Impact’s John Skyler appeared on this week’s “House of Hardcore” podcast to discuss a variety of topics including his time in both WWE and AEW.
John Skyler on his time in WWE:
“I did like 50 squash matches, enhancement matches, whatever you want to call them without ever having a deal,” Skyler said. “I also did live events. I did WrestleMania Axxess.”
“I was getting picked to do some pretty cool things there for a while. I didn’t have my first actual tryout at the PC until right before COVID hit. They actually canceled our tryout while we were there, like we all flew in, and then immediately got flown home because they needed the PC to tape RAW, SmackDown, and then eventually WrestleMania.”
Skyler followed up with, “I went back in May of last year. I had a tryout. Things looked great, but then right around that time was when everything started changing. It’s well documented how many people who have been unfortunately let go from there and how the infrastructure has changed. That was all going on around that time. I’ve also done stuff for Ring of Honor, I’ve done stuff for Impact before AEW, but was never really offered a deal. Around that time when I did my tryout at the PC is when I got the offer to come to Impact.”
Skyler on his time in AEW:
“I did two or three matches. This was the third match. It was against Dark Order’s Stu Grayson and Evil Uno,” he said. “It’s always the weirdest things that guys get hurt on.”
“Up until that point, I wrestled for 12 years. I had over 1,200 matches. I’ve never had a serious injury. I blew out my knee doing a Ricky Morton forward roll underneath a clothesline. The bottom of my foot caught Uno in the quad, and it caused my knee to shoot out. It’s the damnedest thing trying to explain it,” John recounted.
“I tore my ACL, my MCL, and my PCL. It’s the same day that (Kris) Statlander blew out her knee, so we went and got our MRIs together at the same time. We got the news the next day. They projected that I was going to be out 8-9 months and she was going to be out for close to a year.”
“I got my surgery done in South Carolina and I was back in 7 months. I have to credit everybody at AEW, Tony, and all the EVPs because not having a contact there, they could have sat me at home and said take care of it yourself and figure out what you’re going to do, but they brought me back every week to pay me. They also allowed me to do physical therapy with their medical team there at AEW. They did that for a full 7 months during a pandemic when they didn’t really have to. I’ll always be thankful for that. It was quite an experience, that 7 or 8 months that I did at AEW.”
Host Tommy Dreamer and John Skyler went on to discuss a variety of other topics including about how to leave a lasting impression with the companies you work for.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit The House of Hardcore Podcast with Tommy Dreamer with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
