW tenure
- ECW pay (or lack thereof)
- the Anarchy Rulz ’99 3-way
- Rhino
- Spike Dudley
- negotiating with WCW
- dropping the ECW title to WWE wrestler Taz while he was in WCW
- joining WCW
- the “Fat Chick Thriller” gimmick
- the “70s Guy” and “’80s Guy” gimmick
- Vince Russo
- Lance Storm
- WCW being bought by WWE
- being hired by WWE
- WWE backstage etiquette
- Taz
- getting injured in WWE
- Edge & Christian
- his WWE release
- returning to Japan for AJPW
- The Great Muta
- the lack of competition in the U.S. wrestling scene
- friends in wrestling (Sabu & Shawn Stasiak)
- a fan attacking him during a match vs. Vampiro in WCW
- the role of the Yakuza (mafia) in Japanese wrestling
- his rumored heat with Vampiro
- the Internet critics
- a rib on Mark Starr
RUN TIME: 1 hr. 30 min.
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