Tony Deppen ended up becoming close with Ron Funches after they were opponents in GCW.
WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard recently spoke with Deppen about celebrities crossing over into pro wrestling. Pritchard asked if Deppen had any thoughts on Paul Walter Hauser getting press for promoting his Wrestling Revolver appearances. Hauser defeated Matthew Palmer at REVOLVER Unreal in November, and he’ll face Matt Cardona in March.
Deppen admitted he doesn’t watch much TV, so he said he didn’t know who Hauser was. However, Deppen said it is cool to see pro wrestling getting more exposure like that. Deppen has experience working with a celebrity himself, as he feuded with Ron Runches leading to a match GCW Highest In The Room in September 2021.
Deppen gave some more background on his work with Funches, including how he originally pitched Funches to win the match.
“That whole thing with Ron and I had nothing to do with GCW originally. That was just a Tony and Ron thing. He had me on his show, where you get high and watch wrestling. I don’t smoke weed, but I watched wrestling with him,” he noted. “He was making fun of me because I have a Hotmail account still. And I was like, ‘Hey, it accepts emails. I don’t care.’ And we just kept going at it.”
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Deppen explained that Funches pitched a spot where Funches would punch him, but Deppen proposed a full match between the two of them. He said Funches pitched having the match at ROH Final Battle, but Deppen didn’t think he could make it happen. However, GCW owner Brett Lauderdale ended up asking if their feud was legit, and Deppen clued him in on the idea.
“And then he was on The Late Late Show With James Corden. I don’t watch TV, so I have no idea what that is. [Ron] called me like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go on the show and put a video of you on you,’ and I was like, ‘Okay…’ and I thought it was a podcast,” Tony Deppen explained. “I wake up, and my phone’s blowing up like, ‘Yo, you were on the James Corden show,’ I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ It was on ABC or CBS or whatever; I don’t remember what it is. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s cool, dude.’ And then it just kept blowing up.”
Deppen said the plan, which also involved Paul Scheer (The League), was to make their match the most “WCW-esque match ever.”
“You should go up.”
“Nobody wanted to see Ron have a five-star match. Like that was virtually impossible. He had some training, but he couldn’t go all out. And we had so much fun with it. I actually wanted him to win,” Deppen noted. “I was like, ‘Oh, you should go up.’ And he says like, ‘No, I’m not doing that to you or wrestling at all.’”
Lauderdale mentioned how the crowd would have erupted if Funches actually won, and Tony Deppen shared the idea of wanting Funches to beat him. He said it wouldn’t have hurt his push in GCW, but said he’s now actually really close with Funches, or Cooper from the Trolls franchise, depending on who you ask.
“It was such a cool thing. And I’m actually still close to Ron now,” Tony Deppen added. “When my wife and I had our daughter, he actually sent us a really expensive bassinet from our registry. And my wife was like, ‘Who sent that? This is a lot of money.’ And then she saw it was Ron. Then my daughter just recently got obsessed with Trolls. She’s two years old. I texted Ron and was like, ‘Hey, my daughter is obsessed with Trolls. How do I tell her I beat up Cooper from Trolls?’ [He asked me], ‘What’s her name?’ I told him and then he sent me a voiceover of him talking like Cooper to my daughter. That was really cool.
“It was [also] cool because Brett gave me way more money for my match with Ron than he normally does. Because I added a lot of pay-per-view buys, I can tell you that much. Which was like really nice to see. He like quadrupled plus my payday,” Deppen said. “Which promoters that make more money from somebody they’re not going to do that and Brett has always been great with that for your money.”
Watch our full interview with Tony Deppen below:
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