Darius Carter Says Ron Simmons Praised His Match With Darius Lockhart In ASE

Darius Carter says he and Darius Lockhart got high praise from Ron Simmons for their ASE Wrestling TV bout. The two faced off on the February 20th episode of the show, and Carter spoke with Fightful’s Jeremy Lambert and SP3 on In The Weeds about Simmons speaking to them after the bout.

“The reason I tweeted it like that was not to be secretive, but people won’t believe you if you say it,” Carter said about tweeting that Simmons had spoken to them afterward. “I remember thinking, ‘People won’t believe me if I say this,’ just because it’s me saying it. We come back from the match and it’s literally Ron Simmons standing there, not sitting and watching through the chair, which he was doing with other matches. He was watching every single match. A guy like me is seeing who is going up to Ron Simmons and asking for any advice. This is Ron Simmons. How often are you going to have him in your locker room? If he is in your locker room, how often is he going to have the time to sit and watch every single match? That’s what he was doing.”

He continued, “I come to the back, and he said to me and my opponent, ‘That was the best professional wrestling match I’ve seen in recent memory.’ I’m hearing this from Ron Simmons. You obviously have to sell it, but you don’t wan to come out of your body because the first Black World Heavyweight Champion, who is actively watching wrestling and just watched every single match. He broke it down and explained it. Basically what Ron had said, the emotion we were able to evoke from people, ‘That’s what it has always been about. You committed yourself to making sure people responded emotionally to what you were doing.’ That’s what I focused on. It’s great to be seen and great to be seen by somebody standing on such a precipice in this sport. I’m so grateful. Having someone like that give you an eardrop, just take that water and nurture the soil.”

Simmons is a WWE Hall of Famer, known of course for his time with JBL as the Acolytes/APA as well as being the first Black man to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.