On a recent edition of the “Insight” podcast, AEW couple Johnny TV and Taya Valkyrie discussed their respective careers, their worst bumps, their “Johnny Loves Taya” web series, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Johnny TV on their web show: “This is a three-person collaboration. A friend of ours Justin Donaldson has been shooting, directing, editing, and supervising posts and doing so much work, but we collaborate together on the stories and say, after we leave here, we have one day to finish all that we need for episode 10. It’s mostly done.”
Taya Valkyrie on the upcoming season finale: “Yeah, so we’re gonna do some professional shoots and some different things later today. But yeah, it’s never-ending. But we’re almost done, the season finale is coming out. And it’s just been like so much work and a labour of love. I just feel like we are so much more layered than just pro wrestlers, and it’s been an opportunity for us to showcase how creative and how different we can be than some other pro wrestlers or different stories that you see about couples and stuff like that.”
Taya Valkyrie on the show helping their careers: “I think it’s really helped to remind people of who we are, establish us again as characters together, I think it positively influenced the way that people perceive us [like] when we were doing our angle with Dalton Castle and everything like that. And moving forward, we hope to be able to create a second season and we hope to continue doing this because we’ve added a lot of fun.”
Johnny TV on moving away from Johnny Elite: “I think because Johnny Elite, The Elite is a group already that is established. And I think Johnny Elite was Tony’s first idea. And then when I came back, I’m not signed full-time. It doesn’t make full sense to have a Johnny Elite and a group called The Elite. Hence Johnny TV. Like we mentioned last time, TV is perfect because it’s ambiguous. It could stand for anything.”
Johnny TV on the ladder match at WWE Armageddon 2006: “If you watch that clip close, we both took the ladder. I’m a little taller than Joey. And he was leaned over and the ladder hit me on the chin. And I went out one side of the ring and he went up this way. I didn’t see what happened to him. I thought my jaw was broken. I’d never been hit that hard in my life. And I was on the floor holding my jaw. And just like quietly I’m trying to decide if I was hurt or injured. If you are injured, then you’re like, done match over. If you’re hurt, you’re like, I can go, I can finish this. So a minute or two goes by, it’s almost time for me and Joey to run back in the ring. And I crawled over and I was like, where’s Joey? And I looked up the ramp and just saw this trail of blood. And the trainer’s escorting him out and thinking to myself, oh, we have a lot of stuff left. And then I just kind of ran in and tried to do my best to do what we’re both supposed to do as a tag team by myself. And then, man, that night was rough. Like we were in the hospital for about six hours. He stitched his cartilage. They reset his bone, his orbital, and then they stitched his skin on top of his stitched cartilage Yeah. I think that’s the gnarliest ladder accident I’ve seen to this day.”
Taya Valkyrie’s most painful bump: “I mean, I’ve been very lucky in my 13, 14 years of wrestling, knock on wood. Having my nose broken sucked. I mean, I’ve been kicked and dropped and all sorts of things like, you know, especially when some people aren’t there to catch you when you’re diving to the outside, I’ve had several of those. I’ve had several different people kick me in the head that weren’t supposed to kick me like that. I’ve been powered bombed multiple times by Brian Cage that sucked.”
