In an exclusive for WrestlingNews.co, Steve Fall interviewed Joey Janela. They discussed GCW, AEW, and Janela’s “Florida Man” prank on Hulk Hogan. Click below to watch the entire interview.
Joey Janella on the GCW pay-per-view at the Hammerstein Ballroom and why he doesn’t see GCW getting a TV deal:
“I think we have to go back to Hammerstein. We made a few mistakes on that show. We do have another chance to go to that building and do it the right way.” Janela continued, “We pulled it off but we could have pulled it off better. Next time we will. I can never see a TV deal. I can never see any of that with GCW. Just like ECW, as soon as they sold out and went to television, it was kind of over for them. You can’t really pull that off. We’re still very deathmatch heavy. We’re not doing as much deathmatch wrestling as we used to do, but still, it is something we do here and there for big shows and whatnot, so I can’t see that being something people want on their TV stations.”
On teaming with Sonny Kiss in AEW:
“We were just in purgatory at the time as a tag team and they weren’t doing anything with us, I said, ‘Someone has to turn on somebody or else we’re going to be stuck here and this could be it.’ The main objective was to get Sonny over and get Sonny on TV. That was my main objective with this whole thing and it was working because the responses from the crowds were incredible.”
“Cody basically said, ‘Alright, tell me what you want to do tonight. Tell me what you want to do next week. I’ll fund this vignette for you guys. Tell them what you want to do with this vignette. Tell me how you want to end this’, but it never made it to TV with YouTube and whatnot. It would have been a great way to get back to TV with me and Sonny featured because we were getting great reactions and we had great matches. We stole the show in New York at the Prudential Center. Our match was 12 minutes. It got cut down to I think seven minutes. We tore it up there. We tore it up on the Dark show. We had a street fight. We tore it up there and I was getting great responses. I asked Tony, ‘Who do you want up in this final match?’ He said, ‘I want you up because we’re gonna bring you back to TV.’ The next week Sonny was on Dark. I gave him a piledriver off the stage and I’m like, that just made our whole thing mean nothing. I just gave him this huge piledriver off the stage. You could elevate both of us, but he was on Dark the next week wrestling. I think it just made everything bad.”
“I complained and I said, ‘Tony, what’s this deal right here?’ He said, ‘Well, there’s people that get hit by cars and they’re back on TV the next week.’ If that’s your way of thinking about wrestling, that’s your way. I was just like, ‘I’m just not very happy with this situation’ and he said, ‘Alright, we’ll book you for this week. Come wrestle Eddie Kingston in North Carolina.’ It was a special show they had. I gave him a super kick, and it is what it is. Sh*t happens. I broke his eye socket and he was going into a feud with Chris Jericho. Chris Jericho was not happy. No one was happy. So it is what it is. I just didn’t want to sit there for another year and just deal with this heat and no one ever confronts me and talking to me and telling me what I’m doing wrong or what I can do better. So, back on the Indies now and we’re doing fu**ing great.”
This interview is exclusive to WrestlingNews.co. If you use these quotes, please include a link back to this page.
