During a recent edition of his “What Happened When” podcast, AEW broadcaster Tony Schiavone shared a valuable lesson he learned from Arn Anderson years ago about how to properly structure a wrestling card.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the structure: “This is something that Arn Anderson talked to me about years ago. I think it’s probably back in the pre-WCW era. We were in Fayetteville, North Carolina and Black Bart wrestled someone, and I can’t remember who he wrestled — Sam Houston. It was the opening bout of the night. It was a house show. I was there I guess as a ring announcer, or maybe I just was tagging along with Arn.
“And Sam Houston and Black Bart both got juice. Both did a lot of crazy s*it. And Arn was pissed off. And he said, ‘In a wrestling show’ — and this is not done anymore, especially not on TV — he said, ‘You build to the main event.’ The guys that are, as he always called him the ‘curtain jerkers.’ He said, ‘The curtain jerkers should never do what they did. You build to the excitement, to the blood, and the main event should do it all.’”
On how that contrasts with the modern approach: “Oh yeah, there’s no question that it’s changed. I remember we had a show, and this had to be two or three years ago, and we did a dark match. And one of the competitors, I won’t name his name, he’s no longer with us, I don’t think. We got so many wrestlers sometimes, I’m not sure he’s with us, and who’s not. [He] did a dive in the dark match, and I remember thinking, ‘What the f**k is he doing?’ You know, it’s a dark match. Dives are going to come up on the main event on the show when we take the air.
“But to answer your question, yeah it’s changed a lot. Because I mean, look what we do now. Look how we put like, one of the feature matches on first. And then maybe another feature match on second. And sometimes the match on first is even better than the main event as far as a talent is concerned, as far as notoriety. But yeah, it’s changed a great deal. I was at Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend with an AEW appearance. Really had a very good time, but I was talking to some of the people in NASCAR. And they said, ‘Boy, NASCAR has changed, just like pro wrestling, hasn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I guess it has. I guess it is really changed, and wrestling has changed.’ And they asked me, one of the announcers asked me, ‘How do you like it now? The pro wrestling from when you started doing it in the 80s.’ I said, ‘I like it. I do.’ It’s not the same, but there’s something about it that is still the same. Still a ring, still exciting. But I really enjoy what we’ve got now.”
During a recent appearance on the “Johnny I Pro Show,” Ortiz reflected on his time with Santana as part of LAX, noting that TNA put the Tag Team Titles on them even before they were officially signed. He said,
“Scott D’Amore was actually the agent for the match. He’s breaking down what we’re gonna do, whatever, blah, blah, blah, and then he goes, ‘Yeah, and then, LAX up for the win,’ and then we’re just like, ‘Wait, what?’ It was for the belts. Off the bat, second day. That was our second match and then we were just like — we kind of looked at each other and we’re marking out. But, we’re playing it cool. ‘Cool, cool, cool, cool,’ and then after the meeting broke, we walk off to the side and we were like, ‘What did he just say? Yo, what!? We’re gonna win what?’ We didn’t even sign a contract at that point. They made us champions. We signed our contract later that week. The fact that they put the titles on us with no contract, with nothing pen to paper and they trusted in us and of course, we’re like, ‘Yeah, well, let’s go…Another wild one was — I would definitely probably put that up there. I think it was Slammiversary. We wrestled The OGz… The 5150 Street Fight was really cool. I like that one a little bit better but the Concrete Jungle Deathmatch was exposed boards. That was just a scary match to wrestle in… So what happened that day is we come out and we came out with Bodega Bamz. At that time, he’s a New York City rapper. He did our theme song, and he came out and performed it. It was cool. Being New Yorkers, being in the Hip Hop scene, I was like, ‘Yo, this is dope.’ So, he had his crew with him though, so there was like 20 dudes in the ring and we get in the ring, we’re jumping around. So they had tightened the ring and the boards just with no give, no room, right? So with everybody jumping in the ring, one of the boards popped out and they could not get it back into place because everything was so tight and we’re about to wrestle. So then, the ref had to pull the one board out and then it just became like wrestling on Jenga blocks. It was the scariest — you know when you get on ice and you’re like, ‘Oh, woah?’ That’s exactly how I felt the whole entire match. The moves itself, like taking the moves on the exposed boards, that sucked. But, nothing sucked more than the fear of my ankles, like, I’m gonna slip.”
