Joey Janela explains how he put together his flaming superkick spot and ultimately what went wrong.
During an appearance on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, Joey Janela spoke in detail about his now-infamous flaming superkick spot that took place at GCW Maniac on May 21. Janela lit his foot on fire for a superkick to Drew Parker, but needed help putting out the flames after they would not extinguish.
“So this is the situation. So the night before, me, Drew Parker, who’s probably one of the top deathmatch wrestlers right now, he’s from England, he moved to Japan to wrestle some of the best deathmatch wrestlers in the world. That’s where the best, most story-driven deathmatches are. So he went over there and now he lives there. We’re been bringing him in sporadically for GCW, probably once a year. So this match was supposed to happen in January on New Year’s Eve, and he didn’t wanna come over because of COVID restrictions. So he sat out, so we delayed the match til Los Angeles. He’s one of my favorite dudes, so the night before I said, ‘you know what, you’re doing a lot of deathmatches on this tour. Let’s take it easy. Let’s not do a deathmatch, let’s do a Joey Janela hybrid match,’ which a lot of matches are, they kinda have that New Japan main event flow but with doors and bullsh-t, outlaw mudshow bullsh-t. So we’re at the Rainbow Room in LA, West Hollywood, the famous Rainbow Room. Start taking a shot of whiskey. One shot of whiskey, two shots of whiskey, three shots of whiskey. And I go, ‘Drew, I got an idea. Let’s do 15 minutes of a regular wrestling match, then all of a sudden it’s like an M. Night Shyamalan twist. It all of a sudden turns into a f-cking deathmatch.’ He was like alright let’s do it.
“I woke up the next day like why did I agree to this? Right now, this point in my career, kinda want to stay away from deathmatches. I don’t want to scar my face up. I got glass still from the last one I did, this is glass trying to come out. I tried to pull the last one out with tweezers, but they’re like pimples. Eventually it’ll come through and you’ll have to slice it open. So we agreed we were gonna do glass, but the day of the show, they couldn’t find glass. I was like what a relief. Alright but we got barbed wire, we got thumb tacks. So I was like alright, let’s do it. Then like I just came up with this idea, I said what if I light my foot on fire and do a superkick? Just playing with ideas. He’s like that sounds cool. I said can we get lighter fluid? So I talked to this guy, his name is Rob S—, that’s his wrestling name. I said you have a motorcycle, you have a vehicle here, can you go find me lighter fluid? I’m thinking about lighting my foot on fire. Within 10 minutes he comes back with some lighter fluid. Alright I guess this is gonna happen.”
Joey Janela explained that he told GCW promoter Brett Lauderdale about the plan, and Lauderdale thought he was joking. Janela said he wanted to make sure the fire spot looked good and didn’t result in injury, but he still used “probably three-quarters of the bottle” of lighter fluid. Janela noted that the superkick itself looked good, and went into detail as to why a fire extinguisher wasn’t present.
“I didn’t want a fire extinguisher. Usually a fire extinguisher, it’s kinda pointless. Usually you put water on the fire, it goes out. That’s what people don’t get. The last thing I want is some f-cking guy coming, spraying the fire extinguisher and me breaking out in a rash and my eyes swelling up for f-cking four days. That’s what happens, the chemicals in a fire extinguisher are terrible for you. You’re not supposed to spray [people] This is not 2000 WWF fire extinguisher, this is a real fire extinguisher. I don’t want that sprayed at me, so usually a bucket of water will do it. That’s what they had, a bucket of water. It was a Poland Spring, probably an even sh-tty brand. Probably store brand f-cking bottle of water.
“So they start splashing my foot and I’m trying to get the show off because I tied the shoe so tight on that I didn’t want there to be a chance that I super kicked him and my flaming shoe flew off into the crowd and lit someone on fire. Because that was a famous situation in ECW. That’s what people were saying, ECW would never be dumb enough to do this. No, they were dumber. They almost lit the whole building on fire and they were lighting fans on fire when Cactus Jack — the video doesn’t exist, the evidence was supposedly erased, I know somebody has that video somewhere, probably in Stamford in some vault — that Cactus Jack hit Terry Funk in the back with a flaming chair and the towel flew off onto Terry Funk and Dreamer, and that both caught fire, and they ran into the crowd and then the towel flew into the crowd.”
Janela went to explain that his boot was on tight and hard to get off, but he didn’t feel the flames during the ordeal and also said that he did not suffer any burns.
In regards to the reaction to the spot, Joey Janela said he embraces the whole thing and said he loves the attention he’s received the past few years.
“I love it. I love being polarizing. I love the hate. People think I’m thin-skinned. I’m certainly not thin-skinned. I’ve been dealing with this harassment on social media for years. And most people would ignore it, most people would just go on with their day and not care what someone says. But when I rattle that hornet’s nest, it just gives me that much more attention. I could go, something could happen, I could light my foot on fire, and then I say something to somebody, and then it snowball effect and then I’m trending on social media. Because not only did I do something very ill-advised, and very stupid, but I’m also acting like an asshole.”
Read More: Joey Janela Discusses His AEW Departure, How He Helped Make Communication Better In AEW
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