RassleTalk – “Black Label Society – Chapter 1: Training and Busting Your Ass..” with Axeman
This segment is composed of bits & pieces of an interview with AJ Bradley[on right] & Void, also known as Black Label Society. The interview date was Saturday, June 24, 2006, at the XOW Building in New Albany, MS.
The comments and opinions expressed herein are those of Black Label Society (Void & AJ) only, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of myself or anyone else.
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What made you want to get into wrestling?
Void: Well, that’s something… I’ve never been able to answer that. I grew up in West Memphis, Arkansas, from the time I was about two until I was about 13, so I grew up watching the Memphis territory. I would by-pass cartoons, I didn’t watch Bugs Bunny, and I would wait until 11:00, TV 5, you know, Dutch Mantel, Jerry Lawler, Tommy Rich, and all of them. I never could put the finger on why I wanted to do something like that. My dad hated it, God rest his soul, my mom hated it, they didn’t understand why I watched it, they didn’t really like me watching it, my friends didn’t watch it, but I watched it anyway. It wasn’t about cards or any of, you know, the stuff that goes on behind the scenes that we know about now; we didn’t know any of that stuff back then. I just liked the sport of it. To me, it looked like a sport, and I liked it.
AJ: I grew up watching guys like Jake “The Snake” Roberts, “The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase, & “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig, they are the ones I watched when I was young. It was just amazing to watch those guys. Being at that young age, you watch those guys and you want to do what they do, you want to be like them. Looking back now, you kind of realize why I watched those guys back then. I was never into Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, guys like that, I liked watching guys who looked like there was an actual battle going on in the ring, not just a you do this and I’ll do this, trading back and forth kind of thing.
Void: The first guy that legitimately scared the hell out of me was a wrestler. It wasn’t Lord Humongous or Prince of Darkness, it was Steve “Dr. Death” Williams. It was the face that he had, the way he looked, you looked at that face and you just believed, you knew, that he could kick your ass, anybody, anywhere, you know, it didn’t matter, he didn’t care, he didn’t stop until the job was done, and I did not know his background from anything, I just knew he was a wrestler, and I knew he weighed 250# and could press 500#, I didn’t really know anything about him, except that he looked like he could kick your ass. Him and The Great Kabuki, they scared the hell out of me, and Kendo Nagasaki and those guys, the old school, Japanese heels, there was just something about them, because they didn’t cut promos, they didn’t even talk, most of them, they just, the way they looked, they just jumped you and kicked ass. That’s before martial arts got real popular and everybody learned Tai-Kwan-Do and Kung Fu, and now everyone knows a little of everything.
Who trained you?
Void: Well, as a matter of fact, Doug Gilbert, I was trained by Doug. I was working in a warehouse, in a co-op in Jackson, TN, and I remember I was working on a Saturday, and I went down to the store part, the inside part where you go in to place your order and whatever, and Doug was advertising on the front page of the Sports Section of The Memphis Sun, he was training a Japanese wrestler, training him to be more accustomed to the western style, the theatrics, the drama, and stuff like that. I just happened to pick up the paper that day, and see him on the front page of that paper, advertising his school, and I went and dropped my money down, and to be honest, I had very few, I had less that ten in-ring classes in six months. I ended up figuring out that I was getting trained more riding in the back seat of the car on the way to shows, talking to him, and listening to him, and him seeing where I was and what I was paying attention to. Doug trained me a lot more in psychology than anything else. I had been through a camp once before, and I had very, very limited knowledge of what I was supposed to do, and Doug took my enthusiasm, and… Doug and his wife, Melissa, would always joke that, “If I could just get Jason’s entrance to the ring without him throwing up, he’ll be fine.” I was so scared to death, I didn’t want to go out, I told Doug that I didn’t care if I had paid my money or not, if I’m not good enough, I don’t want to be in there. I don’t ever want to be in a match that I can’t contribute to. Being trained by Doug, lots of people can work spots and do this and that; I had a working knowledge of wrestling with a “shoot” background before I got into wrestling. Holds were nothing, I had to know when to do what, and I had to know how to work with somebody. Doug taught me a lot more than spots and take downs. He taught me how to work. I had a blast.
AJ: Izzy Rotten trained me. (laughter)
Izzy Rotten trained you?!
AJ: Yep, Izzy Rotten. It was, I think, the summer of 2003, some of us went up to a restaurant in Jackson, Tennessee, and they were playing a WWE pay per view, I don’t know which one it was, it’s been a couple of years, I go up there and I see this guy I went to high school with, I had just graduated a month earlier, and this guy was already claiming that he was a wrestler, and said he worked here in Mississippi a lot, a lot – a lot – of bullshit, so this guy, I think his name was Donnie, that’s all I can remember, come to find out he had not had the first minute of training, he had never been in the ring before, he only went to shows, just full of bullshit. He claimed that he had been in the ring with some of the top local names. He knew all the names, and being from Tennessee, I had never been to Mississippi in my life at that time, so I didn’t know any better, and I took him at his word. Next thing I know, without even knowing this guy real well, I call him up and ask him if I can ride to a show with him, because I was thinking that if he was already in, he could also help me get in. We get to the show, and I started wondering why this guy is not going back to the dressing room with the rest of the wrestlers. Why is he not carrying a bag of gear, I know he’s not about to climb in there wearing khaki shorts and a V-neck shirt and flip flops…. But, while I was there, I did meet Izzy Rotten and Nathan Lee. It was at one of Stephen Creasy’s shows, when he was running CCW, I think it was in Saltillo, “Super Freak” Danny Morris’ home town, anyway I met Izzy, and I didn’t know any other way to get in, and he was there, so I paid my money, and I got trained.
Void: I’m not saying that I’ve put in a whole bunch of time or anything like that, not saying I am a seasoned veteran or any of that crap, but you can go to any show now and you can say “what will it take for you to train me?” Anybody can go and say that, and the whole crap about you having to wear boots & tights in order to be a wrestler, well I’ve got a saying that if you put a piece of crap in an Armani suit it’s still a piece of crap. It doesn’t matter what you dress it up in, it’s still gonna be shit. There are so many people who have the boots, and have the tights, and have the look, and just plain suck. Entertainers… and there are people who are getting paid for what they used to do, and what they can’t do. And there are people like me, AJ, DC, and all these guys who put their asses on the line to make these other people look good, and they don’t get paid near as much. They don’t get the thanks, they don’t get the handshake, they get the gratuitous smile to your face handshake, then they are expected to go out there and make the guy look good all over again. There’s a difference between entertainers and workers. So… did we answer the question?
You more than answered it (laughter).
AJ: Back to our trainers, I know you hear a lot of stuff about Izzy, and I know a lot of people have heat with him and don’t like him and stuff, but, me personally, I could never say anything bad about him. Through him I was introduced to Motley Cruz & Tasha Simone.
Void: Lots of experience and lots of knowledge there… younger guys like us in the locker room, there should be more people like that in the locker rooms that have been through anything you can come up with, to pass along information and wisdom like Motley is willing to do. And Tasha too, she’s not just a manager or female wrestler; she’s one of the most sound technical wrestlers, period. There should be more people like that, but you have guys nowadays, they don’t really care about what the crowd does during their match. As heels, we went through a certain promotion where we worked for 7 months with not but one win as a tag team, and we were the biggest heels they had. That was because the people believed we were really ass holes. We were main event every other show, but we never went over. It got to be a joke, we got our asses pinned. It didn’t matter, because we could make the crowd hate us.
Motely & Tasha were on my list, but we’ve already talked about them so tell me how you guys got together as a tag team.
AJ: Well, it kind of goes back to people not liking the guy who trained me, like I said, to this day I have no problem with Izzy, but anyway, Doug Gilbert actually works for The State of Tennessee Department of Transportation, he works with my grandmother, and my grandmother, after a certain incident that happened in a match I had, I mean I lost more blood than have ever seen.
Void: There was a big gash in his head.
AJ: Anybody can look at my forehead and see it, the guy, just out of nowhere, he just took a blade and cut me open. Anyway, after that incident happened, Doug Gilbert gives me two phone numbers, one for Billy Ray Hickerson and one for Ricky Murdoch. I called Ricky up in Humboldt, Tennessee, about ten minutes from where I lived. So I go, I show up at the building, I have my ring gear, and Ricky agrees to put me in the ring, and my opponent that night happened to be Void.
Void: We didn’t know each other, I was still pissed off about certain people I had to put over at the show, and I was there working my butt off and I wasn’t getting paid, but Ricky was a guy that would work out with me while Doug was in Japan and gone to different places, we’d set up that 18 x 18 steel ring, and after I had worked 9 or 10 hours at a co-op in the heat with no air, Ricky would get in there after he had worked his 10 hour day, we would get in there and work out, and so I would do just about anything for the guy. So, here AJ comes out, using my entrance music. After the match, we pretty much started talking, I don’t have to catch him, he doesn’t have to catch me, we don’t have to go out there and do a bunch of luchador spots, so we went out there and chain wrestled and did our little thing, and we started hanging around each other. The more we hung out, the more I screwed up and influenced his life. AJ was always that real quiet guy who sat in a corner on the end of the bench in the locker room, and they kinda stuck us together, and all of a sudden we started to become a tag team, and we were so similar they said hell with it, you know, and I didn’t know, I couldn’t run spots or do anything like that, and I wasn’t 20 years old, and I couldn’t take all the bumps I used to could, but he could, so we started doing what we do.
OK, Void, you are a very talented young athlete, a very talented young man.
AJ: (Laughing) He called you young!
Well, compared to this old fart, he is young. Anyway, Void, why do you use so much profanity? You don’t have to do that, you are talented enough that it is not necessary.
Void: I understand that, I don’t have to, but see, I’m not out there acting. And everyone has, but this is a show, and the angles I get involved in, I’m passionate about them. And for me, it is harder to harness or control chaos and anxiety than it is to try to come up with butts and hecks and darns, and I understand that. I do not have a pre-conceived, well I’m gonna say the s-word or I’m gonna drop an f-bomb, I don’t think that before I come out. To this day, and I’ve been in, it will be five years in August, and still to this day I can hear the music, when the music plays, when the music hits, he’ll tell you, I get sick to my stomach, I just start shaking, I start getting all excited, I still get hyped up, I still get nervous. To me, this is like a football game, or in Little League, I would stay up the entire night before… I was so excited, I wouldn’t sleep the night before, and if I’m excited about a match, I won’t sleep the night before, and when I get to the building, I’m shaking I’m so excited. Like the match we had with POPULAR, I was so hyped up I was sick in the parking lot. I have a basic idea of what I want to do, and then the music hits and I get that adrenaline rush and I just go out there and say what I say and do what I do. But back to your question, that is understood, and that’s probably one of the things that keeps me back. But the way I see it, my bills are not getting paid by this, and I’m not gonna sit back and I’m not gonna… We barely make gas money, if you’re in it for the money you’re an idiot… Why in God’s name should we come out here, like tonight, I got my head busted open, I bumped on the concrete, and two big 300 lb. guys just beat the living hell out of me… I didn’t do that for the money, I did it because I like it. To me, wrestling is still a sport. AJ & I were in there with Pure Destruction, competing with everybody on that card tonight, with everybody in this state tonight, for the very best match possible. I feel like if we don’t have the best match on the card every night, then it’s my fault. I take it upon me, I take it personally. I still feel the passion for professional wrestling. Some people don’t take it seriously, they want to be freakin’ actors, and they want to come out and they want to baby oil themselves up and they want to go hit the gym so they can look pretty on the TV, while people like us bust our asses in the ring, and we make them look good. It goes back to the whole entertainer vs. worker thing. I’d rather be in a class of people… the Malenkos, the Jerichos, the Reno Riggins guys, those guys like that, you know, if not for us, a lot of these big slobbering steroid junkie needle in their ass guys wouldn’t have anything to do, the chicks wouldn’t come out and follow them to their cars and the promoters wouldn’t put ‘em over because it’s people like us, the ugly sludge basement dwelling rat lickers that come out and make them look good. I feel that passion, and I want everybody to talk about the angle, I want everybody to really think I hate whoever I am in the ring with. And nothing could be further from the truth. I depend on the person I’m in the ring with, from the person I’m tagging with, to the person I’m working with, to the referee, to the announcers, I depend on everybody, in every part of that match. But back to your question, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, and I would like to be able to change, but I can’t. I’m just thankful that there are people like the ones who run XOW give a damn enough to put me out there, and they know, they KNOW, that I feel that passion and I would do anything in this world to make this show, or any show I am a part of, look good. I’ll break bones, spill blood, and put over people that couldn’t carry anybody’s job. You see what I’m saying?
AJ: The profanity issue is not really an issue of mine, I’ve only talked on the mic a handful of times, I only talk when necessary. Speaking on the microphone is not really my strong point. I’m not really good at coming up with things on a whim. You know that show Whose Line Is It Anyway, I would never survive that show, because I just don’t come up with things like that.
----Make sure to hit the site again next Friday for RassleTalk “Black Label Society – Chapter 2: Word Association”
