Scott D’Amore was recently on VOCNation’s Pandemonium Hour.
Here are the highlights…
On his favorite promotion to work for, WCW, &
TNA: “I mean, if you’re talking about as far as for the professional
fulfillment, it would have to be TNA. Because, obviously, I was pretty deeply
involved there, having headed the creative team & been pretty deeply
involved for the better part of wrestling for about 8 years. So certainly
professionally & financially, that was by far the best run of my career.
Everyone says they want to be a booker. That’s when I learned I really enjoyed
the TV aspect of it. I had Jody Hamilton. He kind of the first person to really
help teach me something as far as what goes on & into producing a wrestling
TV show.”
On the Canadian Destroyer [flip piledriver]’s origin
& his student, Petey Williams: “Well, it’s kind of funny in the
wrestling business. There’s all this talk about how everybody steals things
& everybody takes credit for this or that. It always seems it’s never the
guy that gets the credit. Personally, I did not ‘invent’ the Canadian Destroyer.
From my understanding of things, it was basically created because Chris Sabin,
who’s another one of our graduates, used to take like a Frankenstein-er but
backwards. The guy would actually jump off the rope backwards & basically
backflip moonsault into taking a hurricanrana. So, then the thought process was,
from there, they came up with it on a road trip. It was a move that basically
anybody could do to Chris Sabin because he liked taking that backflip bump. When
we got Petey Williams to TV, the guys were talking about different things as far
as how to get Petey stand out. If i deserve any credit for creating the Canadian
Destroyer because I wanted people to look at Petey & have people give a
“holy sh*’ reaction, have him do the flip piledriver.”
On trust & today’s wrestlers in wrestling
industry: “There’s a lot of things in wrestling that are trust-based.
You’re giving your body to your opponent & trusting that he’s not going to
knock you out or really hurt you or injure you. Certainly, a move like the
Canadian Destroyer, there’s a lot of faith. That’s basically what our business
is built on. You give somebody your body & they give you theirs & when
you do it right, you put on a fantastic athletic demonstration & entertain
the Hell out of people. It’s amazing when you think about the unbelievable
athletic feats that wrestlers pull off on a nightly basis. A lot of trust to
have to go out there & perform. It’s amazing the wrestlers don’t get hurt.
It’s a testament to the business. The guys right now are such phenomenal
athletes. I think there are guys out there performing in the top level now are
as good as an athlete as there’s ever been in wrestling. Much better than in
some years past. I think as good as other athletes in different sports. Great
caliber athletes right now.”
On creating TNA’s Knockout Division and working with
Dutch Mantell: “We had a terrific group of girls who formed the
Knockout Division. I really enjoyed working hand-in-hand with Dutch Mantel
[WWE’s Zeb Colter] on the creative & producing side & helping structure
& created that division from scratch. That was an amazing experience. I
wasn’t in TNA from Day 1 so I didn’t get to experience that. I was there when we
launched on Fox. I was the director of Creative when we went on Spike. That was
awesome. Creative there to me was me & Dutch taking something that some
people laughed at, which was saying we were going to present Women’s Wrestling
in a serious tone… & it was going to be well-received. 97% of the credit
goes to the girls & then probably 2.8% goes to it Dutch, & I’ll take the
other .2%. I had a blast doing it. I enjoyed it. I worked my butt off trying to
work for those girls & make sure we presented quality matches because some
of them weren’t overly experienced so we really had to work. Learn everyone’s
strengths & work really hard to hide their weaknesses. I think that me &
Dutch & the whole group there did a fantastic job at doing that there for a
couple of years when we first launched. “
On Edge: “Adam [Edge] was very gracious in his
DVD to even think of my name, that’s the kind of guy he is. Edge &
Christian. Edge is a TV star now. He’s not going to be in the wrestling school
teaching hip tosses but he’s always been supportive. He’s supporting wrestling
& the community. I mean I remember Edge when he was at the height of WWE,
calling a boy here in Windsor who went through some pretty heinous stuff &
Edge couldn’t make it here to see the kid… That would have been fantastic but
he couldn’t do it. He sent stuff to the kid & then, more importantly, spent
time on the phone & talked to him”
