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SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS TO MIKE FOR THE PWINSIDER Q&A BY CLICKING HERE.
With Brock Lesnar retired, do you expect him to be the headliner for the next WWE Hall of Fame?
Let's think about this for a second. One, we don't know where the Hall of Fame will be, or if it will take place in Saudi Arabia, or perhaps in the United States like NXT and AAA will in 2027. Lesnar is obviously a first-ballot Hall of Famer and is one of the greatest combat sports performers of all time, so there's no argument that at some point WWE will want to sell tickets to a Hall of Fame ceremony by making Lesnar the headline attraction. I don't know if next year would be the year, because A - Lesnar retired at WrestleMania and he wrestled several more matches. He can say he's retired now, but if WWE comes up with a great angle and, more importantly, a great payday for him, he might step back in the ring. He might even have a non-wrestling role at WrestleMania, perhaps an enforcer, perhaps a referee. You never know. So I think this question is a little too early to answer, and we should revisit in about five to six months.
Your question and response about dumb things fans do remind me of an independent show I attended in West Virginia several years back where the heels were all over fans in the crowd, and one of the fans decided to run towards the ring, but tripped on the ring steps and ended up knocking themselves silly. It was funny in a sort of, "Look at what these idiots did, they deserved it" sort of way. I was curious if you saw any moments like that?
Well, first of all, that fan is lucky he didn't give himself a concussion, and I'd love to see the footage of that if it is out there anywhere. The one story I can think about off the top of my head is that there was a fan in Philadelphia at the ECW Arena on an evening where Shane Douglas grabbed a chair from the front row to use as a weapon in the match. The fan grabbed at the bottom half of the chair to try and stop Shane from using it, and Shane and he got into something of a short tug-of-war with it before Shane shoved the chair into the fan's face, breaking his glasses and saying the immortal words, "Who told you you could book my match, motherf**ker?" That fan had to sit there with broken glasses for the rest of the night, and honestly is lucky he didn't get injured in that moment or ejected from the building, but it's just another example of fans being dumb in the moment and getting involved in matches when they should just be enjoying themselves. But, some fans don't have the maturity to do that, and that leads to dumb and sometimes disgusting actions on their part. The sad part is there was at least one other incident with that fan grabbing a chair to try and prevent a wrestler from using it during their match, so it wasn't a case of they got "caught up" in the show - it was a pattern of behavior.
I saw YouTube footage of Oba Femi refusing to sign for a fan in an airport. It was a little kid who was maybe 8 years old, and I was wondering—with everything you have said about wrestlers being overwhelmed by fans and having to protect themselves—where you stand on wrestlers signing for children.
My feeling is that if it's a little kid, especially someone who's younger than 9 or 10, you should probably sign for them unless you're putting yourself at a disadvantage in terms of your safety. You don't know what the situation was: he could have been late for a flight, it could be he was having a bad day, it could be he's been instructed not to sign for anybody in public because WWE licenses those autographs to sell them through their website and Fanatics and things like that. My general feeling is that if a little kid asks for an autograph or a photo, in a perfect world I would like to see the wrestlers stop and take it, but the reality is that is not always a conceivable situation and a doable action, because you stop for one kid, and the next thing you know there's 100 fans lined up. I knew of a WWE wrestler years ago was going to a supermarket and a fan asked him for a photo after he parked. He told the fan that he'd happy to take it but he had to get his son out of the car and into a stroller. The next thing the wrestler knew, there was a line of 10 people waiting for him to put his kid in the stroller. That can be overwhelming. Now, let's also remember we also don't know if that kid was with his father at an airport at 4:00 in the morning, and the father had a stack of 8x10s or Funko Pops trying to sign them to get them in a position where they could get free autographs and later flip them on EBay. All these things happen, and there's a lot of different scenarios, so without seeing the footage myself I can't tell you what really happened. But my feeling is you hope that the talents will always help the kids and be nice to children when they see them in public.
I saw WWE is airing Georgia Championship Wrestling TV now on their YouTube. I was wondering if you knew where these shows originally aired.
\Yes, they originally aired on Saturday nights on WTBS on cable, so they would have been aired nationally. That's why the TBS Superstation time slot was so important in the 1980s especially. So these YouTube videos are from that era.
Whatever happened to Shark Boy?
Shark Boy still lives in the Ohio area and at times does independent appearances, and made a cameo for All Elite Wrestling during Discovery's Shark Week a week or so ago. We've had him on the site many times, and he's always been an awesome interview, and he's a great person to have in your locker room. Hopefully we get to see more of him doing something in the future, because I think he would make a great goodwill ambassador for any promotion.
Why does no one use the Hara Arena in Dayton anymore?
Sadly, it was severely damaged in a storm and was torn down. It was a good venue the few times I was there for ECW back in the day.
What unknown piece of pro wrestling history do you wish there was a documentary about?
I wish there could be a documentary on the old Pete McKay IPWA wrestling school that was housed inside the basement of a NYC housing project on the Lowest East Side of Manhattan. It was a crazy, wacky place to go and watch shows. Lots of names went through there including Joel Gertner, Little Guido, D-Von Dudley, Jason Knight and I can even remember a show where Matt Borne wrestled in that basement as Doink.
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