Chris Van Vliet did an interview with Damien Sandow on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. The following highlights were sent to us:
On needing to take time away from wrestling after the WWE exit:
“Yes, 100%. Because I was mentally just in a very interesting place in my life. It wasn’t the best spot, shall we say? As people, not just as performers, but as humans, we have this spectrum of emotions that we go through. And as we get to different points in our life, depending on circumstances, or a number of circumstances, we can find ourselves in a good place a bad place, or just lost. I find that those times are where the most growth happens. Because it’s how you deal with it. When I left the WWE, I was really not in a good place. I had let myself down. I couldn’t look in the mirror for 18 months. I’d shave with the lights down, because it was just like this weird thing I was going through. But eventually, like with anything it came to a point where I said all right, I’m the same guy who wrestled the invisible friggin man and made it work, what is wrong with me? I had become [someone], especially in Hollywood, which is like a weird thing. WWE, they own the name Damien Sandow. But no one can rock Sandow like I can, like Scott Hall Razor Ramon. And like the list goes on and on, whoever, we are right at our best. I think we need to kind of hold on to that when we’re at our worst because that just reminds us of what we’re capable of. So I said, Yeah, you know what, okay, and I had some management, some representation out there in Cali that I was like, No, you know what, they’re not my kind of people. I have to at the very least be true to myself and not try to conform to you know, lose 10 pounds, shave, you need to look more like this, you need to look more like that. And you need to be doing these kinds of scenes you need to be doing… It’s kind of like shut up, you know what I mean? It’s like, it’s at the end of the day in Hollywood. There’s a game, right? I mean, there’s not a game, there’s multiple games being played on multiple different levels. And this is no secret, right? And it’s like, there’s a saying those who can’t do teach, which is like, Huh? Is it true 100% of the time? No, because there are a lot of teachers, my acting coach is a working actor. And I booked more with him than anybody. So like he’s actively doing it. He’s actively engaged in the process. And people in Hollywood, they sell this dream. And it’s completely void on many levels of just common sense to where you have to wake up and say, You know what, no, you want me to do this kind of thing? You’re an idiot. You know what I mean? Because at the very least, I have explained to you, I don’t want to do this.”
On Damien Mizdow:
“I think there was no Mizdow without Miz. And if I didn’t have a subject to base my satire on, I wouldn’t have had that. So that’s a testament to the timing Miz and I had. Miz and I are, you know, I say we’re friends. Like, we haven’t really talked or anything. But if we saw each other, it’d be cool. Like, there’d be what’s up, man. We came up in OVW and stuff. And out there though, we had timing about it, because that’s all that was. It was Miz doing his thing and then allowing me to do my thing. And then going into it, he was very, very cool about it. Our best moments were not discussed. Truly, they weren’t, we didn’t talk about them. They happened organically.”
On Cody Rhodes:
“Cody and I, we were I would say like in terms of the totality of wrestling, we were a very underrated tag team. If you look at what we did, the matches we’ve had with various people. And we tagged for a minute. And we travelled together and stuff, [did you win the titles?] I don’t think we did. Miz and I did. But no, Cody has always had a drive and a determination about him. And I’m just very, very glad that he’s determined and again, taking the risks that he has, and staying true to who he is. And I think that’s just wonderful. Because like when you see someone stay true to who they are, whatever that truth is. Because only they can define it. But they kind of reach the apex of what they would like to be and that’s awesome.”
