Impact Wrestling star Eli Drake is Sean Waltman’s guest this week on his podcast X-Pac 12360.
Waltman’s team sent the following transcribed highlights from the episode to WrestleZone. You can hear the full episode in the embedded player at the top of this post or via the links at the bottom of this post.
Eli Drake On Why It Didn’t Work In WWE:
Of course, the WWE thing didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped. If I’m honest at the core of it it’s me. I’m so not good at hiding my feelings. And Bill DeMott and I didn’t get along…I mean it was very strange cause he would come in some days we’d be cool another day I’d come in and be like good morning Bill (motions handshake) look at my hand and just walk away and not shake my hand. You’re the head coach. You’re supposed to be an example. And he’d say, “oh I’m working. I’m working.”… It was just a lot of B.S. And then I’d hear he said he hated me to a couple people. That’s fine we don’t have to be best friends. I ended up going in and talking to him because I’m not going to just ignore that. He said,”What’s the problem?” I said, Well I’m hearing that you are telling people that you hate me. That’s fine. We don’t have to be best friends or anything. But if that’s going to impede my progress I should be here I should move on. And he’s like, “Nah don’t get caught up in this high school B.S. I’m just working when I’m saying that.” What do you mean? We’re not in a situation where that makes sense. I remember exactly where that happened. We were just setting up the ring for a show at NXT. I think he’d asked somebody where are we setting up Gorilla? And I’d remembered from the last time. Oh, we set it up here the last time and I continued on to do whatever. He turned around and said, “I F’ing hate that guy.” Okay cool, but why am I here if that’s the case.
Eli Drake On Resigning With Impact:
July 31st (Contract is up) it was initially May 31st I asked for a short extension just so I can figure some stuff out cause I’ve got options and things to do. Impact has been amazing to me. They pay me very well. Contrary to popular belief and rumors and whatnot, I’m living a comfortable life. And at the same time, I have options and I’ve got to figure out what exactly I want to do and where do I want my life professionally and personally to move to. So I’m going to probably try and make that decision as soon as I can but we’ll see what happens.
Eli Drake On What Wrestling Has Become:
This is going to be a weird opinion and a lot of people are probably going to hate me for this. I kind of hate what wrestling has become. And what I mean by that is that I feel it’s become a giant spot-fest where we are having to kill ourselves. Whereas my bread and butter your era (Points at X-Pac) go back to the late 90’s it was characters, it was stories. You guys had awesome snappy moves where they were placed just right and it was all the in-between stuff that mattered. Man, I see this stuff look at the way Paige got kicked in the back. The reason we’re doing that stuff it’s like (Smack!) this is real! (Smack!) This is real! I need you all to believe it. Where guys twenty years ago, thirty years ago the people knew they were in on it but they didn’t care because they were so captivated by the characters the storylines all that stuff. Whereas now we have the very jaded fans. It’s the very niche wrestling fans who are like give me more, bigger, bloodier, hurt yourselves and I don’t like that. The other thing I don’t like is where it looks like complete full compliance. Half the time it looks like guys are dancing with each other. I don’t like that. My style of wrestling I want it to look like a fight.
Eli Drake On Almost Being NWA World Champion:
We (Billy Corgan) had actually spoken about it. We had talked about it in 2017 because I was coming up for renewal at Impact and I was kind of shopping different options and what not. And he made me an actually pretty good offer and wanted to make everything central around me. And how it would be more personality based right up my alley. At the same time, I had a very nice guaranteed raise with Impact if I stayed and I just wanted to take advantage of that. So I stayed there.
Eli Drake On The Rock Breaking The News To Him That Paul Bearer Had Passed:
He {Paul Bearer} knew he was about to die. He put some things in place to where his assistant actually reached out to me. I was in Panama shooting Hero at the time so I had no phone, no computer, none of that. So it was The Rock who actually told me. I guess he forgot that we didn’t have our phones or computers cause he was like, “hey, I’m sorry for what happened to your manager.’ What are you talking about? And he was like, ‘William Moody died last night.’ And I was like, (Shocked Face) I had no idea. And now I could see the look on his face and he knew that he was the one breaking the news to me and he felt like a complete piece of garbage at that point. I’m like it’s fine don’t worry about it but I was like holy shit.
SEAN ‘X-PAC’ WALTMAN TALKS ABOUT NJPW’s DOMINION:
Everything that’s been said by people about praising Naito and Jericho and Okada and Omega, I can’t argue with any of it. Especially the Okada/Omega match. I mind ya when you watch that match you have to be ready to hunker down and have the drinks and everything cause you’re there for a while. It was over an hour, when I hear okay {Dave}Meltzer said this was… I’m going okay I wanna see why he said that. So I go back and watch it carefully and some of that stuff is just whole other level shit we’re talking about here. Really intricate stuff that isn’t hard to follow though. It’s such a pleasure to be able to watch that.
SEAN ‘X-PAC’ WALTMAN TALKS ABOUT JERICHO VS NAITO AT DOMINION
The story was excellent. After he {Chris Jericho} wins, he attacks him and starts whipping him with a belt. So then EVIL comes in and makes the save and the place goes nuts over that. It was a win-win, good stuff.
SEAN ‘X-PAC’ WALTMAN TALKS ABOUT CM PUNK’S FIGHT AT UFC 225:
A lot of people want to say this and that. First of all, just all the training and everything that goes into it that’s the worst part. He got off a couple of shots I saw, I think he landed one or two punches, at least one, I know he landed one. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take Mike Jackson down.
SEAN ‘X-PAC’ WALTMAN TALKS ABOUT COREY GRAVES’ TWEETS ON CM PUNK:
Okay so Corey Graves he vented on Punk, it seemed like kind of a bad look at first, but then when I kinda looked into it more, hear his side of things. I totally understand where he’s coming from, totally. Emotions fly and he was hurt and he expressed it. And I don’t have a problem with that at all. It may or may not have looked good but hey sometimes we don’t look good.
SEAN ‘X-PAC’ WALTMAN REMEMBERS DUSTY RHODES:
It was either yesterday or the day before, it was the anniversary of I think three or four years of the passing of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes. I just wanted acknowledge that and once again talk about the first time I ever went to a live Pro Wrestling event and what made me decide I wanted to do this for the rest of my life was American Dream Dusty Rhodes vs Ric Flair for the NWA Title… It was an amazing experience… He’s the mother effing’ man! Rest in peace American Dream Dusty Rhodes, obviously you’re missed by so many and I just noticed on Twitter all the people that tweeted about that. Damn sure Dusty Rhodes is never gonna be forgotten, ever.
Get it all on this week’s brand new episode of AfterBuzz TV’s X-Pac 12360. Two words for you…DOWNLOAD IT! X-Pac 1,2,360 is also available for download on iTunes and Android devices.
