RassleTalk “Black Label Society – Chapter2 : Word Association” with “Axeman” Randall Lewis
This segment is composed of bits & pieces of an interview with AJ Bradley & 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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OK, let’s play some word association, you guys have been wanting to do this since we started, so now’s your chance.
Void: Yes sir, let’s do it!
We’ll start with Rodney Grimes.
Void [photo to the right]: Well, I would like to ask Rodney Grimes who the hell he… you know, he and I had a 
little bit of… oh God, he sucks, I can’t even think straight thinking about this guy. I wouldn’t know him if he stood right in front of me, I really wouldn’t. But he gets on a message board, run by a guy in Nashville named Trent Van Drisse or something like that, who is an openly critical guy, he takes the good with the bad and does his thing, right… Well, Rodney Grimes decides to get on this board, where people know who I am, and know who I like and who I will take up for, and he decides to start telling stories about Tommy Rich, road stories about Tommy Rich, and all the people that he’s done this for and done that for, and I’m pretty sure that Tommy Rich wouldn’t really care for Rodney freakin’ Grimes to be telling. It’s not like… it’s just things that you don’t tell. And then I asked him… the only thing I asked him, that little midget moron bastard, I asked him, do you really think Tommy Rich would really want you getting on a public message board and talking about him, private matters such as this… and then he starts asking me who the hell I am. Then I calmly tell the little bastard, go ask Doug Gilbert just who I am, go ask Picture Perfect, Tracy Smothers… Tracy Smothers, I’ll love that guy ‘til the day I die, I would do anything in the world for Tracy Smothers, Tracy used to ask to come in to put me over, and if that does not swell your head up… anyway, I said go ask Tracy Smothers who I am. Ask your little Tag Team Champions Picture Perfect. Go ask Chase Stevens and Andy Douglas, who we borrowed our first gimmick from, The Unnaturals, go ask the people that you pay money to work for you, ask them who the hell I am, then you can report back to me. And I haven’t heard anything from him since. As far as I am concerned, he sucks. I would not work for him, and I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna break his heart.
AJ: I think I worked one time for Rodney Grimes. At least I think it was Rodney, it was a long time ago. I got a call from Marcus O’Neil, he needed a tag team partner to work Reno Diamond & OZ. Apparently his partner at the time, Chris Lexx, could not make it. Anyway, he called me up, and I did not have anything to do that night, so I went up there, we had the opening match, and outside of the people with name recognition, it was probably one of the best matches of the night, based solely on guys going out there and working, not on what their name is, so after that match I didn’t get called back. I have not been contacted since then to work another one of his shows. If that was Rodney I worked for that night, it was in Selmer, Tennessee.
Void: If you know anything about us, we’ve gone to sleep clinics because we can’t sleep because freakin’ Rodney Grimes won’t book us. There’s a guy that I couldn’t care less if I ever run into him. He’s more than welcome to come up to me and slap the piss out of me and introduce himself any time he is ready.
How about Neil “The Real Deal” Taylor?
Void: Neil… I kind of relate to Neil, in a way. I have never had any problems with him; I like to base my opinions on what I’ve dealt with. Neil is disliked for a lot of the reasons I am disliked. I mean, you hear stories about people, and I waited until I met Neil to from my opinion. I don’t have one bad thing to say about Neil Taylor.
AJ: My earliest memory of Neil Taylor was working a six man tag against him in Booneville, I was set to do a cork screw plancha off the top rope, and he rolled the wrong way, and I landed on his leg and put him out of action for a month or so, it wasn’t intentional; prior to that I don’t even remember meeting him. He was cool about it, he knew what happened and everything; he didn’t blame me like a lot of people would try to do. I have nothing bad to say about him.
How about Storm?
Void: Oh man, I have got a lot of love for that guy. When we first came into XOW we were doing, if you remember, the doomsday Jesus gimmick, and Storm kinda added an idea, because Brody was telling us that Storm was gonna be the one to kinda lead us, or watch over us, and Storm put a lot of faith in us. I asked him, Storm, what do you want from us? What do you want from me, what do you want out of my character? Storm gave me a very very rough sketch, nothing real particular or specific, he put a lot of faith in me, in us. And he said, if you have any ideas, let’s hear ‘em. And Storm put a lot of faith in us. The stories you hear about me coming into a place… You hear good, you hear bad, you hear real bad… Storm took the leash off and let me run. I thanked him publicly one time about that, and he told me that he knew I wouldn’t be out there to do anything but make that part of the show look good. I really do have a lot of love for him because he helped me bring back a passion for this business that I didn’t have for a while. I would put him over any day of the week. I don’t give a rats ass WWE World Champion, I’d put him over.
AJ:Any time I worked with Storm or against Storm, it’s never been a bad experience at all.
How about Bonecrusher….
AJ: The entire time we worked in Booneville, about half way through our run there, I gave Bonecrusher three VCR tapes to watch. You know, (laughing) he kept them… that’s the first thing that came to mind, I was kinda irritated about that, I spent my money on them tapes. He had them a couple of months, and he never would give me tapes of my matches.
Void: But we like him, I’d hate to be on the receiving end of one of his right hands, God that guy has hands like ham hocks!
AJ: There ain’t no real heat, you know, we like him. And God he’s big! He’s a big guy for sure.
How about Justin Rhodes?
Void: [ [AJ, Void and Psycho to left]When I first got myself booked in Corinth, when I first started doing the Void gimmick, Justin and I sort of gravitated towards each other. I wanted a big tag team partner so I could go in there and take the heat or take the shine or whatever, and then tag the big guy in and kind of rest out there, you know what I’m saying? And there’s nothing wrong, you know, it’s just… the guy, I had him booked on so many shows, places like Columbia with Tracy Smothers, I was going over The Naturals, if you can believe this, I was going over on Chase Stevens and Andy Douglas, every freakin’ week that these guys were brought in, and they didn’t say a word about it, they were super cool, made me look great, made me look awesome, and I had this guy booked to come in to work, you know, show the promoter what you’ve got, it was a free ride and everything, and the sombitch no showed me I don’t know how many times. But I love him to death. He was the first guy I ever wet willied in the ring. I put my thumb in my mouth and stuck it right in his ear. And be sure you get this in the interview, be sure to tell him to quit missing leg drops off the ropes, that shit is insane, he shouldn’t be doing stuff like that, he’s gonna hurt somebody or himself, and the ring is gonna come down.
AJ: I haven’t been around Justin an awful lot. No bad experiences, I have nothing bad to say about him.
What do you think about SGWA?
Void: OK, I don’t know which button you hit to put the asterisks on there, it’s shift and one of the numbers, and you’re gonna need a lot of asterisks before this is done. SGWA… those people can eat shit and die. We didn’t get fucking paid for three months, maybe four months that we were there. The only way that we even got any gas money from Jackson Tennessee to Booneville, Mississippi was because we bought Dino Sundrops, because you couldn’t get ‘em in North Mississippi at the time. Dino filled up out tanks for Sundrop sodas. We didn’t get paid for three or four fucking months. I’ve said it, and I’m not blowing smoke up my current promoter’s ass, this is the only set of tag belts we have wanted to hold. We were forced to hold the first ones because they didn’t want to put ‘em on anybody else. We were cutting our teeth as a tag team so we said OK, we’ll see what that’s like. We didn’t get paid, and they would bring people in, and I’m not gonna mention their names, but you know damn good and well those fucking three people don’t come in for free for anybody. You know they got paid. And they had people they were going to give cash to come in because of people we know, James Storm, Chase Stevens, Andy Douglas, Cassidy Reilly, The Naturals were going to come in and work the Unnaturals. Chase Stevens & Andy Douglas, they’ll cut down their prices for friends, but this is a business, it’s how they make their living, they’re not going to come from Nashville or wherever to north Mississippi for free. They couldn’t pay their heel tag team champions, but they could pay these guys that damn sure ain’t going to come down here for free. The three people they brought in, I guarantee it took at least $100 to bring them in, you couldn’t give us $15 for gas? Couldn’t give us $5, couldn’t give us a damn thing? Every time we turned around there was something new to the set, something new to audio, something new to video, but you couldn’t pay us? They can kiss my ass.
OK, did you have any dealings with EWW when they existed?
Void: I was taken over there by the guy that has about twenty fucking gimmicks, Gary Woolridge, we were going over there to see the people they wanted to pluck from EWW. I didn’t care, if we’re fighting over the same base of people, why don’t we all just get together and put all that crowd into one building. Well, these ass holes, they decided they wanted to do that after these guys were gonna lose their building. I met a couple of guys from there, they were decent guys, met a couple of drunk pieces of shit who shouldn’t be in the business. That was my only experience with EWW, I really did not have much to do with them.
AJ: I hope I am not mistaken on this, I believe I worked for them one time. The only reason I even remember that is because I got to wrestle a guy who passed away a couple of years ago, Jason Lynn, I worked him in a tag match.
I think that might have been MCWA, that was before EWW.
----Make sure to hit the site again next Friday for RassleTalk “The Black Label Society – Chapter 3 : The Fire Incident”
USWA: The return to Monday night house shows at the Flea Market hadn’t helped the crowds, as the show on October 21st had drawn another crowd of 375 fans paying $1800. Brian Christopher & Wolfie D won the USWA Tag Team titles from Bill & Jamie Dundee, in a match with Jimmy Valiant as guest referee. With the main weekly house show now taking place on a Monday, this ruled out Jerry Lawler being booked, as he had to work Monday nights doing live announcing for Raw, either in the Stamford studios or ringside at the arena….. The October 26th tv show was heavy on comedy, with Lawler doing the booking. A new wrestler debuted, named Macho Warrior Ric Hogan, whose gimmick was that he combined the interviews and mannerisms of the four. Randy Hales was taking credit for creating PG-13, and said he was debuting a new tag team that he’d manage – two masked heels called the ‘Devil Dogs’. In their squash match debut, they were beaten up by their jobber opponents for seven minutes, before Hales pulled them from the match (they lost via count out) and said that they were concentrating on an upcoming tag team title match…… Mike Samples was feuding with Sean Venom (who carried a snake), and debuted his neutralizer – a tiny dog called Hercules, which he had previously built up through promos to supposedly resemble a rottweiler. During his match on the show, he tried unsuccessfully to get the dog to act mean…….
