Mosh Was Surprised By Headbangers’ WWE Return In 2016, Talks Working As Guest Coach

The Headbangers made their returns to WWE for a short tun in 2016, a moment that left Mosh surprised and touched for family reasons. Mosh and Thrasher made their returns for WWE on the August 30, 2016 episode of Smackdown as they faced Heath Slater and Rhyno in the SmackDown Tag Team Championship Tournament. They lost the match, but would come back for a couple more appearances.

Mosh spoke in detail on Insight With Chris Van Vliet about how the returns came about. He noted that he always wanted to have just one match in WWE for his son to see and got the opportunity, then nearly missed it because of where it was taking place. He also has worked as a guest coach at the WWE Performance Center several times in recent years, which he also discussed. You can see the highlights below:

On If He Was Surprised By Their 2016 Return:

“Yes. So what happened with that is, I would see Road Dogg at indie shows, and whenever WWE was in town or anywhere near me, I would call. I would try and get a hold of Hunter and say, ‘Hey, is there any way for me to [do one match]? I’m not looking to come back, just want to do one match.’ At this point, I had a son. My son was born in ’04. He had seen me do hundreds of indie shows, then when Glenn came back and him and I started tagging again, he’s seen that. All I wanted was one time for him to see me in a WWE ring. That’s it, in an arena, or whatever it was, that’s all I wanted. Every time I reached out to the office, I got no because of insurance purposes. ‘You don’t have physical.’ I’m like, ‘I’ll get a physical. I’ll get blood work, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll sign a waiver. I’ll sign all the waivers you want. I just need one match, please. That’s all I’m asking for.’ And I kept being told no. But I would see Road Dogg, and I’d be like, ‘Dude, you’re still close with Hunter, can you talk to him? Just one match? That’s all I want. I don’t care where it is, what it is.’

“Then so all of a sudden, 2016 I got a text and it said, ‘Hey, are you and Glenn available to do SmackDown Live on Tuesday night?’ And it was like, Foxwoods Casino or something up in Connecticut. I’m like, ‘Okay, yeah, nice rib.’ Then immediately he called me, and it was Road Dogg, and he goes, ‘No, no, it’s not a rib. We got the storyline we’re doing, we’d love to have you on.’ I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Then a couple of days later, I get a text, ‘Sorry, dude.’ I didn’t realize in Foxwood, wherever the casino was, you had to have full blood work done, full physical. He goes, ‘We won’t have enough time to get that done by Tuesday. I want to try and keep the storyline going to bring you to Dallas the following Tuesday. But no promises. I’ll do my best.’ I text him back, ‘Thanks, Brian. Appreciate you thinking of me.’ I’m like, ‘It’s not happening.’ So I actually hadn’t watched WWE in a while, I hadn’t watched anything. I was a little bit bitter and salty about being the way I was, not re-signed and all it says I just kind of separated myself. But at Tuesday night, I’m watching SmackDown, and I’m trying to see the storyline where we would have fit in, never saw it. I’m like, oh, I don’t see where [we’d be], so I let it go.”

On Getting Called Again:

“Wednesday comes and goes, nothing. Thursday comes and goes, nothing. And then I got a message on Twitter from Howard Finkel, saying, ‘Please call me at this number.’ Before I even saw it, five minutes later, my phone rang and it said it was a 203 number, so which I know is Stanford. So I’m like, ‘Hello,’ and he’s like, ‘Chaz, Howard Finkel here. I don’t know if you saw my message on Twitter, but you and Glenn are needed in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday night for SmackDown Live. Are you available?’ Hell yeah, we’re available. So that and that was three, four o’clock on Friday. So that’s when I’m like oh my god, this is really happening. Hadn’t been there in 15 years, on TV in 15 years, and now it was the opportunity for my son to actually see me [wrestle]. But not only see me, but see it on TV, live in a WWE ring, which was even better. So leading up to that, I had said to him, ‘What can I do?’ Because that whole thing for me was for him, that it’s all I wanted. In 2016 he was 12, so he I talked about him earlier. He had no idea the level that I did it, or anything like that. So I said to him, ‘What can I do for you so you know it’s just for you when I get to the ring?’ We went through a bunch of stuff. He goes, ‘I want you to dab.’ I looked at him, and that’s when the dab was big with Cam Newton. I looked at him and I go, ‘I hate the dab. I think it’s stupid, I’m not doing the dab.’ He goes, ‘That is exactly why I want you to do the dab.’ So I went, Okay.

“So we went back. It just worked out perfectly. Because a lot of times when you’re doing stuff in the ring, you want to make sure your camera gets it. You talk to the camera guys or production and say, ‘Hey, I do this, can you get this camera over here?’ I didn’t talk to anyone about it, was just a perfect thing. I did my roll in, I hit that corner, and bam, there it was. The greatest part about is my wife at the time, she set up her phone behind Tyler and she videoed him watching me. So I got to see his reaction. I got my entrance coming down. I watched the TV, but the TV was here, and he was here. I got to see the whole thing. As I’m coming down, and you could see his face, he was smiling. But the reaction of when I hit the dab, he was like, [cheers]. I go, ‘You teared up?’ He goes, ‘No, I had something in my eye. The ceiling fan was going, wind blew in my eye.’ But that’s probably the greatest two minutes. I have it saved on my phone. That’s the greatest two-minute video I have of him. I’m so grateful to my ex for filming that, because all I wanted was for him to see me, but then I got to watch him watch me. It’s goosebumps. And for him to be able to do that. At the end of the book, I write kind of chronological order of my top 10. So the only reason it’s not number one is because I did it chronologically, but that’s got to be the highlight of my career. Watching him watch me get in that ring, was just, and then we had a decent match with Heath and Rhino, because we knew them also. So they were like, ‘No, whatever you guys want to do, let us know what we’re going to do. We want you to get your stuff in. And it was just amazing.”

On Guest Coaching At the PC:

“It kind of came together, I don’t want to say it’s kind of just a joke I threw out, but Steve Corino and I, we’ve remained friends all these years out of nowhere, and he’s a Phillies fan also. So during baseball season, we’re always texting back and forth about something. He is awesome. So for someone who never, and I don’t mean this in a negative way, the way it may sound, because he made it, but he never made it like WWE status. ECW status is unreal. What he’s done in Japan, what he’s done is what most people haven’t done. But the knowledge that he has, and watching him work with these kids and pass it down is just amazing. So we were texting one day, and I was like, ‘Hey, just throwing it out there, if you ever need a coach up there, or is there a chance or an opportunity to come up and help out or something?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely. You have Bloom’s number?’ I’m like, I think so. He goes, ‘Just text Bloom.’ He came back to me. He goes, ‘You text Bloom?’ I’m like, ‘No, not yet.’ He goes, ‘I just talked to him. He said, Yeah, he’d love to have you come up here. So just text him and you guys figure it out.’ And two weeks later, there I was.”