The interactive Interview (Courtesy of "The Blaze"1260 AM)
Guest: Chris Kanyon
Date: July 20, 2005
Your Hosts: Chuck D, James Walsh, & "The Queen of Extreme" Francine
Recap By: James Walsh

He's a former WCW United States and WWE Tag Team Champion. He's the Innovator of Offense. And, he's back! He's Chris Kanyon and he's on Wrestling Epicenter's The Interactive Interview this week!

Also, the secret of the month is revealed as we welcome our weekly correspondent to the show. She's, in my opinion, the most beautiful woman wrestling has ever and will ever see. She's so hardcore and so extreme, she's known simply as "The Queen of Extreme." Yes, working for www.Wrestlingepicenter.com and now a weekly part of our live broadcasts, Francine joins us LIVE!

That's right! Both "The Queen of Extreme" and the Innovator of Offense on the same packed radio show that you can download right now by going to www.WrestlingEpicenter.com. What more can you ask for?

To download the show in archived streaming real audio, visit www.WrestlingEpicenter.com.

CHRIS KANYON

-- The brand new style of the Wrestling Epicenter begins right away with a completely new intro package featuring our brand new partner in crime, Francine!

-- Francine joins the show right at the start to announce that she is now working with us on the radio show as well as the web site. You'll have to listen to catch all 15 minutes with "The Queen of Extreme" but here are some highlights.

-- Francine had a lot of fun doing both the One Night Stand pay per view but the Hardcore Homecoming as well. And, believe it or not, she and Shane Douglas have decided to put their past problems behind them and are now getting along again.

-- Francine signed to do the WWE pay per view six weeks prior to the event and had to keep it secret and lie about it to all who asked because they wanted it to be a surprise.

-- "It was the most proud weekend I've ever had in my wrestling career," says Francine about the weekend of the pay per view and the Hardcore Homecoming show. She goes on to say that if anybody ever does anything with the letters "ECW" in it in the future, she hopes she'll be a part of it. "It was my life."

-- Francine mentions that in addition to the great pictures available of her at www.MissyHyattandFrancineTV.com, she also has a new feature to the site. You can now play poker against "The Queen of Extreme!" Join now!

-- Chuck, James, and Francine debate a title for the Francine section of www.WrestlingEpicenter.com. Titles bounced around are "The Queen's Court" playing off the Jerry Lawler interview segment from years gone by. Francine also mentions liking "The Queen's Corner" and said she'd give it thought. We've got a poll up on the site right now. What do you think it should be?

-- We then do our RAW review as we prepare to talk to Chris Kanyon.

-- Kanyon joins the show. The first question for "The Innovator of Offense?" "Who's Better than Kanyon?" Kanyon laughs and says, "Everybody knows the answer to that! It's NOBODY!"

-- James mentions that he's been a big fan of Kanyon's work for many years now and that the first time he saw him was in WCW as Mortis. James Mitchell describes the Mortis and Wrath gimmicks as "Mortal Kombat Crap." Kanyon laughs at that and says he feels the gimmick could've worked at a different time but when it was launched, the nWo was just catching fire and that took a lot of the attention away from him. He goes on to say Kevin Sullivan probably would've helped the gimmick more if the nWo wasn't so huge.

-- Another reason he thinks the Blood Runs Cold gimmick didn't work very well was that they were feuding with Earnest "The Cat" Miller. Kanyon says he likes Earnest a lot but doesn't think two new guys like himself and Wrath should be feuding with another new guy. The idea was to bring in Rob Van Dam to feud with but RVD turned WCW down due to past problems with the company.

-- James mentions loving the gimmick of many Mortis characters coming out when he began feuding with Raven. Kanyon says he loves Raven but stops short of calling him a genius adding, "He calls himself a genius." He mentions that Raven has always done smart things for his career as well as to help push the younger talent. He also exclaims that he'd like to work with Raven again in the near future.

-- When we talked to Kanyon, he was driving down to the TNA tapings in Orlando to check it out. He says he's not going to wrestle at the tapings but is looking forward to seeing some old faces and maybe see about getting in there if all goes well.

-- Chuck mentions that Kanyon is one of a kind when it comes to taking bumps on his neck as it always looks like he's compressing his spine. Kanyon says he does a lot of stretching to take bumps on his neck and says that is mainly why he is able to take bumps like that. He mentions he popped a tape in a few weeks ago and watched some of his matches with Benoit. Kanyon mentions the dragon suplex being a move nobody can take unless their neck is fully stretched.

-- James mentions just recently watching the tape of Great American Bash 1998 when Kanyon faced Saturn and took a lot of sick bumps on his neck from Kanyon and Raven. Kanyon says, "Perry had some great ideas too, man. *laughs* But, he can be mean to some people!" Kanyon mentions that it's funny James mentions that match because in that match, Kanyon brought out more new offense than in any match in his career.

-- We then discuss his gimmick with Raven when it was revealed Raven was a spoiled rich kid and he proceeded to treat Kanyon to a shopping spree. Kanyon wonders why that gimmick was dropped as does James. Both feel it could've gotten over but Kanyon doesn't honestly remember what the reason was that it was dropped.

-- "One of the problems in wrestling has been and will be that they bring in these writers... Let's get somebody who can write an episode of Friends... If you watch the show, you can write an episode. I could write an episode of Friends... If you have these Hollywood writers, you're only going to get one end of it. You're either going to get comedy or drama. With that angle (see above), you would've gotten a beginning, middle, and end. But, they just didn't let it get there."

-- Chuck mentions that Charlie Haas said something very much like what Kanyon just said about the writers. Kanyon agrees with him by saying, "To bring in these writers who don't watch wrestling, don't like wrestling, and don't know the history of wrestling... I just don't understand it. I think it's crazy. I think it's suicide. "

-- Kanyon says if he ever runs his own promotion, he'd have the wrestlers themselves hand in ideas and suggestions for characters and have 2 main wrestlers go through them and that would be the show. He says most wrestlers are very creative and know their characters better than the writers.

-- Somehow we fast forward all the way to his WWE release. Kanyon says, "When I got fired. When I got the call from Johnny Ace, my first question was "Why?" He said they just couldn't come up with anything for me. I said, "Well, maybe you should be firing them and not me. I'm doing my job, they're not doing theirs!" Either that is a lame excuse and he just didn't want to give me the real reason or they're just avoiding the main problem."

-- Kanyon appreciated the opportunity of working the Ready to Rumble movie a great deal as well as the Jessie Ventura Story. But, he feels the timing of Ready to Rumble wasn't the best because the Jersey Triad was getting over and Page and Bigelow had just won the tag team titles.

-- Another thing Eric Bischoff gave Kanyon an opportunity to do was to gather talent for a show Eric Bischoff was going to put on with the creator of Saved by the Bell. The show was to be set up like the Saved by the Bell show for the first hour but with the guys fighting with each other. Hour two was to be these guys having matches at their local independent promotion. Bischoff gave Kanyon $400,000 to go find some skilled cruiserweights and through that, Kanyon brought "Hurricane" Shane Helms, Jamie Knoble, Jimmy Yang, Shannon Moore, and others to WCW.

-- Kanyon says he has a great respect for Eric Bischoff because he gave him all those great opportunities. He also puts over how professional the production of Ready to Rumble was with the same stunt coordinator as the movie True Lies and Terminator 2.

-- James mentions a stunt of sorts that Kanyon took off the Ready to Rumble cage at Slamboree 2000 and asks why that bump doesn't get any mention when it was quite like the bump Foley took. "Probably a couple of reasons. First of all, I never was marketed or pushed like Foley was. Mick's was first. Without Mick doing his, I probably wouldn't have had the idea of doing mine. I'll never forget mine. And, mine was a lot safer than his. It still hurt. It don't go exactly as planned, though. And, the company didn't follow up with it as much as they did his."

-- Kanyon mentions that to this day, they still show the Foley bump off the top of the cage yet WCW didn't show his bump very often at all. He then laughs and says someone told him that his bump off the top of the cage now plays on the Titan Tron before a WWE live event promoting 24/7 saying the WWE promotes his bump more than WCW did and he doesn't even work for them now.

-- Kanyon says the differences between WCW and the WWE are quite obvious. At 5 o'clock at Turner Headquarters, the place was empty. When he went to the WWE, Kanyon himself, Kidman, Lance Storm, and others asked to take a tour of the WWE Headquarters. It was well after 5 o'clock and a lot of people were still working including Vince McMahon himself who was in his office. He feels the fact that WCW had a lot of people that didn't care and the WWE always took it so seriously is "probably why they put us out of business."

-- "I don't want people to get the wrong idea about Vince Russo. I talked to Mick Foley when Vince Russo first came in and I wondered how much he had to do with the success of the WWE. Mick Foley had no reason to lie to me about something like that and Mick told me Russo had a lot to do with the WWE's success. But, when I did the Positively Kanyon gimmick which I thought was tremendously well written, Vince Russo was on sabbatical. It was actually Ed Farrara and Disco Inferno writing that for me. We got it over in a month. I was feuding with Booker T and wasn't just making fun of DDP but was in there with top guys. Things were going real well and then Vince Russo came back. As soon as he came back..."

-- Kanyon says when Russo came back was the night they did the thing with Hogan and Jarrett in Florida. That night, Bash at the Beach 2000, Kanyon beat Booker T who went on to win the world title hours later. Kanyon says he isn't saying he should've been the next to challenge for the World Title at the next pay per view but thinks he could've been involved in the top angle because he did beat Booker maybe helping Steiner. Instead, Russo put him in there with Judy and Buff Bagwell as well as Mark Madden and Mean Gene. "He took something that we worked very hard on and turned it into a comedy spot," says Kanyon.

-- Why didn't the match with Page happen? Well, Page couldn't come to terms with Russo and it wasn't clear if he'd ever come back. Kanyon feels him doing the Positively Kanyon gimmick when Page may not have even come back was stupid because it's teasing the fans and that's how you turn them off, by promising them something and never delivering. Anybody else remembering the endless Scott Hall mentions from 2000 to no pay off?

-- When DDP did return, Russo didn't want to have that feud because the fans "expected" it. Kanyon says, "There's a difference between expecting to see it and "wanting" to see it. They didn't expect to see it, they wanted to see it."

-- Kanyon says it's sad that he had to hit Judy Bagwell with so many Kanyon Cutters only for them not to be aired at all. He likes Judy and feels bad that she was getting banged up and they wouldn't even put it on TV.

-- Kanyon hates the "Death of WCW" book because neither author was actually in WCW and didn't see how things were.

-- "The only reason I didn't go with the Radicals was because I wasn't at that pay per view," says Kanyon.

-- Kanyon did have plans to leave WCW in early 2000 though. He asked and was supposed to get his release at the unopposed Nitro from Valentine's Day at the Nassau Coliseums in New York. He jokes saying he always called his bosses at WCW by respectful names like "Mr. Bischoff" but with Bill Busch, he would go over to him and say, "Billy." So, when he asked "Billy" for his release, he walked away from him and talked to someone. Kanyon says, "I'm 99% sure he went over there to ask who I was." Real good management, right?

-- Kanyon says "Billy" asked him why he wanted to leave. Kanyon had a simple answer, "Sinking ship, don't want to be on it." He also then explained to "Billy" that WCW's unopposed night against the dog show on USA would result in the dog show getting higher ratings. Sure enough, it did.

-- Kanyon says Hulk Hogan shouldn't have ripped on Billy Kidman the way he did because "that's not how a team should work."

-- Kanyon mentions that when Eric Bischoff was in charge, WCW had a boss. But, Bill Busch had no power and it showed. He even laughs saying that Busch used to ride coach on the plane to show he's "one of the boys." Kanyon says he always thought that just made him look like a mark.

-- Kanyon feels his first WWE run was nothing short of special. He loved that run as part of the Alliance and loved being the US champion.

-- Kanyon noticed that he started doing less on TV and more dark matches which lead him to believe his release was coming. Then, he suffered the knee injury in the ring with Randy Orton. He feels that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

-- The shoulder injury, on the other hand... "The shoulder injury was very bad," Kanyon sums it up. He mentions that he was rushed to the hospital after a WWE pay per view and woke up the next day not knowing where he was. The doctor told him he had to have shoulder surgery. He asked for a second opinion, the doctor said if he waited, he'd lose the arm. So, he got the surgery. Well, that resulted in his lungs filling up with fluid and he was near death having trouble breathing. When he went into the hospital, he weighted 240 pounds. When he left, he weighed 208 pounds.

-- Getting back in ring shape after that was the hardest thing he ever did in his career. He's glad he is where he's at now but says it changed his opinion and attitude in a negative way back then. He mentions constantly wanting to quit and doing things that don't make any sense like buying a house in Florida without even selling the house in Georgia first. He just wasn't in a good way.

-- We mention that we spoke to him about a month before his WWE release and he said, "I'm a slave to the office and can't do anything." Kanyon laughs and says that was just the mind set he was in. Things weren't going well.

-- Kanyon says it isn't out of the norm for the business to take its toll on someone. He then goes on to talk about how he went from working for the Fabulous Moolah for no money and ending up paying her $10 for a tape of the show just to get experience and watch the tape to see what he's doing right and what he's doing wrong.

-- Kanyon says his head is on straight and he's ready to hit the ring. He just recently stepped back in there and feels like he's getting a second chance at his love, wrestling.

-- Kanyon says to watch out for him in the next six months. His head is on straighter than ever and he's ready to make an impact. He then invites us to call us 6 months from today and talk to him because he promises we'll say, "Wow, a lot has happened in the past 6 months."

-- We then roll into a few word associations including names like DDP, Club Kanyon, Jeremy Borash, and others. Want to hear them? You'll just have to listen to the show!

-- We will, however, give you one without having to download it even though downloading the show is free!

DDP: "A lot of people say I'm a Page stooge, a Page kiss ass... Page did more for me than anybody in the business." We then mention that he put Kanyon over big in our interview with Page 6 months back. Kanyon jokes saying he's glad Page didn't rip into him because he never returns his phone calls.

-- Kanyon has a brand new site up and running at www.ChrisKanyon.net. You can book Kanyon for indy appearances right now through that web site!

-- We then discuss SmackDown! as well as other top news before we sign off with an appropriate song... "Revolution" by LA Guns. Why? Because our show is waging a revolution on all other wrestling talk shows. We've got bigger names, bigger staff members, and exponentially more talent. Who can blame us for wanting to be recognized for it?

We at www.WrestlingEpicenter.com invite you to check out the site as we will be adding the Francine section within the week as well as adding more guests for you to pose questions to via our forums. Upcoming guests include the one and only Mick Foley as well as several other top stars. Don't miss out on your opportunity to enter the Epicenter. The stars are coming! Shouldn't you?

Catch us LIVE on "The Blaze" 1260 AM every Tuesday night at 10 p.m. EST as well as the live stream on www.WrestlingEpicenter.com through beautiful streaming stereo audio!