E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness – E&C are back with HBK & Nita Strauss!
Release date: November 16, 2018
Recap by: Caitlin Lavelle
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They’re back!
Edge & Christian are back and have found a new home at Westwood One. They have a new producer, so Christian paid a nice tribute to Mega Matt.
Edge on Smackdown 1000
Edge talks about his segment with Becky Lynch on Smackdown 1000. He explains his parameters for deciding when he’ll come back and do something with WWE, saying he only wants to participate when he can help move a storyline along, and doesn’t have any interest in coming back to WWE for a backstage comedy segment.
Edge says he does not believe Becky truly wants to be a heel because she’s, “Digging the fan reaction too much,” and Christian agrees.
Edge on Nikki Bella’s Neck
Edge & Christian talk about Evolution, which is a pretty outdated discussion at this point, but does mention that he’s fairly certain Nikki Bella tweaked her neck on a baseball slide to the outside of the ring during her Evolution match with Ronda Rousey.
Nita Strauss on Wrestling
During Edge & Christian’s interview with musician Nita Strauss, Strauss discusses her wrestling fandom, including a cool interview series she recently did with Becky Lynch (check it out here) and the unique story of how she got into wrestling.
Nita didn’t grow up watching wrestling (her family didn’t even have a TV), so her first introduction into the genre was when her boyfriend wanted to watch Wrestlemania 31. Nita says she didn’t quite “get it” that night, but ended up checking out more content on the WWE Network. Strauss says she actually fell in love with wrestling by watching the Monday Night Wars Documentary Series.
Interview with Shawn Michaels
Crown Jewel
Edge & Christian jump right into it, asking Shawn Michaels about Crown Jewel (with Christian cheekily telling HBK he’s glad he made it out alive). Michaels explains that he literally hadn’t been in a ring for eight years, that he’d planned to work out in-ring at the Performance Center but ended up getting lost in his crazy schedule, and that he was happy overall with his mobility but is still feeling sore.
HBK explains the twofold reason he agreed to wrestle at Crown Jewel. First, he says it “was a special request from other people.” However, he says he thinks people are off base when they say he did it for the money, assuring that he’d make a lot more money for a singles match at WrestleMania than he made for performing at Crown Jewel. Second, Michael says he knew that he wouldn’t have the pressure to be, “the guy to shine a younger singles competitor,” in this match, and knew that the four guys in the ring could get away with performing their greatest hits within the confines of this match.
HBK also talks about the torn pectoral muscle that Triple H suffered during their Crown Jewel match, including the conversation the two had mid-match about whether Hunter could continue and how they tried to work around it.
More Matches
Shawn says he currently doesn’t have any interest in working a singles match at WrestleMania. He calls working at WrestleMania “less fun than it is stressful,” and thinks that the unfair standard he’d be held to in a WrestleMania match would take the enjoyment out of the experience.
Getting a Haircut
Christian asks Shawn about shaving his head, joking that he should have held off on the reveal and taken the opportunity to be introduced as a new character, Shawn Michaels’s bald brother, John Michaels.
Shawn explains that he shaved his head for a movie in which he was playing an older, sicker version of himself, and apparently thought the look worked well enough to just stick with it.
Working at NXT
Michaels talks about moving to Florida, which he calls an “unbelievably infectious, positive environment”, and becoming an NXT trainer. Michaels likens his role with his students, a group that includes Tomasso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Aleister Black & Lars Sullivan, to being a parent, and says that it’s hard not to enjoy their hunger and enthusiasm.
Michaels touts the importance of vulnerability in wrestling, remarking on the emotional evolution of the business, which Edge & Christian remind HBK can be traced back to the iconic, “I’m sorry – I love you,” moment from the Ric Flair ‘retirement’ match at WrestleMania 24. Edge talks about seeing the fingerprints of this philosophy in today’s NXT product.
Michaels says he encourages his students to rethink audience engagement, telling them to value the more silent, attentive fan reactions over the “Pavlov’s dog”-like “this is awesome” chants NXT is known for. He says he finds it easiest to give advice to the guys closer to his size, like Gargano & Ciampa, who work a similar style, but sometimes has to call Triple H to give advice to the bigger guys like Aleister Black & Lars Sullivan.
Rating: 8/10
Yay! Edge and Christian are back! This episode is a little long, but you can save yourself some time by skipping over the Nita Strauss interview.
Writer Bio
Caitlin is a wrestling fan who hopes to one day discover that she is the illegitimate daughter of Vincent Kennedy McMahon and the rightful Anonymous RAW General Manager. Until then, she’ll keep on living in Orlando, Florida with her husband and son.
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