Chris Masters (Chris Adonis) will be facing Tyrus for the NWA Championship at NWA 312 in Chicago on April 7th on PPV. Ahead of the match, Masters spoke with Chris Van Vliet about the match and he had some things to say to Bobby Lashley.
Masters on why he feels the audience does not like Tyrus being the NWA Champion:
“Well, here’s the thing. What as he calls them, the trolls, what I will give him is this. What the, as he would call them, the trolls, don’t understand is Tyrus does love professional wrestling. He does have a love for it. But what he doesn’t understand is the trolls, it’s not they’re not woke, it’s not a right or left thing, it’s a professional wrestling thing, and quite frankly, the wrestling fans are resentful of a guy who comes in to, or back into professional wrestling, as kind of, say, a side hustle. Or, you know, let’s put it this way. If he lost the NWA title, he’d be just fine because he’d be out there hosting Greg Gutfeld, he’d be doing his thing on Fox News. The wrestling audience, what it comes down to is they want the best wrestler in that position and they want the best wrestler holding the most prestigious title in professional wrestling, and quite frankly, they don’t think that Tyrus fits the bill.”
On wanting to wrestle Bobby Lashley at WrestleMania:
“I just noticed today that Wyatt is out for WrestleMania. So Bobby, he is looking for an opponent and I told Bobby under his Instagram posts that I left that date open for him. So maybe one day we will get this Hurt Lock-Master Lock match. Believe me, I’m pushing for it. But, you know, a couple loose ends I got to tie up there.”
On saving his mother’s life:
“Okay, so I’m at Gold’s Gym. I received a phone call from my mom’s neighbor saying that something was going on at her apartment. She didn’t know what, but something funny was up. So then I go to call my mom. Anytime I call my mom, I get a voicemail without fail, like, you know, it’ll ring but then it’ll go to voicemail. This particular time, it just kept ringing, which doesn’t sound like much, but for me was a big red flag. Why isn’t the answering machine going off? It always goes off.”
“So I immediately hopped in my truck, and I went from Venice to West L.A. It’s only about 10 minutes. Thank God I was in town, by the way, and I got there and it’s an odd scene. I get there, and my uncle who was staying with my mom at the time, is locked out. That’s all I see is him at the door. So I get out of the truck and I don’t know what’s going on. I’m like, what is going on? I get to the door and I don’t even know what my uncle told me, but I start trying to make communication through the door, and somebody starts speaking to me. It’s a voice I don’t recognize and they are just speaking, like I’m asking about my mom, and this person is talking crazy. They’re like, ‘She’s my mom too now.’ He said something like, ‘We’re gonna go to heaven together.’”
“It didn’t take long for me to realize this guy’s tripping on something. Like he’s either tripping on meth or crack. This is not what comes out of a straight or even a crazy person’s mouth. It just sounded too bizarre.”
“Another twist to this whole thing is that the cops were actually there and had left, so I don’t know where the confusion was. They obviously didn’t know she was locked in the house, but somehow they came by and did not read the situation and left.”
“I’m trying to figure out what to do. I’m looking at the door and I’m thinking about kicking it down, obviously, because there’s a madman in the house with my mom. It’s barricaded and he’s not letting me in. Your first instinct is like, f**k, I’m gonna kick the door down. Thank God I didn’t. I had the smarts to know that what if I don’t get this door down? What if I can’t get in and then I escalate the situation?”
“So you know, I took a breath. I walked out to the street so he couldn’t hear me and I called the police. I told them, ‘Hey, I heard you guys were here. I need you to come back. I don’t know what happened, but my mom was barricaded with a madman and I’m about to kick the door down and I need some help.”
If he knew this guy:
“I don’t know who it is initially, but it turns out he’s actually staying with one of the other neighbors. But like, this is a guy who’s on the outs and he’s just a mess, I guess, apparently. I don’t know. I wasn’t around there at the time except for this instance.”
“So I tell the cops and then they come back. The cops are back now and they form a perimeter and they put me on the perimeter. This whole time, man, this whole thing sucks.”
“Here’s an important detail left out. As I’m communicating with him through the door. I hear my mom yell something about fire. She’s like speaking in code and I can tell that she’s saying that he’s threatening her to start a fire in there. So I already knew that much. So that’s why I didn’t also didn’t kick the door down because she had said that and it made me think he’s gonna start a fire and if I can’t get the door down then I’m screwed.”
“Okay, so anyways, now the cops come, they form a perimeter, I’m on that perimeter, and they start trying to communicate, obviously, same thing. Then they start trying to get the door down. Again, this just kind of solidifies my position. They couldn’t get the door down. They get the battering ram. A cop bigger than me with boots on because I had athletic shoes too. He couldn’t get the door down. He kicked it three times and they get the battering ram and it takes about three to four tries to get the door down. This is because the door first is very sturdy, but it’s also barricaded by a ton of sh*t. He took whatever he could and put it in front of the door and barricaded it.”
“While all this is happening, this is where it gets intense. They forced me on the perimeter, right? So I’m watching this all happen, and as they’re trying to get this door down, in the corner window, I see a fire emanate. So right at that moment is where everything starts for me. I’m like,’ Oh, hell no.’ I sprang into action because while all this is happening, once they get the door down, like actually I’m going a little forward like okay, so I see the fire. I came over there and I grabbed the hose. I think one of the cops breaks the window and I stick the frickin hose through there. I don’t even know what that was. That was probably the stupidest thing I did out of the whole exchange, but like you see a fire and you’re just trying to like, you know, it’s also the house, its possessions, you’re trying to like, what can I do to preserve that, in addition to more importantly, save her life? But okay, so now as this is happening, I stick the hose in there for whatever reason and I come around the corner. They’ve gotten the door down with the battering ram, but like smoke comes burrowing out. So the fire had already been starting for like the little bit of time elapsed. I see all the cops and basically they take steps back. You know, this is my mom. So I’m completely irrational. I’m thinking in my head, ‘What are they doing? Why are they backing off?’ Again, we’re talking about smoke burrowing, so they can’t, they have no choice, but it’s my mom. So I’m completely irrational and that’s when I realized this is the moment. Once the smoke came burrowing out, I realized she might die, and it’s not gonna be from the fire, she’s gonna die from the smoke.”
That was the moment that, it was real the whole time, but that was the moment where the adrenaline shot through the roof and I just knew I had to save her right now. So what I did is I knew exactly where her room was. She had two windows and one of the windows was blocked by a tree. So I told the cops, ‘Break these windows. She’s in this room’, because again, they can’t enter because of the smoke. She breaks one, no sign of her. Now the other window is blocked by a tree. So I freaking grabbed the tree and I bear hugged it and I basically ripped it to the ground. Like I go down with it. She breaks that window. Nothing. Nothing. All of a sudden my mom pops up. I was like, Oh my God, thank God. I got up, I scooped her out, I brought her about 50 feet from the scene, I made sure she was okay.”
“Then the last bit to the story was the next thing I know, I’m checking on her and I see them wrestling him out in front of the apartment. I rushed over there and I gave like, you know, what I can only describe and what most people identify kind of as almost like an RKO punt to his head when there was an opening. I mean, that’s pretty much the story. That’s as detailed as I think I can get with it. I’ve had to tell that story a lot of times, but it’s been a while. That’s what happened man and this guy ended up going to jail for four years. I think he’s out now and I’m pretty sure I’m assuming he was on meth or something, like, I don’t know. The behavior was just so odd.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Also, be sure to subscribe to “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” on your mobile device by clicking here if you have an iOS device or here on your Android device.
