Ethan Page recently spoke to Chris Van Vliet about his early fandom of TNA Wrestling and his belief in the IMPACT Wrestling brand’s strength in present-day.
Chris sent the following transcribed highlights from the episode to eWrestlingNews. You can hear the full episode on YouTube, embedded above.
On Winning The IMPACT Wrestling Tag Team Championships:
“To me, it means something different than everybody else I think. I guess in a short form, TNA was my WCW because of my age, if that makes sense. That was my alternative which got me into the Ring of Honors and stuff like that, which got me into becoming a wrestler. So TNA meant a lot to me as a fan, so I am a TNA tag champ right now, at least in my mind.”
On Who He Looked Up To in TNA Growing Up:
“I started watching just after they finished their weekly PPVs and went to their big 3-hour PPVs. So the Jeff Hardys, the Christian Cages, and then obviously when Kurt Angle came but Abyss was always one of my favorites. As an original character, I always wanted to see him go on and wrestle guys like Kane and The Undertaker. He was always having crazy matches and they were doing things that WWE at the time wasn’t doing like with the thumbtacks and barbed wire and stuff like that. They would go a step further. I don’t know, maybe I had that blood lust but I was a huge fan of Abyss.”
On Being Booed in Canada:
“The thing that blew us away, we went to film television in Windsor and we had won the tag titles so we go and everyone’s like ‘You guys are going to go out there and they are going to embrace you like the Canadians are bringing the gold home’ and I just turn and go ‘No, they’re not, they’re going to hate us.’ and they were like ‘No, they won’t.’ We go out, we put our hands in the air, they start booing us, and to me, it’s like the greatest victory of all time. We get to the back and D’Lo Brown, our producer, is like ‘I can’t believe Canadians got booed in Canada!”
On Impact Being The Best It’s Been:
“I guess the lack of exposure we have with our television station right now, I won’t make you bring it up, I’ll bring it up. I think that also deters people from actually watching the show which sucks. I think our TV put up against anyone right now, check it out honestly, I think it’s great. Whatever everybody else did before the team we have now, shouldn’t affect the guys, because most of them are gone. So why don’t you see what the new crop is putting together because we’re doing our best and it’s really good I think.”
The Biggest Change He’s Seen In Wrestling During His Career:
