In an exclusive for WrestlingNews.co, Steve Fall spoke with Mike Mondo, aka Mikey from The Spirit Squad.
Mikey on the creation of The Spirit Squad:
“That was strictly a Vince McMahon idea. He’s like, one day he probably just got up and he’s like, ‘I never had cheerleaders on the show. Damn it. Find me some cheerleaders.’ That’s just kind of how it went. The original idea was for Kenny, Kenny Doane, Kenny Dykstra. You know, that was also supposed to be Dolph Ziggler, you know, he was in it. A lot of people don’t know this, but it was also scheduled to be for Elijah Burke as well, but Elijah, you know, he bet on himself and I mean, it worked out for him. Good for him. He’s a good dude, great, great wrestler, a friend of mine. They wanted five guys. I remember I was home around the holidays and Tommy Dreamer gave me a phone call. He’s like, ‘I have a spot for you in the Spirit Squad. He told me to dye my hair and show up to the Continental Airlines Arena for Monday Night Raw. He took me in front of Stephanie McMahon. Stephanie took a look at me up and down. She goes, ‘Yep, that’ll work’, and that’s how I got my spot in the Spirit Squad. Shortly thereafter, Johnny Jeter became a member and got involved in the gimmick and it was just a great run and a great time in my life. You know, I got to wrestle my childhood heroes growing up, you know, those being Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, Triple H, Dusty Rhodes, Sgt. Slaughter you know, and it was fun. I got to live a dream you know and be at the biggest stage in professional wrestling.”
On his friendship with Tommy Dreamer:
“Tommy was always a big advocate of mine. He always said to me that he always wanted to give guys breaks that really worked hard and had a passion for the business because Tommy always had a passion for the business. He’s been around forever. He was a big fan of mine and we’ve always had a great relationship. He was just one of those guys that was always in my corner. I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but Tommy Dreamer is the guy that got me my developmental job.”
On his return to WWE in 2016:
“I remember I was at a baby shower and all of a sudden I get a text message from Dolph Ziggler, and he’s like ‘Hey, kayfabe. The office is gonna call you to come to TV.’ Lo and behold, a couple hours later I get an email from Mark Carrano seeing if we were interested in coming to TV. Absolutely. You know, let’s get back to work. Let’s do this. We showed up and it was supposed to be with The Miz which we were with and do a little feud with Dolph, and originally was only supposed to be a one-off, but because the one-off went so well, Vince asked us to come back to the pay-per-view to be involved in the ending of the match. I think it was like a false finish or something.”
“So we do our deal with a false finish and now the writers are ecstatic about, ‘Oh my God. These guy’s got this reaction.’ The writers were even kind of confused about who we were. I don’t know if they really remember that we were those guys back then. Yeah, it was very interesting. They were like it, ‘These guys can go. Let’s use them’ We came back the next week and then we started doing something with Heath and Rhyno, you know, and it was just like, one week after one week.”
“Now, we never had a contract the entire time. That’s the thing. It was very unheard of and I think it was Mike Chioda who came up to us, me and Kenny, and he’s like, ‘Dude, like, what’s going on? You don’t understand. I’ve been with this company for years. No one ever gets a live microphone that’s not under contract in the middle of the ring.’ Because think about it, we could have said anything. Not that we would do that or nothing like that and it wouldn’t do good for business for anybody. But the fact of the matter is that was the situation we were in. But they will tell us, ‘The contracts are coming boys.’ It was one of those things just kept on waiting week after week after week, you know. Then we had, I think it was my first ever, by the way, like a 15-Man tag team match, or something like that. It was ludicrous. There were guys all over the place. I was in that ring and I don’t know, something didn’t feel right. I was looking around the arena and remembered, and I’m like, I don’t know because we were just waiting for the phone call every week and that was the last show and we never got the call after that. We didn’t get a reason why, not a text message, not an email. That’s just how it works.”
On dropping the tag team titles to Ric Flair and Roddy Piper:
“What an honor it was to drop it to the guys that we got to drop it to, Roddy Piper and Ric Flair. You know, I mean, those are two individuals that are bar none, two of the greatest of all time. I learned a lot from Roddy Piper in the ring, but I’ve learned so much more from him outside the ring. After the matches, we had our deal where we would hook up at the hotel room. He would come to my room. We would crack open a beer and we just talked about the business, and it was mostly me just listening. I knew I had a chance, I had an opportunity that people would kill for because here I am getting to pick his brain and I’m just learning. I was like, ‘What the hell? Like, what am I doing in the room of Roddy Piper right now. What the hell is going on’, but I just was like, be a sponge, be a sponge, learn, learn, learn. I took and I always applied what he taught me.”
“Same thing with Ric Flair. You know, Ric was a big advocate, for what I know, a fan of my work and he taught me a lot in the ring. He taught me how to call things on the fly in the ring and improvise and, you know, work with top guys that are over. You don’t have to do a million things to them. You can do one thing and get so much more out of it by just listening to the people. When you know how to accentuate a person’s strengths and hide their weaknesses and give them the highlight reel at the right time, you know, and it’s just like magic. It’s like playing music. You hear the people and it’s just like hitting chords on a frickin piano. It was just a really great experience to learn from Ric Flair and Roddy Piper, and so cool I got to wrestle Roddy Piper at Madison Square Garden.”
This interview is exclusive to WrestlingNews.co. If you use these quotes, please include a link back to this page.
