AEW star Stokely Hathaway was interviewed on the latest “Talk Is Jericho” podcast.
Stokely talked about his name:
“Well, the funny thing is the Stokely part, a lot of people think it came from Stokely Carmichael, but it actually came from Stokley from Mint Condition and Hathaway is from Donny Hathaway. They’re both from black culture. Mint Condition still does tours. They were a big band in the early 90s. They were a part of the, I would say, New Jack Swing era. There was a guy called Stokley in that band.”
How he got into AEW:
“I was available. Dax is one of my good friends so we were talking back and forth. He sent me a screenshot because he was having a conversation with Tony. The screenshot was Tony just being like, ‘Let’s go’ in all caps with like 37 exclamation marks. That was the beginning of the talks of me coming in. We didn’t meet face to face until I would say Double or Nothing. I was backstage. I debuted. It was a handshake deal and it became official a few hours after that.”
On the plans for him to be paired with Jade Cargill:
“It’s interesting, because a lot of people thought that Jade and I was this long term plan. The idea, and I take a lot of responsibility for it, it wasn’t really conveyed the fact that when I was with Jade, the idea was I was a con artist, like I was a scammer. I was using everyone to get to this position in The Firm. Obviously after All Out, plans changed. The Jade storyline was actually the beginning of the next chapter.”
On wrestling Hook:
“It’s pretty surreal because I remember watching Taz in ECW, watching his WWF debut during the Royal Rumble, and years later, I’m wrestling his son. It’s bizarre. But I’m very appreciative of that feud from Hook and Taz and just being allowed to do what we did, because I think it saved us. I think we were just, I wouldn’t say floundering, like I think we were just there. Once it turned into Lee And Big Bill feuding with Hook and Jungle Boy, it was like, ‘Oh, now we have a clear cut direction.’ That’s when we were kind of empowered to have a little more say. That’s when I pulled all the guys aside and said, ‘Hey, I think this is the direction we should kind of go in’, and I think it worked out. Hook is a tremendous performer. I know he was excited to do the match and it’s like, ‘No dude, I am excited to wrestle you.’ As you know, there’s not a lot of real estate on Wednesdays. Tony has hired like 200 or 300 people so it’s one of those things where once you’re given that opportunity, you have to knock it out of the park and wrestling Hook was probably my favorite moment out of the past few years.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Talk Is Jericho with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
